Our Second Exchange Student {China}

Just two weeks after our Spanish student left, a group of young Chinese students were coming to the area. Education First (EF) contacted us after a few of the families backed out at the last minute. We agreed to host one 9 year old girl for ten days. Can you imagine sending your 9 year old to another country where they don't speak the language?! Not me! This is one of the many cultural differences we'd come across with Rachel. And that's another. Apparently Chinese students pick an English name the first time they come to the US. Is that because they want to have an "American" name, or because Americans don't generally take the time to learn their Chinese name? I hope it's the first. I preferred to call her by her actual name, but my kids found it easier to call her Rachel.

I have to admit, the first couple days with her were rough. When we met her at Thursday night's welcome party, she seemed to not want to communicate and it was clear she understood VERY little English. As I looked around, I saw a room full of terrified young children. One little girl was crying and being rocked like a baby by the only adult in the room who spoke Mandarin. What have we gotten ourselves into? How would we ever communicate with our student and help her feel comfortable with us? Yan Xue Fei fell asleep five minutes into our hour long drive home. I had to wake her at 5:30 the next morning to make it to her first class. Monday thru Friday, the students met together for English class in the morning and activities after lunch. They wouldn't arrive to the bus stop til around 6pm each night. Her first night she again fell asleep on our way home and slept until the next morning. Poor thing was really struggling with the schedule on top of the 12 hour time difference. We let her sleep as long as she wanted on Saturday morning. She had still barely spoken to us and I was afraid she was uncomfortable in this situation. These next two days were our only real chance to spend time with her as the school schedule was long and left her exhausted. We (mostly) solved our communication problem with the help of Google Translate. It's amazing, and free! It can be used in multiple ways. You can type or speak and the app will translate it into one of a hundred different languages! Conversation mode was super handy and you can even take a photo to translate the text on any sign or page. So cool!

She had told us of her love of cats. She has one at home. We've been volunteering at our local Humane Society, so we took her there to spend time in the kitten room. On her last day, she told me spending time surrounded by kittens was her favorite thing. Afterwards we went to the YMCA and played racquetball. It was great to hear her laughing and see her beautiful smile!

We stopped for Icees on our way to an exotic pet store. This place had all kinds of critters including a snake I'd never heard of, a Kenyan Sand Boa, which the owner took out for us. At first Yan Xue Fei was afraid of it, but while I held it, she had no problem reaching out to pet it. I loved seeing her become more bold with all of the creatures we showed her and let her touch.

The next day we took her to church with us where she got along great with all the kids. They all learned to use Google Translate in no time and the kids all had a blast together at lunch afterwards.

My favorite part was taking her to Silver Springs State Park. During our hike, 

we saw a manatee swimming alongside a kayaker. What a cool sight!

We went to a park and found lots of lizards, cicadas and other critters. 

The kids decided to build a little home for one of the lizards. 

One day we found this Hickory Horned Devil in our yard. I was so happy to see she had become bold enough to hold it.

When the time came for Yan Xue Fei to head home, we were shocked at how attached we'd become to her in just ten days. It's still shocking to see how we'd gone from total strangers who could not mutually understand a word, to a warm exchange student family situation in such a short time. And it wasn't just us. EF does a graduation ceremony and it was so wonderful to see how all of the students had warmed up and come out of their shells. You could see they had bonded well with their host families as well. We still keep in contact with Yan Xue Fei and she hopes to return thru EF again next year.

Hosting Our First Exchange Student {Spain}

Have you ever thought about hosting an exchange student? My husband and I had, but that was years ago. In July, the opportunity presented itself and two weeks later, we brought our first student home.  We are unable to host for an entire school year, so we were excited to hear Education First (EF) does short-term programs, We were able to choose between a student from Spain or France, boy or girl, and then were given two profiles to read. We chose Aner, a 15 year old student from Spain, because his interests most closely matched our own. We were both excited and anxious before his arrival as we didn't really know what to expect. Would we be able to communicate? How would our children handle having a teenager around? Will he eat the food we prepare?

Twenty-one days can be very short if you get along, but very long if you don't.

We arrived at the Welcome Party with handmade signs and waited for the bus to expel the young man who would spend the next three weeks with us.

We were relieved to realize he already knew English pretty well. The first few minutes did feel a bit awkward, but over dinner and the drive home, we had a chance to get to know him a little bit. He is from a town called Mundaka, along the coast of Northern Spain. We were shocked to find out they do not speak Spanish there, but Basque. In school they speak Basque, but spend fours hours per week learning English and Spanish. Now at fifteen years old, he is fluent in all three! When we asked how similar Basque is to Spanish, he replied, "not one word is the same in both languages"! He gifted us a book about surfing in northern Spain, written in all three languages, so here is an example of how different they are.

The first night, he tried describing something that was served to him on the plane. We couldn't figure it out until he showed us the photo. It was a green bean. He's never seen them before. He'd also never eaten corn. He said they have it in Spain but no one eats it. We were confused, but later we found out that corn was brought to Spain as animal feed. That explains it!

Twice a week the students have organized outings with their EF group. They catch a bus at 830am which takes them on their excursions until we pick them up around 6pm. Activities included a day at Daytona Beach, shopping in Orlando, swimming at Deleon Springs State Park, and more. The host families were invited to a couple of the outings, like this river cookout.

On days when he didn't have scheduled activities, we took him to some of our favorite places. We hiked and kayaked the Silver River.

In DeLand, we enjoyed lunch while watching skydivers land right in front of us.

We went fishing, spent time with the kittens at the Humane Society and took a tour of ITEC where the kids sat in a real flying car! ITEC trains indigenous Christ followers to take care of the physical needs of their community as a door opener for the gospel.

 We took him on a weekend trip to Sarasota so we could kayak the mangrove tunnels at Lido Key. Thankfully we made it to Siesta Key beach, before the red tide invaded the very next day causing the beaches to close. So on our last day, we opted for some pool time with our friend, Janelle, and her family.

Another day we went swimming in the cold, blue water of Rainbow Springs.

Hiking a trail at Lake Woodruff National Wildlife Refuge was not really Aner's 

idea of fun, especially when we came across a snake, but we had fun anyway.

We introduced Aner to lots of creatures that live in the woods and he enjoyed mowing the grass for us. In Spain you must be 18 to drive, so he thought this was great fun.

 Having lived in an RV for so long, we wanted to show Aner that RVs can be just like a tiny house on wheels. He had never been inside one before and was quite impressed. We watched the movie RV together and after this tour, we caught him watching RVing videos online.

Having Aner with us, was a fantastic learning experience for us as well. He explained some things about their culture, for instance, they normally eat dinner about 10pm, unless it's the weekend, then dinner is around midnight. They live in tall buildings with each family owning a level. They walk to school and most places. A typical dinner is spiral pasta with white sauce. He loves Burger King, but really missed eating Spanish food. And we found out our family really enjoys Spanish music. 

 At the farewell party, the French students sang for us and the Spanish students did a song and dance.

 Saying goodbye to Aner was harder than I had expected. I admit, it was a struggle to hold back tears. The kids mention him often and say how much they miss him. We all do.

Another benefit of hosting, was meeting other host families. One family goes to our church but we had never met. Who knows how long it would have taken for us to really connect without EF. We really connected to one particular host family and have been enjoying their friendship the last few months.