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.
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