Ring, Ring..."This is Heather" - "Hi Mrs. Barker, this is Camille with Park City High School, we received the records for your student and need you to come in and meet with us to get him fully signed up"....crickets..."Oh, sure, how about Monday morning first thing?"
Let me tell you how weird it was to receive that call on Friday - took me totally off guard. I guess it is all official - we will have a foreign exchange student staying with us in August. I just looked in our file online and he has written us a great letter introducing himself. We will need to write something back to him tomorrow - I am sure he is curious about us. I am excited about this new experience and also nervous. I hope he likes it here. I hope he makes friends. I hope the experience is what he wants it to be. The one thing that makes me feel comfortable is knowing my family will totally embrace him while he is here. It will be fun to have him speak Chinese with Amy's kids and I can't wait to see how he and Travis get along. It sounds like he REALLY likes basketball.
His name is Lingfei, but he calls himself "Jay" - this simplifies things a bit. He wants to study architecture here in the US after he graduates and is excited to learn about our culture this next year. I am thinking of all the weekend trips we will need to take him on...Moab, Zions, Lake Powell, Yellowstone/Jackson Hole & the Tetons...then the winter...I wonder what his winters in China are like. Travis is excited to take him skiing - I wonder if he ski's already? I am very excited to learn about his life in China.
Can you imagine how brave you need to be to go away from all that you know to a place with total strangers all by yourself? I already admire him for taking on this adventure. I think he will be good for us. It sounds like he is quite involved in service projects at home and I am going to begin thinking about something we can get involved with here in Park City that we can do as a unit. I think this was a very good decision for Travis and I - we deserve to step outside our little life and experience some new things and it will be fun to see things from Jay's perspective, rediscover our great state and learn about another culture.
I Am Grateful,
HB
Diva Quote: "I wandered everywhere, through cities and countries wide. And everywhere I went, the world was on my side" Roman Payne
You need to take him on a tour of Welfare Square, the Humanitarian Center and the Conference Center. Church Hosting sets it up so missionary couples take you around and give you the tours. I took my birth grandparents, who are Episcopalian, on it over Christmas break and they LOVED it. It's not terribly churchy, but it is REALLY interesting.
ReplyDeleteI'm really excited for you guys! You'll have to blog about all your adventures (and please take day trips around the Salt Lake area -- I need more things to take my grandparents to for the next time they come) (o:
Great idea...I'm sure he will love it. It may seem awful, but I don't think I have taken any of the actual tours so it would be good for me too.
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness!!! Wow! That came out of no where. I thought it was just an accidental call. So Jay sounds great. You guys will have a ball. I agree, I think that would be soooooo scary to send a child off to live with complete strangers for an entire school year? or full year? You, Trav, Bart and Snowball?? will be an awesome foster family for him. If it was me, I would DIE to have the exchange family keep in touch and write/email me about our son if I was in the same situation.
ReplyDeleteWe will be there until Aug. 7th (really the 12th but I will be in Vegas for Choffy). Hopefully we can meet him.