My sweet-spirited and adventuresome Wendy!!!!!

 Life continues to go well with Wendy.

Last week we took her on a family vacation to a lake in Washington.

She is sweet and quiet-spirited but she has a bold and adventuresome spirit that of course I love!

 She LOVES hamburgers and HATES "red" berries (she insists they taste like "Chinese medicine").  ha.  She eats anything/everything I put in front of her (except berries), despite me continually telling her that I will NOT be offended at all if she doesn't like something.

 She definitely has an attitude of wanting to embrace all that America has to offer and live the "American life" to the fullest while she is here.  Have I mentioned that I love this girl?!

 I can only imagine what she thinks of us.  

While she is with us we are pretty much (totally) doing life as usual and so she sees it all.  The good and fun, and the loud and crazy.  The other night we were sitting at the dinner table.  We had just gotten back from the lake and we were all exhausted.  Marc had gone back to work so I was alone getting the car unpacked from the trip and a last minute trip to Costco (crazy but necessary) and was just getting dinner on the table at 7pm (very late for my kids).  Did I mention how tired we all were? During the dinner, the dog ran inside with muddy feet, Caleb had a coughing attack and threw up inches from where Wendy was sitting, and Jorie (who had been helping Mei in the bathroom) came out to the table carrying Meili's pants that had a huge CHUNK of poop on them to show us all (ARE YOU KIDDING ME????).   And by the way, my family only takes about 10 minutes to eat a meal.  So, all of that "crazy" happened in that time frame.  All I could think throughout all of that was, "well....she is seeing it all!"

ha ha.  I can only imagine what she is thinking.

 One of the many frequent comments that Wendy has made to me is, "Mom, that boy/girl does not look like his/her family?????", with a VERY puzzled look on her face.

We have MANY friends who have adopted "international" children in their family.  Wendy is seeing what "adoption" looks like in all of them, including ours of course.  She is aware that there are orphans in her country but previously was not aware of adoption and continues to have a hard time understanding it. Her English is weak enough that we won't (while she is here) be able to have an in-depth conversation about it.  I have peace that God is at work though and am just trying to trust Him to work on her heart and mind concerning this issue.  Oh, how I hope pray that she will see the deep BEAUTY of these children while she is here and that her thoughts about them would not be shaped by a culture that says they are "worthless" and "bad luck", but instead by a God who says that they were created in His image and therefore have GREAT value!

We are already half way through our time with Wendy.  It is going by so fast.  And it has been very very good!  To Him be the glory!

Meet Wendy

Our awesome exchange student arrived late last evening from China.

She is much more extroverted than our last two exchange students.

Her English is minimal, but enough to communicate the basics.

 Today was a super full day:

 Church, friends house for lunch and sad women's soccer game,dinner at the Homeless Shelter, and then long walk around the neighborhood.

 Her personality is fabulous and she gets along GREAT with all of us.  She even loves our dog.  She has THREE dogs at home in China.  Are you kidding me?

No surprise, I love her!

Foreign Exchange Students

For the life of me, I cannot figure out why more people do not want to partake in the adventure of hosting a foreign exchange student.  I have talked with many many many friends over the last several weeks seeing if they want to host and NOT ONE of them is signing up.  :)  Ofcourse I know that the circumstances in each family is so different and everyone has their reason, which despite what you may be thinking, I totally respect and do not think ANY less of them.  I just simply am baffled why more people, generally speaking, won't give 3 1/2 weeks of their summer to embracing a teenager from another country.

Since my "salesman" techniques are obviously seriously lacking, I have decided to go the only other route I can think of and that is to document on this silly blog my heart and our experience of hosting a foreign exchange student.  My hopes are that whoever reads this thing will see that it isn't so bad and that in fact, it is totally the opposite,  an awesome experience for an American Family to partake in! 

So, here we go.

Tonight we will be meeting and taking home a 16 year old girl, our third exchange student from China. 

I was one of the first ones to sign up (shocking) for this batch of  kids coming to our city so I got to take my pick at choosing which student I wanted.  I ended up choosing this female student based on one thing:  she has 2 younger brothers in her family.  #1, I thought that her experience with brothers at home will have prepared her to come into our (somewhat loud/wild/crazy) home.  and #2, I am dying to know how her family gets to have THREE children....a characteristic that is EXTREMELY rare in Chinese families.

We will be picking her up around 7:30 tonight.  I am most curious to see how she responds to Meili, which will no doubt be SHOCKING to her.  I will encourage her to get to bed by 10 so that she can get to work immediately on getting over that jet lag.  And then tomorrow our family has a full day of activities planned. A day full of going to church, cheering on the American women's soccer team to victory, a bar-b-q at a friend's home, and then finishing the day by serving at a woman's homeless shelter.  Can you imagine what she is going to think of ALL of that???? 

more to come.......