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.......