Our exchange student has now come and gone. It was fun and the kids absolutely loved it. A lot of work though driving him here and there. We took him for American hamburgers--he inhaled them. He ate pizza, Mexican food, spaghetti (his favorite) and tried pumpkin custard. Our friends hosted a birthday dinner for him on Sunday. Took him to the mall where he didn't find anything but then we stopped at Wal Mart where he bought $300+ worth of Yugio(sp?) cards, which are apparently a lot cheaper here in the US. Peter and Lily took the kids and Yuuki to Lagoon to ride on all the roller coasters and Nathaniel said the best part was listening to him scream. Sunday we went to Temple Square.
I think one of the fun parts was teaching him to play card games like 5 Crowns and Skip-O. But the best was carving pumpkins, something he had never done. He was hesitant to pull out pumpkin guts but got really into the whole process of carving. We mistakenly bought pumpkins this year that were as hard as rocks! Yuuki's was the worst! We had to pound in a screw driver just to get some some of the cuts started. It was like sawing wood! Poor Yuuki must think we are all crazy Americans. They don't have Halloween in Japan.
Nathaniel showed him off to all his friends and they came over and asked him a bunch of questions. It was very cute. He spoke very limited English. Half the time we weren't even sure if we had really understood each other and then we ended up speaking broken English to every one else out of habit.
The only bummer was getting him up every morning. We set two alarms for him but he would just sleep right through them. We would stand outside his door and knock and yell his name and once Nathaniel just went in and turned on the light. The first night he slept on top of the blanket because he didn't get that he was supposed to pull them back. He didn't know how to use the shower and was puzzled by the automatic doors on our van. He also insisted on washing his clothes every night, even though he had plenty to go three or more days.
The last morning he had to be out the door by 6:15am to catch their bus to Salt Lake Airport and we were all pushing him to move. It was totally futile. We didn't even get him to emerge from his room until 6:05. I was ready to tear my hair out worrying he would be late, but Peter drove to BYU in good time and got him on the bus at the last minute. No tears this time, thank goodness, though I know he was not looking forward to going home. Too much fun!
2 comments:
That's interesting that he wanted to watch his clothes every night. I wonder if that is a Japanese thing or if he was just quirky.
We had a Japanese girl stay with us once. She was very sweet. She was always gone to their meetings and we didn't do much with her. Your friend sounded like a good time!
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