Today is the last Saturday before I am officially back to work. Teachers had pre-planning last week, but our kids will be there this Monday...yikes! I am so not ready but here we go again.
Our friends, Kip and Treena, left today for Taiwan to bring home their beautiful daughter, Jemma, and
John and Nancy leave on Thursday for China to bring home Lily. John and Nancy are going to enjoy some of the activity in Beijing before meeting up with their travel group. What a fantastic opportunity to get in on the action of the Olympics while there for such a special occasion.
Jena, our exchange student, has officially been here for 2 weeks. After losing 1 of only 2 bags she brought here for 1 year in Hong Kong, it was found and delivered to us 2 days later. We felt so bad for her since this was the most important suitcase (contact lenses, clothes, etc) but she recovered from the scare, especially since Continental gave her $100 worth of shopping for her "troubles". We have had so much fun getting to know her and we have learned so much from her already about the Taiwanese culture. It has also been interesting to watch the Olympics with her, beginning with the open ceremonies, and hearing more about the politics between China and Taiwan.
Her favorite sport is baseball, as this is very big in Taiwan. She has been up early two days this week watching Taiwan vs. Japan and Taiwan vs. China in the Olympics. A fellow Taiwanese is on the NY Yankees and we will be taking her to a spring training game or a Devil Rays game here in Tampa. Her friends are SO jealous!
A great thing for Drew and I has been introducing all of our foods to her. She is an extremely good eater (as alot of teens are not), and so far the only things we know that she does NOT like are goat cheese, and Drew's insane "tofurkey" (don't ask, he's back to vegetarian). We have also found out that she has a distaste for green beans; we are in good shape.
Monday will be her first day in an American high school. She has come to us with a preconcieved notion of high school in America from watching movies like "Step it Up" and "Mean Girls". It will be very interesting to hear her impression after a couple of days. The school she is attending has over 2000 students with an extremely diverse population, which is great. This will truly give her a chance to experience our culture, no holds barred.
Now that we have some excitement in our lives, enduring this painful wait for our daughter wont be so bad. I will have fun things to post about. How cool that we are parents to a teenager before a baby? We could not have had a better match between exchange student and host family. We have become really close, really fast and we are so excited about the upcoming year.
