I had a perm, was attending a local junior college and was really into REM and The Indigo Girls. And we had a German exchange student who now lives in Berlin. She has a two year old, is married to a journalist and produces theatre- the artsy kind. It was so good to see her all these years later. The last time we saw each other was at a party in Munich a few weeks before I was moving to Japan to teach English. I was 23, a recent college grad and full of ambition. My goal at that point in my life was to live for a year on each of the major continents and then return to the states for grad school. But isn't that just like a young 20-something? Life had other plans for me.
My second day in Japan I met who would turn out to be my husband and father of my two girls. Though I was young and swore I would never marry before the age of 30, that meeting changed the course of my life. I ended up staying in Japan for 3 years and then moving straight back to the states for grad school. After working as an English teacher speaking in 2 and 3 word sentences for 3 full years I was desperate to go back to school. I couldn't wait to read big thick books again that didn't cost me an arm and a leg. In Japan I would need to take a 1 hour train into the city to buy a book in English- a penguin paperback at $50! Then I would finish the whole book in a day and be dry again. Oh, how Amazon has changed the world. It was also before the internet and email so I would write 13 page letters to my friends and then wait weeks for a measly 1 page reply. Living on the other side of the world in those days felt like living on the other side of the world. It is so different from today. What will another 20 years hold for us?
So, back in 1989, our exchange student was a senior at West Torrance High. She went to home coming and prom, starred in the school's production of The Crucible and lived the life of an average American teen. Except that she wasn't. She was a tall beauty that had modeled at 16 for European Vogue. At 6'4" she didn't exactly fit into the typical American high school crowd. She used to get so irritated when every single person she met greeted her with, "You're tall." She would try to be as polite as possible by responding, "I know." A few years later while living in Japan I would know her pain. Being a 5'7" female in Japan was nearly the same as 6'4" in the states and the 'you're tall' comment would grate to no end. Being considered tall is a funny thing because it's one of the few physical characteristics that it is OK to comment on. It is not polite to say to a very short person, "Gosh, you're short!" Nor a fat person, "you're fat." or a terribly thin person, "You're skinny." It's not polite to tell someone "You're bald." or "Your legs are short." But "You're tall." is pretty much fine in most cultures. There are some cultural variations of course and in Bali I was told on a daily basis that I was fat and that the girls' dad was skinny and that the big sister was 'skinny like daddy' and the little sister was 'fat like mommy.' But that was Bali.
All these years later the thing that still puzzles our ex-exchange student is why the drama teacher was referred to as 'Mr. S.' She wonders if the girl who wrote in her yearbook, "If you don't keep in touch, I'll hunt you down and kill you." was serious or kidding. (I could offer to insight on this one) She wonders if all those short boys finally grew taller after high school ended and she thinks back fondly of that year. This is the year of her 20th reunion, which she will not attend but I told her about Facebook and how very likely it is that most of her class will be on it this year. She's excited to delve back into American school life to a temporary little trip.
Growing up our family took in exchange students a few different times and most of them turned out to be good experiences. There were the summer school students from France that ended up getting sent home early for drug possession, which did not go over well with my mom- but other than that...
Since the girls were babies we've also had many exchange students in our home. They've all been from Japan because we lived very close to a conversation school that catered to Japanese, but we were certainly open to all ethnicities. I find it to be an excellent was to get to know people in a more intimate way than just meeting quickly. We once had two Japanese girls at the same time whose names were Yuko and Aiko, but they went by Yu and Ai (phonetically, that's 'you and I') which was terribly confusing, but still fun. I highly recommend the whole exchange student thing to all who are open minded and interested in sharing the world with your children. Particularly if travel is not in your near future yet you still want to expose your children to the outside world.