The phone rang while we were watching some one of the 4pm football games on Sunday afternoon. Probably the Steelers, but I cannot recall. It was Jess' German teacher and she was not at all happy.
"I am not sure what to do, but I need to ask you a favor..." she started. She is a lovely and sweet woman, and my heart started pounding wondering what could possibly be wrong. "I need a host family for one of the students coming here on Friday, and I'm wondering if you can take her in." She told me the story of how the original exchange family cannot host her, and the substitute exchange family deicided that they just can't take her.
"Sure. We'll take her."
I looked at Doug, who was lounging upon the couch watching his football and he rolled his eyes, but he knew in his heart of hearts that I was right speaking for us. "OH!" said Jess' teacher, "Thank you!!! I don't know what I would do without you!"
It isn't about her praising me, it was more about me thinking "What if this was my kid, and she was on her way to some Foreign Country, and her host family flaked." What would I hope for ... someone to step up.
So our German arrives tomorrow afternoon. Jess didn't sign up for the exchange program so we're not prepared for this. She's not planning on going to Germany in June, this is actually someone "else's" student, which is all fine and good. Some of you may remember 2 years ago right now when we had Anna here as our "German." She was fantastic. We went to my sister's wedding and had a hands down blast.... and Jess went to Germany and stayed with her family in June 2008.
Melanie will come to us, and we'll surrogate host her, I guess. But already I've had a wonderful time emailing with her. And I can't believe in 24 hours she'll be sleeping upstairs.
I do feel a little self-satisfied. I'm so willing to just fling open my doors and let whomever in... it's just too bad my house is a fucking DISASTER and needs to be top to bottom scrubbed.
I took a vacation day tomorrow.... so the scrubbing/vacuuming can take place. And it will. dude. It totally will.
So not much else to say except I plan on a German living with us starting tomorrow. And it is freaking me out. I should be cleaning... but oh man. German. Don't mention the war!
While she is here, she will be going to NYC with the full group (Americans and Germans) and spending 2 days heading out to Niagara Falls with just the Germans. They'll come down to Salem, and I may try and tag along with them when they do.
The weekend of October 16th, I'm going "home." My High School Marching band is having a reunion. I'm going to stay with my sister, and I'm kind of super looking forward to it because Linda (my baby sister) and I have never been in Band at the same time together... so this will be the first and only time I get to march with her. I wasn't going to go do this trip, but when I realized this fact, I had to go.
I loved high school marching band, the fun field shows and challenging programs. And Linda and I were never in band at the same time, so this will be an amazing time.
If I can remember how to play my flute or saxaphone.
There may be some awesome people there and I'm almost out of control excited about seeing people that might be there. More to come on this in the coming weeks, I'm sure.
But wow. High school. Marching band. Woot!
Anyway -- not much else going on. A lot of Scout stuff keeping me busy and the German thing, and ... wow. That's about it kids. Hope all is well with all y'all. Watch this space as usual.
No comments:
Post a Comment