"Well, if you like burgers, give 'em a try some time. Me, I can't usually get them 'cause my girlfriend's a vegetarian which pretty much makes me a vegetarian." Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction
I like how Samuel L. Jackson delivers that piece of dialog, and I quote it quite a bit when people ask me how things at the high school are going. I'll say, "Well, you know that line in Pulp Fiction when Sam Jackson says... ? Well, Char is in marching band right now which pretty much means we're all in marching band right now." I'm usually talking to another a parent, and they'll know exactly what I mean.
When your kid is in an activity, then you're mostly in it, too.
Daphne and I aren't on the marching field, but we are with the band.
If Char marched at the Friday night football game, then Daphne and I watched the half-time show from the sidelines. That's because we volunteered to pull and/or carry something on and off the field before and after the show. We also pulled and pushed multiple things back to the band room. Daphne and I did this at some of the Saturday marching band competitions, too. We even spent six hours in the concessions stand the Urbandale Marching Invitational.
Volunteering is a big time commitment, but it's worth it because Char loves marching band. She has said so many times.
I was discussing this with Charlotte's Japanese teacher when he said, "Yeah, about that time commitment. You know we have the Japanese exchange coming up, and I'm still looking for host families..."
To make a long story short: Char is a student taking Japanese, so Daphne and I all took in two Japanese students for a week.
My challenge is posting about their visit without showing pictures of their faces. (I didn't ask for their permission because that would have been weird.) So, we'll see how this goes. For the purpose of this post, I shall refer to the Japanese students as "the girls."
The students from Owa High School arrived via a bus from Chicago on a Tuesday afternoon.
The Japanese students were 16 and 17 years old. I don't normally take pictures of shoes, but I liked how the girls lined them up when they would get home from school. Char's shoes are on the left.
Here the girls (including Ellie) are taking a break from carving pumpkins. They're watching Spirited Away. Char's head is on the left.
For two girls who had never carved a pumpkin before, their results were quite impressive. Char's pumpkin is on the left.
The girls wanted to experience a high school football game, so we moved movie night from Friday to Saturday. We checked out a couple of Blu-rays from the Urbandale Public Library, and I was impressed with the number of languages that were available on each release. We watched The Lost City in Japanese with English subtitles. I think they liked it. It was hard to tell because they were so polite.
School activities for the girls included touring our state capitol and spending a day at Living History Farms. We took them to a Spirit Halloween store, Char's church youth group, Char's evening percussion party at school, a volleyball "tournament" where the girls got to play, a Leo Club tailgate, the football game, the Downtown Farmers' Market, the Pappajohn Sculpture Park, the Jordan Creek Mall, Sunday morning church, and the Hurt's Donut Co.
The girls liked the doughnuts, but they later admitted they wanted to go for ice cream instead. That was an easy fix. We hit up a Baskins-Robbins on Sunday after church. I really like the retro VHS design on the Hurts Doughnut Company's boxes.
I'm pretty sure the box's slogan, "It's a Jelly", is a reference to the movie Strange Brew.
Wow. Bob and Doug MacKenzie. That takes me back. But I digress...
Daphne bought a Halloween Witches' Tower Cookie kit for the girls to assemble. Here are the parts for the kit.
And here is how they did. Looks good!
The girls were with us for six nights, and to be honest, it would have been okay if they stayed a few days more. All three seemed to become more and more comfortable with each other as time passed. By the last night, they were really having fun just hanging out and playing online games.
That went on for an hour and a half. Good times.
Hosting was a big time commitment, but it was worth it because Char loved having the girls stay with us. She has said so many times. I think the girls liked being with us as well. They both wrote very nice thank you notes in both English and Japanese, and Char has heard from both of them since they returned home.
High school activities. You don't pick them when you're a parent. They pick you.
It's okay.
