Mary

Today is our first day with our Chinese exchange student.  She arrived at about 9:15 last night.  She is currently in her room with the door closed and no noise coming out.  I'm letting her rest or whatever she's doing for a little while longer.  She ate breakfast with me, Jake and Madi this morning and we chatted for a while.  She played a beautiful song on the piano for us.  She was kind of looking at the piano and I told her she could play it.  She said something about her 20 hours of travel plus staying in Beijing for a few days before that, and I wasn't sure what that had to do with whether or not she could play the piano, but I know guess it was her way of saying she was a little "rusty" after not playing for a few days.  You would never know it by the way she played.  Just like you would never know Madi threw up during intermission when she was playing Ariel on Thursday and the camp that she works at was there to see it, but that's a post for another time... just remember I'm stress mama who wrote about EXTREME a few posts ago.  Back to Mary.  The other day Jonathan and Chloe were watching Tarzan (the Disney one) (they have this plan to watch 100 movies together this year) (Tarzan was the first movie Jonathan saw in the movie theatre, he was 3)  (this reminds me of when they do that pop up thing with movies on TV)  (maybe they don't do that anymore, was that a 90s thing?).  I mentioned how I am bugged by the part in Tarzan when they (Jane and company) teach him all about being a human with a five minute slide show.  I am reminded of that as we get to know Mary though, (whose real name is Hong Bing Pan {or Pan Hong Bing}), I feel like we were trying to tell her everything about being an American over breakfast on the first morning.  We mentioned things like Thanksgiving and Halloween, New York City, showers and dishwashers, junk food, cell phones, and of course the biggies around here church and theatre, so we're well on our way.  I explained how Madi and Jake have always done school at home, but this year will actually go to school.  Neither one will be going to the school she is going to go though.  It is a funny thing to have a stranger from a strange land move into your house. We had practice the past two summers with our short term exchange students, but this is the real deal.  It is kind of exciting.  She told us last night that she has fun with everything, we're off to a good start.