Just waiting to bring our new daughter home...our little place on the Oregon Coast:
10 more days! Yes, we have to wait another 10 days to begin this year's adventure. The other AFS students in our community arrived last weekend and have already begun their experience. While we are happy for all of them, we are feeling a little left out this year with our 'late' start. Last year, everything was a new experience for us and it really felt like a special club when all our local students arrived almost together. This year we are 'old hands' even though we have only hosted once and it was just last year, yet we are without our student. Our first 'compromise' on our expectations. Trying not to have many expectations is key to making the hosting experience a much better adventure, keep this in mind and remind me now and then!
How does this really play out, the expectation thing? Well, I had bought theater tickets for us to go see the Broadway traveling play, Mamma Mia in Portland next week. Living in rural Oregon and having a student from the city (Rome!), I thought this would be a great transitional experience, big city vs. small town, plus our younger daughter loved the movie version. We had gotten the original arrival date from AFS and the timing was perfect. Oops...change of arrival date happened! You can't return tickets so now it is going to be a tween trip to Portland. It will be a really fun trip even though it is not the trip I had expected. Lesson learned, again.
We will have lots of experiences and the transition will happen in any event, I didn't really need a big adventure, they will come. Just 10 more days and we will begin our journey for this year along with all the other students and their host families. We can't wait!
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