Today I was telling Chloe that if we had another exchange student he or she would have a tough act to follow. Alicia was a joy to have around and I'd be disappointed if the next one wasn't as good. Then it occurred to me that the order in which a family receives exchange students could greatly affect the students' experience. Before Alicia, I didn't have too many expectations. Now, I'll be expecting another student to be happy, helpful, pleasant, low maintenance, a good student, beautiful, work hard to get involved with school and make friends, and lose things.
But, if the first exchange student had been rude, peevish, didn't make an effort to get involved in his or her life abroad, and was a lot of work, just about any student who came afterward would be such a relief that, by comparison, even an average, boring kid would seem to be an outstanding representation of his or her home country.
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