A whole year?

A package from Pamplona

Alicia sent us a package with Christmas presents for all of us. That kid is amazing. In her letter she mentioned that by the time we read it Steve's big birthday had probably already passed (he turned 50 a couple of days after we received the package and he's started talking about "people our age"), asked - by name - how most of the people in our families were doing, asked Chloe about Homecoming and some of her classes, and asked Christopher if he was enjoying living where he lives now. She's so young - she turned 16 only a couple of months ago - to be so aware of social niceties. She lived with us for only the first half of her exchange and had two families after us so I'm surprised she'd remember those details enough to mention them.

Wait a minute: she didn't ask about my birthday! But then, I'm not as old as Steve. People our age, indeed.

Yeah, I knew that

Should you ever be compelled to feel like an idiot, have a general conversation with a well-read foreign exchange student. While we were waiting to get the ticket to San Francisco fixed, Alaska Air was in a bit of a shambles. Two hours before its scheduled departure, their flight was half an hour late. The conveyor belt that was supposed to deliver the luggage wasn't working, so bags were piled up around the counter, vulnerable to anyone who happened to walk by. To politely mention concern about the security of the bags or concern about them making the same flight as their owners was quickly proved to be not appreciated by the Alaska Airlines baggage checker-inners. Most of the e-ticket stations were open, but there were only about a third enough employees to staff them. Hence, two-thirds of the passengers were standing around wondering what to do because every time they'd ask, they'd get a, "If you can wait a moment, I'm helping Skippy here" or "We didn't call your name yet" with no explanation of how one might place his name on a list to be subsequently called.

Despite multiple attempts, the aforementioned student couldn't get past the boarding-pass issuing machine and no one could tell us what to do or where to go (Alaska Air is also apparently trimming the budget by eliminating helpful signage). The difficulties with the boarding-pass machine prompted the student to comment that this was an example of why we should depend on men and not machines. As it turned out, it was man (a woman, actually, the travel agent) who had made the mistake, which was a victory of sorts for me because I'm a fan of machines when they are properly deployed.

Amid the confusion and as sort of an explanation I told him that a short while ago all of the Alaska Airlines baggage handlers reported for work one morning only to find that they'd all been fired and replaced with outside employees ("Scabs?" he asked, his European mind incredulous at the thought) because they couldn't agree on a contract. He, a European (a seventeen-year-old European) where strikes are a common event, said that surely that wasn't legal. I said maybe not, but until it's sorted out in court a lot of people are out of jobs. He said, "That's like Carnegie in the 1890s locking his employees out and shutting down his factories." Um, yeah. That sounded vaguely familiar. Then, "That's against the Wagner Act! Isn't it?" Um, sure it is. Click on the link and then you, like me now, will know what he was talking about.

Temporary daughter takes off

Last night I picked up Alicia at the airport from her trip to Chicago. This morning we went back to the airport so she could leave for her Rotary trip to San Francisco, Hollywood, the beach, Disneyland, Universal Studios, Las Vegas (for the Fourth of July), the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and I don't remember where else. Of the twelve inbounds in the Seattle district, ten of them are going on this trip (out of a total of about 54). Fifty-plus kids from many different countries traveling on a bus (and camping) through the American west for a couple of weeks. There has been a lot of ethnic and racial intolerance throughout the world to read about lately, and I see this trip as a partial antidote to that poison. It makes me hopeful just to think about it.

We swapped suitcases, Alicia left some things here that Christopher can take back to her host parents before she gets back (she decided - after a prudent count - that seventeen t-shirts was a bit much for a fourteen-day trip), and she was off. Her host parents will pick her up in a couple of weeks and then she leaves for home the next day. She'll get home a couple of days after Chloe and I leave her house in Pamplona.

It was great to see her again for a brief time and we (Steve, Christopher, my mom, and Steve's sister) got to say goodbye. At the airport we were at the Alaska Air ticket counter (several of them) for about an hour sorting out another boy's ticket. His travel agent booked him on the wrong flight even though months ago he'd forwarded Alicia's itinerary to the travel agent and told her that's the flight he needed to be on. I told him to be charming (his usual demeanor anyway) because there were no seats left on the flight, except in first class. His charm wasn't necessary because the ticket agent couldn't have been more helpful and took care of everything (I think he was a sucker for a group of international students traveling in the US). Then they (four of them) were off to the security line. Because they were all there it wasn't so bad saying goodbye to Alicia. I hugged her and told her I'd be seeing her again. As I was walking away she said, confused, "Wait, when?" I choked out, "Sometime." It's easier to say See you again than it is to say Goodbye.

The ticketing snafu was a valuable demonstration of why it's not a good idea to leave a passenger at the airport doors and then drive off (the case with two of the students, including the one with the ticketing problem). These are intelligent kids and they would have eventually gotten it figured out, but having a native-English speaking adult there helped to pave the way to a successful resolution.

Gosh, what a year

All of this end-of-year business has put me in a rhapsodic frame of mind. At Alicia's goodbye party I was struck again by what an incredible, life-altering gift these kids have been given, and by strangers at that. Warning: gushiness ahead.

There was supposed to be only one student from Vashon sent out this year; instead, the Rotary club agreed to send three of them. These kids have flourished in Italy, France, and Spain and will bring three times the experience home to their school, friends, and families next year. They're also lucky that they'll have each other to turn to while reintegrating themselves into their former lives.

Alicia was not supposed to come to Vashon, but Vashon Rotary and the school district (which made an emergency exception to accept six exchange students instead of the customary limit of five) welcomed her anyway. Vashon Rotary gives each student a $100 per month stipend (ends up being $1,000 per year, per student), and that's in addition to the various fees that the clubs pay for the kids they're hosting (travel to Rotary-sponsored outings, etc.), so one unexpected additional student is a considerable expense. The Vashon Rotary club is small in relation to the 50+ other clubs in the Seattle district. Out of all the clubs in the district, only about twelve or thirteen students were hosted, and Vashon hosted twenty-five percent of them.

Among those three were a girl who spoke no English, despite what her application claimed. It's not a requirement, but it's nice to know to help ease the student's transition. She was terrified when she first arrived, but had gained enough confidence (thanks in large part to the early efforts of her first host family) to play on the school volleyball and basketball teams and be a cast member in the school play. Although Alicia was relatively young when she arrived, she has been nothing but an asset to the Youth Exchange organization and has enriched the lives of every family she's lived with this year. She's also bringing home with her proof that not all Americans are fat and lazy. All of these kids - inbound and outbound - owe a lot to Rotary (and many individuals) for the opportunity given to them. As do the rest of us.

Beneficial progression

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.

Food snobbery

Chloe wrote about peeling fruits and vegetables, which reminded me of Alicia. I know that in some countries it's wise to peel fruits and vegetables because the quality of the tap water that's used to wash them is in question. But that's not an issue in Spain (Alicia always drank tap water here because the bottled water was too cold). Steve usually leaves the potato skin on when he makes fried potatoes or french fries. I noticed Alicia cutting off the skin on the end of her french fries one night (which indicates that she was using a knife and fork to eat the fries), but I didn't ask about it. Then we went to Jack in the Box and she pinched off the ends of the fries with the skin on them. I mentioned that Jack in the Box had recently changed their procedure and now included the skin on their fries, and had built a couple of TV commercials around that development. She said probably because it's cheaper and easier. No, the part that gets peeled off has the most nutrients (a wash, I'm guessing, when they come out of the deep fryer, and it probably is cheaper and easier, but that was contrary to my point so I dismissed it) and that lots of people like the flavor. I don't think she bought it.

Likewise, one day I grabbed a piece of string cheese to eat in the car. She said her mother would never buy that kind of food (that sounds kind of snotty, but she was never anything but polite). Why? Because it's not fresh (isn't freshness sort of a bad thing in the aged-cheese business?). I said that it was just cheese - not a pasteurized processed cheese-like substance - in a handy portable wrapper that enabled me to eat a little protein on the run. I very nearly got mildly indignant because I don't eat that crap, either (although I'm happy to eat many other kinds of crap).

And, when Chloe first got there Ana had bought fresh green beans. Chloe loves raw green beans (but hates them cooked), and so washed a handful and ate them. They were appalled and worried that she was going to get sick from eating raw vegetables. It's hard to know what are cultural differences and what are personal differences.

She's baaack

Alicia's back for a couple of days and Steve's so excited to have a purpose in the early morning again. Tonight we had family over for dinner because no one got to say goodbye when she moved. After dinner Steve poked his head out of the kitchen and said he was going to get started on the dishes now because he had to "get waffles in that girl in the morning." My brother laughed and said I needed to get him a chew toy to fill the daughter void.

Steve asked Alicia if her new family made her lunch (yes) and if the lunches were good (yes). Then he asked for specifics and jokingly said that they probably didn't give her special treats (like candy bars - because every kid needs a candy bar in her lunch, whether she wants one or not) like he did. She started to say something and my aunt, laughing, interupted with, "You'd better say 'no.'" Alicia shook her head and said, no, they didn't ever give her those good things. Again, it takes a certain kind of intellect, especially in one's third language and when speaking with relatively unfamiliar people, to catch on to sarcastic subtleties like that. It still surprises me when she gets those jokes.

Traveling not light

A week ago I told Alicia that she was going to need a new suitcase to take her stuff home, for her end-of-year trip, and for moving to the next house (she brought only one from home, and it weighed only twenty kilos, or forty-four pounds). They were on sale for 50% off, so she bought the same one Chloe did last summer, the biggest one they have that's still within airline size limitations.

That night she got off the phone from home, where there had been much discussion about the need for such a big suitcase and the relative foolishness of buying it. Any purchase, no matter how trivial, generates the same discussion. Today, when she packed, did she need every inch of that suitcase and the one she brought from home? Yes, and she could have used more.

She's gone

We delivered Alicia to her next home and I've spent the evening being surprised that she's not here, or won't be here in the morning, and then remembering that it doesn't matter which weekend in February is the next RYE gathering because there are no more weekends on my watch.

The house is very quiet and the TV is still on Saturday Night Live even though I'm in another room. Is it too loud for her in Chloe's bedroom because she doesn't sleep with a fan running for white noise like Chloe does? Oh, that's right, she's not here so it doesn't matter if I get up out of this chair and go turn the TV off. I need to make sure her clothes are washed before school on Monday. Oh, no, I don't. Is there enough bread for Steve to make her sandwich on Monday morning? No longer a concern.

Having Alicia gone is more than just having Alicia gone. She was a tenuous yet tangible thread to Chloe, especially when Chloe lived in Alicia's house. Because of Alicia, we had a better understanding of the family dynamic that Chloe and Abby lived in. More than once I was able to explain something to Chloe that made it easier for her to understand what was going on. We had an insider's perspective on Chloe's school, her host home, her new friends. Even after Chloe moved, though, Alicia's mom and dad would still tell her what they'd heard about Chloe from the two new girls at their house. For example, did I know that Chloe went to Madrid today? We've lost that thread and I feel somewhat adrift. Not to mention that Steve barely suppressed tears when he hugged her goodbye and has been suffering a sense of emptiness in the teenage-daughter department.

Found

Alicia came to us as a self-described loser of things. So, when she lost her Christmas cards she was angry with herself ("So, so stupid!"). She'd written letters in some of them, some were already stamped (at .80 a pop) and some of her addresses from home were in the box. I last saw them on the dining room table, which was littered with a bunch of pre-Christmas stuff. But I cleaned that up and there were no Christmas cards. She was certain she left them here, then one day she said she looked in journalism class and they weren't there, either. "You brought them to school?" Which meant that she could have left them on the ferry. But, no, she remembered looking around and didn't see them. They had to be at home. But they weren't.

She tends to offer too much information to home, and so this was a several-week international ordeal. One Saturday she was scouring the house because her mom had told her that she just hadn't looked hard enough. With all due respect, Mom wasn't here, and neither were the cards. She finally bought more cards, but that $6.00 decision was about three weeks in the making, and the purchase was made only after she was given permission to do so.

Today I went to get the mail and there was a box of Christmas cards in my post-office box. A ferry worker saw the return address and made a trip up the street to the post office to return them. They must have gone to lost-and-found on the ferry first because there was a tag with December 17 written on it, although they were lost at least a week before that.

Everyone complains about ferry workers, including me. And most of the time the griping is justified. So it's only fair to recognize when they do something right. Like this, which was above and beyond the job description and was a nice thing to do. Alicia will be very excited at the news.