Categories
International Student Program

Honeymoon, Homework, and Holidays – So Far, So Good!

An International Student Host Family Update
By Bruce McCoskey, Host Parent

So the literature from the homestay company talks about the “Honeymoon Phase” – that’s supposedly the first few weeks or so with your International Student. Everything is “NewFunCool!” and you show off your student to your envious friends so they can see how hip, progressive, and downright philanthropic you are.  And you go out to dinner way too much.  Excuse me, better make those “I” statements.

Logically then it would seem to follow that the “Après Honeymoon” is when the shiny starts to wear off and it’s not quite as much fun for the host family or the student.  Maybe the host parent considers the student a burden and/or the student starts secretly plotting an escape because these people aren’t the American Fairy Godparents he or she had been hoping for? Hmmmm, we’re five months in and that hasn’t happened; so what’s wrong with us?

Sure, everybody’s going to settle into a comfortable routine. In the past few months we’ve learned that Xinyi (Amy) might sometimes prefer a little routine to our somewhat haphazard wacky spur-of-the-moment American lives.  This means set routines for waking up, breakfast, getting to school, cooking dinner at home, homework and studying, bed time – nothing wrong with that – a little routine happens to be good for us as well.

Amy’s residential coordinator once asked if we would be “offended” if she sometimes chose to study quietly in her room instead of hanging out with the family. Amy is pretty serious about studying and getting good grades; after all – that’s the main reason she’s here and her parents pay a considerable amount of money for her to attend school in America.  Her intent is to earn enough in academic scholarships to pay her own way through college so her parents can afford to send her little sister to America in a few years. That’s quite a burden for a 15-year-old kid in a foreign land – a lot of the things we take for granted here just don’t happen in China. We’ve talked about all these things with Amy and the importance of work/play balance (another somewhat foreign concept). She gets it. We get it. Nobody’s feelings are hurt.

Oh, we still have plenty of fun – among Amy’s “firsts” are: Homecoming (there are no mums in China), The Great State Fair of Texas (yay Corny Dogs!), her 15th birthday party at Medieval Times (Ye Olde Land of Merriment and Overpricing), Halloween (SO glad she chose the “modest” witch costume), Thanksgiving (fried turkey – enough said) and Christmas (helping with our family’s over the top decorations and lighting).  She’s bonded heavily with “her” pup and is not shy to pick up the karaoke mic.  We all laugh and play on a regular basis and it’s just as rewarding to see Amy doubled over in laughter as it is to see her getting good grades.

So far, so good. In fact, very good.

Homecoming

Helping with Dinner

At the State Fair

Halloween

Christmas

Categories
Technology

An Uncommon Adventure

By Julie Riggs English Department Chair, K-7, Lakehill Preparatory School
Teacher Voices Columnist, The Dallas Morning News

Published in The Dallas Morning News: 13 December 2014

In late October, I had the remarkable experience of receiving two hand-written letters from two different faraway friends. This was simply astounding! One of these explicitly lamented the loss of the art form to its inferior usurper, the email, or the even more inferior heir apparent du jour, the text. It’s an argument we’ve heard before from luddites or literati, bemoaning the digitalization (and thus degradation) of language. Don’t worry — I don’t intend to repeat that complaint.

Being significantly over 30, I did not initially enter the electronic age with zeal, but I admit that the digital rendering of text is no less than magic. I could not be induced back to the clumsiness of correction tape, the rigors of recopying, or the luridness of steaks and blobs of Liquid Paper, magical in its own right back in the day. Away with ugly filing cabinets — all hail Google Drive and its sisters of storage in the ethereal cloud! I think back on my stubborn resistance to e-readers as a passing madness. Being able to compose and stockpile documents, books, images, and music on a device smaller than an abridged dictionary is surely as wonderful as being able to access them from the electrified air.

Recently, when a new and ugly virus temporarily reduced my computer’s effective processing speed to glacial sluggishness, I was nearly reduced to tears of frustration. Speaking with the tech assistant on the phone, I noted in aggrieved tones that my homepage had taken a full minute to load. The three or four days of troubleshooting before I figured out what was actually wrong felt like being bedridden with a prolonged illness. Convenience and efficiency, though not actual necessities, seem essential to the addict.

But when I replied in kind to my ink-and-paper correspondents, I discovered something new and exciting. Writing letters by hand, rather than being a return to a quaint old custom, now feels like a risky enterprise. The wait involved between the time I place the stamp on the letter and the time I receive a reply bristles with eagerness.

My friend asks a question or makes an observation. I answer the question or counter the observation. Days go by. Choosing to write and mail a letter means voluntarily putting oneself in suspended animation, fraught with the thrill of the unknown and the vulnerability of surrendering control.

It takes so long that sometimes I even forget what I wrote, and I cannot check the Sent folder for a reminder. The reply, then, gains additional unpredictability. Somehow, this thrills me. Opening the mailbox provides much more excitement than opening an email.

I also find that writing by hand provides a narcissistic buzz. My handwriting grows self-consciously curvaceous, and I can occasionally indulge the guilty pleasure of an affectation: quote a line of poetry, roll out a ten-dollar word, show off knowledge of trivia, wax philosophical — devices that seem misplaced in an email and ridiculous in a text.

So rather than carrying the torch for the lost art of letter writing or the banner for the digital revolution, I intend to have it both ways. When time is of the essence, email will be my medium. When composing something likely to need editing, bring on the liberating manipulation of digital composition. When preservation matters most, I will save my work to disk and back it up to the cloud. When I need a bit of uncommon adventure, however, I will use pen and paper, seal my message in an envelope, and mail it out into the tangible world.