June 2011
5 posts
Ambassadors
I sent two of my four daughters to South America this week. I’m so proud of both of these young ladies. Both are unofficial ambassadors for their countries.
Lisa went to Paraguay for two months, volunteering with the program Amigos de las Américas. (You can read more about Amigos in an earlier post:...
"Curiouser and curiouser" - Kerri and Sisi in...
Alice had to drink and eat to get smaller and taller, but Kerri and Sisi (who are similar in height) just had to enter a room.
I didn’t use any photo editing with these pictures; the “distorted room” is built this way.
The room is in the Exploratorium - “the museum of science, art and human perception.” As you can see from these pictures, they use cool hands-on...
California Academy of Sciences
The Academy of Sciences has an aquarium, a planetarium, a natural history museum and a 4-story rainforest all under one roof. It is the kind of place that makes education fun.
rainforest picture courtesy of the Academy
butterflies in the rainforest
birds in the rainforest
The “living roof” design “is like lifting up a piece of the park and putting a building under it.”
...
Crime and Punishment
The maximum prison sentence permitted in Brazil is 30 years, even for the worst crimes. In the United States, life sentences and even the death penalty are a part of our criminal system. This difference was one of the surprising facts we learned this year. The fun way to learn about another culture is to have an exchange student live with you. Instead of learning from books, we learn from...
May 2011
3 posts
Play Ball! Baseball, Football, Soccer, ..... and...
Baseball is often called “America’s pastime”. It is certainly played in other countries, but it’s not as popular as it is here. Sisi asked me why the championship is called the “World Series”. Good question, since only the United States and Canada have teams in Major League Baseball. (That question also makes you wonder why they call it the “Miss Universe” pageant.) Our...
A Girl and Her Dog
A girl and her dog make a glorious pair:
No better friendship is found anywhere,
For they talk and they walk and they run and they play,
And they have their deep secrets for many a day;
And that girl has a comrade who thinks and who feels,
Who walks down the road with a dog at her heels.
She may go where she will and her dog will be there,
May revel in mud and her dog will not...
Lessons Learned
“I guess there is something called dish soap and something called dish washer soap and a huge bubbly mess if you use the wrong one,” said Sisi on her Facebook page. Sisi did this just the other day. It was kind of funny that it took her 8 months to make this mistake.
S’Mores (and roasted marshmallows) are delicious. Sisi first heard of them in Brazil while watching the show “Jon &...
April 2011
2 posts
The “Coelhinho da Páscoa” (Easter Bunny) visited us from Brazil on Sunday. That is one tough bunny. The chocolate eggs he carries are huge. And he hides them so well that it takes at least 30 minutes, and lots of hints, to find them.
Sisi went to Yosemite on a school trip over Easter weekend (more on that later). Luckily, the Easter Bunny also went to Yosemite so that the high school...
Prom Knight*
*Intentionally misspelled: the high school mascot is the Knights, so pretty much every prom title is a play on the word night - A Knight to Remember, etc.
Prom is a big deal at most American high schools. There are other countries which have traditional graduation dances, but most exchange students have seen American movies with prom scenes, and there is a mystique about prom.
I’m not...
March 2011
2 posts
Snow Days
Since Sisi had never seen snow, a snow trip was high on our priority list. Exchange students from all over the world have numerous adventures in their host countries. And their host families have adventures as well. Even though it is only hours away, I hadn’t been to the snow since 2003! (My kids went without me a few times.)
If you want to read about our adventure, the story is...
February 2011
3 posts
"Thar be dragons"
was supposedly the notation on ancient maps about areas that were unexplored. Exploring Northern California as a family is one of the reasons we decided to host an exchange student. As I’ve said, students don’t do exchanges to be tourists, but we do enjoy seeing and sharing our local attractions.
These sea dragons are at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, rated one of the best aquariums in...
Only in America?
Only in America?
Really?
“Only in America” is often the beginning of a joke. Or as a description of pictures such as the one above.
Like, “Only in America does every drive-through ATM machine have braille.”
Or, “Only in America do we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight.”
Google it; there are many of these jokes. Oddly, when I did an internet search for “Only...
January 2011
8 posts
Christmas, Act III
“Received in Damaged Condition”
Act I – Christmas Day at our home. Sisi is used to opening presents on Christmas Eve, but we don’t open presents until Christmas morning.
Act II – Christmas with John’s family. We celebrated “Christmas” on Jan 2nd, which fit into everyone’s schedules. Many cultures open gifts on Jan 6th, the Epiphany, when the Wise Men arrived. Hence the “12 Days of...
Here comes the sun – random thoughts
It’s hard to believe that we’re in the middle of winter here. The temperatures have been close to 70º F (21º C), and it will be warm for another week. The Northeastern United States is freezing right now. And in Minnesota a few days ago, they had a record low temperature of -46 ºF (-43 ºC). Brrrr. I’m glad we live in California.
It was 73º F (23º C) at the beach last week.
Sunrise,...
WatchIt’s quiet in the house. Kerri went back to school on Thursday; we won’t see her again until spring break. Lisa is on a training weekend with Amigos de las Americas. Sisi is at her AFS mid-stay orientation weekend. John is away for the weekend. So it just leaves me and Rebecca at home.
Four teen girls in the house can be very noisy. Sometimes it jumbles together to sound like...
A castle without a king
Exchange students don’t need to go to Europe to see European style castles. Our Girl Scout trip last weekend was to the town of Cambria. Besides the elephant seals, we saw Hearst Castle.
Although the United States does not have royalty, there are about 80 so-called castles in the country. Newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951) was for a time one of the richest men in the...
A face only a mother could love
Elephant seals get their name because the males’ “noses” (proboscis) look a little like elephant’s trunks.
For many years, our family had talked about going to Año Nuevo State Park to see the elephant seals. Since Sisi was here, we decided this was the year to go. I had to make reservations three months in...
Points of View
Half empty or half full? Are you an optimist or a pessimist?
Today is the exact midpoint of our family’s (academic) year with an exchange student. We are half way done with our 316 days sharing our lives with Sisi.
So is our year half gone, or do we still have half a year left? (If I were Sisi’s mom in Brazil, I think I’d be happy that I could count down the time until I saw my...
"The Happiest Place on Earth"
When our family talked about places we wanted to show Sisi, Disneyland was high on the list. We headed down to Southern California the day after Christmas.
We left at 5 am and drove for 5 hours. We brought snow chains just in case, but this was all the snow we saw as we drove through the “Grapevine”.
just a few days later the interstate was closed due to snow and some people spent 24 hours in...
choose your hazard
“The three most important things about real estate: location, location, location.” Where your location is can determine which natural disasters you are most likely to face. Would you rather deal with floods, tornadoes, wildfires, snowstorms, hurricanes, or earthquakes?
We had a small earthquake the other day. It was a 4.1 and the epicenter was about 30 miles (48 km) from...
December 2010
2 posts
"We cannot do great things on this Earth, only...
Small things change your life. Many small things change the world. For three summers when I was a teen, I volunteered with an organization called “Amigos de las Americas”. Living with host families is what inspired me to become a host mom. A small thing, the decision to join Amigos when I was 14 years old, has had an impact on not just my life, but the lives of my family, my host student...
November 2010
5 posts
From Peking Duck to Twin Peaks, a day in San...
We don’t live in San Francisco, but we live close enough to easily go. San Francisco is a world famous city with many tourist attractions. Have my kids, or even I, ever done most of them? No, because that’s what tourists do. Since we live here, it just doesn’t occur to us. One of our reasons for hosting an exchange student was that we knew we would actually do some of the...
The First American Woman President: Bonnie Parker
Name sound familiar? That is the Bonnie of “Bonnie and Clyde” fame. She was famous for robbing banks. What is the connection with the presidency? I was trying to think of a famous American woman criminal. Brazil just elected their first female president, Dilma Rousseff, who was imprisoned in the 1960s for terrorist activities. So even though the “first woman...
"a day to be dedicated to the cause of world...
Today is Veterans Day, a holiday in the United States.
World War I formally ended “at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month” in 1918. Other countries around the world also observe this day. In 1938, the United States Congress made November 11th a legal holiday, “a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace”.
The mission of AFS is quite significant on...
Happy Halloween!
Halloween is celebrated in only about 20 countries. But American pop culture has shown our traditions to others around the world. I think many AFS exchange students get excited about doing new and different things, like dressing up and carving pumpkins.
Too old for trick or treating?
I’m a little ambivalent about teens trick or treating. On the one hand, they’re old enough to...
October 2010
7 posts
Mom's International Taxi Service
I did a carpool run home from the AFS Orientation the students had a couple of weeks ago. I’m used to filling my car with kids, but this time was unique. It was like a taxi service for the United Nations. I got to add the word ”international” to my usual Mom’s Taxi Service.
From left to right: Sisi from Brazil, Jorge from Chile, Francesca from Italy, Lisa from...
“It takes a village to raise a child."
Once an exchange student arrives at their home, the host families are not left alone to deal with any issues. I think many people are nervous about hosting because they worry that if anything happens they are on their own.
The Bay Area families have a yahoo group, and the students have a Facebook group. AFS has student and family orientations during the year. Each student and family have...
What Did You Do Today?
I mentioned in an earlier post that our calendars are always filled with the everyday activities of life. But we do make time for some amazing adventures, many of them through Girl Scouts. I’ve been a Girl Scout leader for many years. Sisi was a Girl Guide for a while in Brazil, and has joined our Girl Scout troop.
Last week, Lisa taught knife safety to a group of younger Girl...
Catch a Wave
(Switching to the Beach Boys for inspiration)
Last month, during another brief heat wave, I took Sisi and Lisa to the beach after school. Sisi was excited to finally be going to the Pacific Ocean. All those Beach Boy songs? Sorry, they’re about Southern California.
This is our typical view of the beach on the San Francisco Peninsula; the fog is there much of the time. I added the...
California Girls
“You could travel the world But nothing comes close To the Golden Coast”
The song by Katy Perry is starting to get on my nerves. But there is nothing like the Golden Coast. When people think of California, they often think of sunshine, palm trees, beaches and bikinis. We live in Northern California though. San Francisco is the “Fog City”. We had a short heat...
Counting up and counting down
I figured it was about time to add another post to the blog. I was getting ready to write something this morning when I looked at the Daisypath. I saw that it has been ONE month, TWO weeks, and THREE days since Sisi joined our family. We’re in the counting up mode.
Back in Brazil, Sisi’s parents are in a countdown mode. Nine months until their “baby” comes. Like a...
September 2010
4 posts
Life can change in an instant
Last week, fire devastated a neighborhood in San Bruno, California. This wasn’t just another news report for me; it hit too close to home. I grew up in San Bruno, only one mile from the explosion. My sister still lives in that house. Friends of mine had to evacuate their homes. I could see the smoke from my house. It has been heartening to see how the community is reaching out to...
"We have so much time and so little to do. Strike...
It was one month ago today that we met our new daughter. Hosting an exchange student for “a year” sounds like such a long time. Sisi arrived at our home on August 14th and she will be leaving us on June 26th. Ten and a half months. Three hundred and sixteen days. It still sounds like a long time, and then we realize that one month is already gone.
Time passes. Sometimes it flies and...
Roots and Wings
“The two most important things parents can give their children are roots and wings.” (Attributed to multiple sources.)
When Kerri, my oldest, made me into a mother over 19 years ago, I benefitted from being a pediatric nurse. Before she was even born, I had an intimate look at other families’ lives. From other moms, often in the most stressful times of their lives, I learned some lessons...
August 2010
21 posts
Sign Language
The other day we were at a mall food court. Sisi was across the court and I was pointing to which table to sit at. When she found the one I wanted, I gave her the okay sign. As soon as I did, a thought crossed my mind that maybe this had not been the best choice. When I sat down, I asked her. Sure enough, in Brazil, the okay sign is a very vulgar gesture, worse than giving somebody the middle...
Report: Mom Just Locked Her Door
ROANOKE, VA—According to reports from stunned Melberg family sources, Mom just walked up the stairs, slammed the door to her bedroom, and locked it.
The shocking incident occurred shortly before dinner time in the Melberg home at 46 Fairmoor St. Although Mom had reportedly been silently chopping vegetables in the kitchen, showing no signs of outward agitation or anger, multiple sources confirmed...
Independence Day
Sisi was at the mall alone for a few hours today, and walked home afterwards. And I wasn’t even nervous : D If I hadn’t already been through this with 3 other daughters, I might have been.
The shopping trip was successful. Imports in Brazil have a SIXTY PERCENT tax added! On a shopping trip a few days ago Sisi bought jeans on sale for about $13, which would have been $100 in...
Thrown into the deep end
Sisi and Lisa leaving home for the first day of school.
Sisi got thrown right into school. She arrived at our house last Saturday afternoon, and started school on Monday morning at 7:45.
Sisi has a September birthday. Even though her age fits in with the Seniors, many Juniors are her age. The cutoff for registration in California is December 1st. Many parents delay starting school for...
Time to catch our breaths...
…and catch up with the blog. It has been sooo busy every since B arrived. I’m writing this blog post partially for B, who has not had time to write in her journal, partially for me, so I can remember it, and partially for potential future host families, so they know what it’s like. AFS asked us to keep a blog; I think it is a great idea. I am diligently reading all of the other host...
Bem-vinda!
Welcome!
Once home, it was time to show B her new home, help her get unpacked, eat dinner (hamburgers), watch a movie and go to bed. B had been yawning all day; she is so sleep deprived from her days of travel.
I am now the mom of four teenage girls. Well, one is 12, but acts like a teen. The 19 year-old is mostly grown up, but is still a “teen”. Good thing they have 1 1/2...