Makiko

Last Thursday night, we began hosting a Japanese student. Her name is Makiko. She is 19, studying elementary education, and she's here for 10 days with a program through her school. On weekdays, she spends her mornings at Ivy Hall helping in the kindergarten, then afternoons are spent at Selnate International School. So, she only gets evenings and weekends with us.
It has been so much fun. I am having a blast and I'm already getting sad that she will be leaving on Sunday. She speaks very little English, but we are able to communicate thanks to the help of her electronic dictionary. She carries it everywhere with her. She types something in, then I type back, then we both smile and nod. It's kind of fun. I've been speaking very slowly and in 3 word sentences for the past 5 days that I've started speaking that way to everyone. Or I accidentally speak to her in French which is really bizarre. But, she doesn't really notice since she doesn't understand.
I was really excited to do this, but I'm surprised at how attached I am already to her. I wish she could stay longer. Yesterday she was trying to explain to me that the time is passing too quickly and she's sad to have to go home soon. I told her that she could come visit anytime she wanted. She didn't really understand, so I said, "My house is your house forever" and she smiled and almost started to cry. It has been so much fun to share myself and my family with someone. She is so grateful and kind and helpful. She takes pictures of me doing almost everything which makes me feel really cool and fun :) She says "thank you" to everything probably because it's one of the only things she can say, but it still makes me feel good to know that she is so happy to do everything that we're doing.
We've been doing more organized things than usual to entertain her a bit, but mostly she just wants to participate in American life. Last night I asked her if she wanted to watch "24" with Jason and me after the kids went to bed. She was so happy and excited. She probably didn't even follow what was going on, but she was so happy to be watching anyway.
We have done a lot of fun things together, but everyday I think of more and more things that I want to do with her. I find myself wishing that she didn't have to go to school. It's so fun to have a friend to do everything with me--help me cook, help me clean, play games, play with my kids, just hang out with and she's so excited and grateful to do it.
It's also funny to see her reaction to my kids. They are so happy to have someone around too. The first day, they wouldn't leave her alone. They followed her into her room and dragged her all over the house. She loved it. Yesterday Haley unrolled all the toilet paper in the bathroom and dumped a whole bottle of shampoo into the water while she was taking a bath. It made me laugh more instead of being mad because Makiko thought it was so funny.
I've taken a lot of pictures but I haven't downloaded them yet. I'll post them when I do.
It's been a great couple of days and I look forward to the rest of the week with her. I'm really going to miss her when she's gone.