I mentioned in my last post that we were preparing for a visit from a former foreign exchange student from Japan. She is now here, and we are in the midst of her visit with us. I am going to report on her first day with us. A bit of background to begin. When we first moved into our home, we were approached by a member of our ward who was a coordinator for a foreign exchange company asking if we were interested in hosting a Japanese student for two weeks during the Christmas season. Now that we had a home with a guest room, we thought this would be a fun experience and said, "yes" to the invitation. Since that first December back in 2003, we have hosted somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 to 20 students and/or chaperons from Japan, China, Brazil, Germany and France. Two of the students, Julio from Brazil and Robin from Germany, were "long term" students who stayed with us for four to six months. The others have been part of groups that have stayed in the US for anywhere from a week to three weeks. Out of all of the kids or adults who have stayed with us, there were three who were . . . clunkers (I'll leave it at that), but the others have been very nice and we've enjoyed getting to know them. We have had a few of the kids contact us after returning home, but those contacts have either dried out, or have been very sporadic. It has been a while since we hosted any of
the short 2 to 3 week student stays. I have to wonder if anyone is even doing them anymore.
Akane Kasuga first visited us about 3 or 4 years ago. She was part of a pair of students who stayed with us that summer. We really liked her and had a lot of fun with her while she stayed with us (her roommate, on the other hand, was one of the "clunkers;" hiding out in the guest room from the moment they returned from daily activities--I think we coaxed her out once). Every time we connect well with these students, I always tell them: "If you want to come back, you are welcome to stay with us." Up to this point, no one has taken me up on this invitation until now. Akane contacted Jennifer through Facebook back
in February around Jen’s birthday and brought up the possibility
of visiting us during her summer break from college. Soon, it became apparent that a summer visit wasn't going to work out, but she persisted and by the end of July,
things began falling in place. It wasn’t long before she had plans put
together to visit us from December 21st through New Year’s Day. We were all very excited by this. As I said, we had never had an exchange student come
back for the sole purpose of visiting us—Robin, the 6 month exchange student from
Germany, visited us for a couple of hours several months after he had returned
home, but his sole purpose for coming back was to see the girlfriend he had met, so he doesn’t count.
In
the midst of making plans for her arrival, we learned that Michael McLean's Forgotten Carols play
would be in Las Vegas on the 21st. At
the time, Jennifer got dates a bit mixed up and thought for sure that Akane would be
arriving on Friday (the 20th).
The tickets were affordable and we thought it would be fun to take Akane
to Vegas to see the city and the play, so we made our purchase and let her know
that we wanted to treat her to this experience.
She thanked us for doing so, but reminded us that she would be arriving
on the 21st. Jennifer panicked at bit at first--how where we going to pull this off? After looking at
the logistics, we realized she was scheduled to arrive at around 8 in the morning at LAX and the play was to start at 7:30 that evening. We realized this would be a crazy day for her, but she assured us
that she was up for the additional traveling. Of course, since nothing truly works out like you plan, the 21st became a wild day for all of us. We got up early Saturday morning to head down to LAX. Halfway in our drive, Jennifer found a message on her cellphone from Akane saying that her flight had been delayed somewhere between Bangkok and Tokyo for 2 hours and she would be arriving at the airport around 1o o'clock (could have slept a couple hours longer). Once she had arrived, Akane didn’t get through customs until around 11:20. After quick hugs and reintroductions, we bundled her into the car and zoomed away towards Vegas.
We made a quick stop at home to grab some more snacks for the road. The
poor girl slept in the car along the way and kept apologizing for it when she woke up (we assured her it was fine). I had made reservations to stay in the Rivera hotel, since I didn't want to try to drive home late in the night. I wanted to check in and get situated before we did anything else. We had learned there was a Stake n' Shake at the South Point casino. The plan had been to check in, get dressed in nicer clothes and eat dinner before the show started. By the time we got checked into the hotel and dressed (Akane was already dressed for the play; we where the "slobs"), we had maybe enough time to possibly grab fast food and get over to the Cashman Center. With the way the streets are in the main casino area, this turned to be harder than it looked. Every time I we saw a place to eat (Subway, Burger King, and the like), I would either pass it while looking for the driveway, or the driveway would be in a place that was very difficult to get to in time. Finally in exasperation, I said we could eat some snacks and get dinner afterward because I was afraid we wouldn't make it to the show in time.
When we got to the Cashman Center, we were told that a person in front of us had paid for our parking and several other cars behind us (that was a nice surprise). This was the first time we had taken Ben
and Isaac with us to see Forgotten Carols. Jen and I noticed the presentation had been turned into an
actual play. Before, about 7 or 8 years
ago when we last saw it (this was our third time), the program was a story with musical
interludes, but I read in the playbill that a concerted effort had been made to
flesh out the presentation. Jen and I
noticed new characters and the story was more cohesive and tied more seamlessly with the music. I was very impressed with the additions—in a
way, it was like seeing it for the first time. Jennifer said Akane nodded off a time or two during the show, but she and we had a good time.
When we left the
auditorium, it was plain to see that Akane was very tired (for her, the 21st of December
had lasted for roughly 36 hours). Jennifer told me it would probably be better to go back to the Rivera and go to sleep. However, when we asked her, she was more interested in eating dinner even though it was nearly 11:00. I suggested we could now go to the Steak n’ Shake and everyone was happy to hear it. Yum. We went to church in Vegas this
morning. Our leaving a little after noon kept the usual traffic problem to a minimum and got us home by the mid-afternoon
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