This past July, we did something we've never done before...we hosted a high school exchange student from Spain. Her name is Irati and she has recently finished high school and wanted to come to the U.S. to improve her English. We didn't know this before she came, but her English was already excellent. We had a wonderful time with her.
Emily and the kids went to pick her up in Portland. At this point, she had been traveling for about 24 hours and was a little tired! Spain is 9 hours ahead of Pacific Time. So we had dinner, showed her around the house, and let her go to bed!
The next evening, we had a welcome dinner at a local family's house. This hosting program is through a partnership between our church, another church, and an organization that arranges for all this. So we were able to host and get to know other families that were hosting as well.
Here is the first picture we took together as a family.
After the dinner, we all had s'mores together.
It turns out that Irati has never had s'mores before. And it also turned out that it was one of her absolute favorite foods from America.
Elvin could not eat the smores because he can't have gluten, but he did enjoy the marshmallow that Gabe roasted for him.
The next day, it was the Saturday before July 4th and so we decided to go hiking to see some waterfalls, since this part of the country is famous for that. We drove about 45 minutes to Elowah Falls.
It was not too long of a hike, which was good considering we had little kids tagging along. Another family and their student came along, as well as Charles--Emily's brother--and his two girls.
Before long, we made it to the falls.
Here is another look at them.
After eating a light lunch, we decided that we weren't done hiking, so headed up to another falls along the same trail.
This was fairly high up and so had handrails along the trail.
This one was harder to see but still very pretty.
We headed back home to have dinner of shish kabobs. The older "kids" helped put the meat and vegetables on the shish kabob sticks. It's so nice to have older kids helping out with dinner!
Gabe is often in the mood to eat and stared at one of the shish kabobs which was made especially for him--it had only mushrooms on them--his favorite!
Afterwards, the kids played together. Our Irati and the other student, Ane, were so good and patient with our kids. It was a great match.
They loved playing together. In this picture, Irati has an app on her phone called SnapChat where it superimposes things, like a doggie's face onto your own. That's why Karina is sticking her tongue out...
That Sunday, we went to church and afterwards had a very fancy lunch--Panda Express. It turns out that Spain also has plenty of Chinese take-out restaurants although the food is not ready made like it is at Panda's.
She did enjoy opening and eating a fortune cookie for the first time. They do not have those in Spain.
And then we went fireworks shopping. This year is the last year that fireworks are going to be legal in Vancouver. On one hand, we will miss lighting them, but on the other hand, we will not miss the huge loud explosions and booms all around our house when we are trying to sleep on the night of the 4th.
On the 4th, we took Irati to the Vancouver Rodeo. Yes, Vancouver has a rodeo! It's a smallish one but has the calf roping, mutton races (where little kids ride on the back of sheep), and bull riding too. It doesn't get more American than this!
Eliana wanted to get an elephant year and Irati tried it too. Deep fried dough covered with sugar and cinnamon...what's there not to like?
Here is an attempt at taking a family picture.
Afterwards, it was very exciting for the girls that they each got an autographed picture of the Rodeo Queen herself! Karina right then and there decided that she wants to be a rodeo queen when she grows up! (Before, she wanted to be the lady that rides the horses in a circus. There seems to be a theme here--basically she wants to work with horses and also become royalty.)
In the evening, the kids were eager to start the fireworks even though it wasn't dark yet. It's hard to wait since, because of our latitude, it really only gets dark after 9:30pm.
We let the kids light these "snake" things. A snake-like thing grows out of the ground.
We have ear protectors for our kids that don't like loud noises. Irati tried on a pair.
And then the fireworks began.
We set up chairs and watched.
Looks like someone got to stay up late and run around like a crazy monkey!
Irati had a fun time with sparklers.
We had a fun time and will miss the fireworks next year.
Three of our kids have summer birthdays and we celebrated Eliana's the following weekend. She got to invite a bunch of her friends. What was the most popular of the snacks? Jell-O.
Eight years old!
The kids then went outside to play while Daddy set up the piñata.
The youngest kid got to whack first. So Xiao Yu started with the swinging.
Gabey was up next.
Then after a few kids, it was Karina's turn.
Eliana got her turn too.
After a big kid hit it, it broke apart and the kids rushed in like a pack of hyenas.
There was some candy trading going on. Karina, in particular, doesn't like many of the types of candies. She was probably trading away some of her chocolates for Starbursts.
Eliana opened presents and then we headed off to the skating rink...
Our girls had been taking skating lessons for a while during the spring. Our students from Spain, however, haven't skated in a while! But they got the hang of it.
The boys enjoyed "driving" on the arcade games. No need to stick in quarters...they couldn't tell they weren't actually driving!
Here is Eliana with one of her good friends.
And here is Gabey with one of his friends! They didn't skate, just ran around the viewing area like maniacs!
Another thing we did that weekend was go bowling. We hadn't been in a long time.
For kids, they have a rack where kids can just roll the ball down the lane.
Xiao Yu really enjoyed it.
Afterwards, we went to the arcades and the girls took pictures in the photo booth.
And got pictures printed out.
On Eliana's actual birthday, it was a Thursday, and our group of families with host students had an organized event on Mount Hood. During the summer, one of the ski resorts gets converted to an Adventure Park. Here is Karina inspecting the map--she really likes maps.
One of the things you can do is ride the ski lift up and then ride down on a bobsled-like thing.
Here is Eliana riding down. You pull on the handle to slow down and push forward to go faster.
While trying to look at the track, you also can't help but also admire the beautiful Mt. Hood gleaming in the background.
We bought tickets to ride down several times. Emily went down with Karina.
Elvin went with Gabey...
And rode down with Gabey.
On a different time, Elvin went down with Xiao Yu. Xiao Yu wanted control of the stick. There was no way Elvin was going to let Xiao Yu navigate.
The Adventure Park also had a mini-golf area and that's where we headed next.
Xiao Yu got to try it out for the first time.
Then we went to Trillium Lake, which has a beautiful view of Mt. Hood.
The lake has a family of ducks, which Xiao Yu found fun.
The kids changed into their swimsuits and went into the water a little bit, even though it was pretty chilly.
They played on some water flotation toys.
And stayed near the shore as it got deep pretty quickly pretty soon.
After leaving the lake, we drove up to Timberline Lodge. This lodge is where the Shining movie was filmed.
We then decided to go for a walk on the trail behind the Lodge. It happens to be a little segment of the famous Pacific Crest Trail that runs from Canada to Mexico.
As we rounded a corner, we found an area that was still full of snow, so the kids plunged in, despite the fact that half of them were in sandals and flip flops!
And the situation quickly devolved into a snowball fight.
Everyone started throwing snow at everyone.
And then all of a sudden, we heard some vehicle noise coming from up the hill. It turns out that it was the snowplow they use to groom the slopes a bit farther up on the mountain and it was coming back to its parking spot where we were at. They maintain these slopes all summer long for skiers that can't bear to wait all summer for the next ski season. (And for the competitive athletes that come from Europe to train during the summer.)
After playing in the snow, we stopped at the local Dairy Queen. It turns out that Blizzards were also one of Irati's favorite American foods, right up there with s'mores.
The day we spent up in Mt. Hood was actually Eliana's birthday. So in the evening, we let her quickly open some of her presents.
And she got a pair of ice skates! She had requested this.
She also requested a matching figure skater outfit for her American Girl doll, who also got a miniature pair of white skates.
The following weekend, we decided to drive up to Seattle to show Irati some of the sites. It was a little tight in our van on the drive up.
It was about to get tighter though! Coincidentally, Irait's best friend from school in Spain was also visiting Seattle and flying into SeaTac the day we were arriving. Her best friend, Teresa, had been an exchange student on the same program the year before and was visiting her host family for a couple of weeks. So we picked her up at the airport on our way to Seattle!
We visited Pike's Market of course.
We waited for a little bit at the fish stand where they throw the salmon. Finally, someone bought a fish and here's the fishmonger gearing up for the toss...
And off it goes!
Below Pike's market there is a wall (several walls actually) covered with stuck-on bubble gum. Pretty gross.
And one very fun part of the trip was visiting the Theo Chocolate Factory. You actually got to walk through the area where they make chocolate, so we all had to use hair nets. (We also met up with Emily's sister's family who live in Seattle.)
The first half of a tour involved a talk where they explained to us where they source their cocoa beans etc. And they passed around many samples of chocolate, which was interesting to taste. Most of it was dark chocolate with a high percentage of cocoa.
Then they let us walk into the factory floor and also let us taste pure cocoa beans, which is actually quite bitter.
Here are the girls' faces as they are tasting the bitter cocoa beans.
Here is Elvin's face.
After the cocoa is ground up, it is then mixed with sugar to form a very light powder that melts and seems to evaporate in your mouth. It was very tasty, Karina said it was her favorite part. This is what they then mix with cream/milk to make chocolate.
Later on that day, we stopped at Kerry Park for a photo op in front of the Seattle skyline.
The next day, we head off to the Science Center, where we all get our hands stamped.
At the Science Center we checked out the Butterfly Pavilion, an atrium area that has hundreds of butterflies flying freely. They also have a display of all the current cocoons and chrysellae, which was pretty interesting.
The butterflies have lots of feeding spots and water areas that they land and flutter about on. They also often land on people! Here is Elvin, with a little tag-a-long.
After leaving the butterfly pavilion, Elvin took the kids to see a show at the planetarium, while Emily took Irati to the top of the Space Needle. Eliana said this was one of her favorite parts of our whole trip to Seattle! The guide showed the Big Dipper and told a fable of how the Ursa Major (Large Bear) lost his tail. (In the constellation, the bear in the constellation has a long tail but as we all know bears have short tails.)
We didn't take the four kids up the Space Needle, but here they are at the bottom! They don't look very impressed.
While Mommy and Irati were going up the Space Needle, Elvin and Emily's sister took the kids for a ride on the monorail.
The kids thought this was very exciting.
They played around some and then we got Slurpees at the local 7-Eleven. Then we met up with Mommy and headed back home. The kids were tired but we saw a lot.
During the week, we decided to try something different for dinner. So we went to a local Hawaiian restaurant. The food was ok, but the real reason we were there was because...
They serve shave ice! As you can see, they have tons of different flavors.
The "small" size is a pile of snow about the size of a grapefruit. Two kids shared one. Karina got root beer flavor on her side and Eliana got cake flavor. Who knew that they have cake flavored shave ice!
The next weekend, we went camping so that Irati could experience tent camping in America. Unfortunately, we left the house a little later than we had planned and so arrived when it was getting dark already. We now know from experience that it's much harder setting up camp in the dark than it is during the day!
In the morning, we lit a fire since we didn't get to the night before. Here is Irati doing the honors.
We soon have a nice little fire going.
And Irati has a nice after-breakfast snack of...what else? S'mores!
Later on in the day, we broke out the inflatable raft that we recently bought. It's big enough to fit 5 adults and all our kids piled in.
Gabey enjoyed pulling the raft in by pulling on the rope.
Emily's brother's family joined us and we had dinner by the fire. On the menu was hot dogs and sausages.
...And Cheetos, if you're Karina.
The next day we got out to the water again. Eliana tried her hand at kayaking. But there was quite a bit of wind that made the kayak a bit hard to handle for someone's first time.
We ate a light lunch and then packed up to go home. Here is an obligatory picture with all the kids--both big and small.
Poor Karina is exhausted from the trip...she fell asleep and slept and slept and slept.
It was now the fourth week in July and our time with Irati and Ane was unfortunately drawing to a close. To introduce us to some of the amazing food from Basque country where they are from, they decided that THEY would make dinner for us one night. One dish they chose is called tortilla de patatas. (Patatas means potatoes.) Ane had made this before but Irati had not so they consulted the internet for the recipe. Earlier, they went to the grocery store for all the ingredients.
The Spanish tortilla is different from what we call tortillas in the U.S. Their tortilla is made out of scrambled egg with diced potatoes mixed in. It is more like a thick omelet or a frittata. First, they cooked the potatoes in oil, and then poured the scrambled eggs and potatoes into a deep frying pan. And they were having fun while they did it!
The tricky part comes when you have to flip the tortilla so that it can cook on the other side. At this point, we relied on Nate, the dad in Ane's "family" to do the honors. Here comes the flip!
And it's done! At this point, Nate slid the half-cooked tortilla back into the pan.
And voila! A Spanish tortilla!
The tortilla was yummy and all the kids ate it. It was great fun having our students cook for us.
A couple of days before Irati was to board a plane back to Spain, there was a farewell dinner. It was fun hanging out and after dinner, there was a bonfire and, of course, s'mores.
Xiao Yu had some s'mores, although not all of it made it inside his mouth.
Then the music came on and some folks started dancing.
Gabey didn't dance but did help himself to the glow-in-the-dark accessories and also to more of the s'mores ingredients.
Soon it was Friday and time to say goodbye to our wonderful students. But it was not a "goodbye," but rather, an "until next time." The girls all made pinky promises on this. Irati invited us to visit her in Spain, which would be really fun to do. Hopefully someday we will be able to visit so that the kids can see where Irati is from.
And here is one final group picture. We had such a wonderful time with both Irati and Ane. They played so well with the kids. And as much as they learned about the way of life here, we learned a lot about life in Spain, and also had a lot of fun having a teenager for the summer. We miss her, and hope to see her again before too long!
1 comment:
Loved everything about this, Emily!!
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