Visits with Hosts and Schools

April 16 - 19:

We've been visiting the kids all week, to see how they are doing with their host families and schools.  Our first visit was with Jane at the Kupsky house on Friday.  We brought Erng, because Brylee was having a sleepover with her friend, and she invited Erng to join Jane at their party.  Jane was having some trouble with homesickness last week.  She'd been crying and using her computer/phone a bit too much.  So while we were at the Kupsky house, we took Jane for a walk and talked to her about what she needed to do to get over homesickness.

Basically, homesickness happens when a student has difficulty accepting their current situation. They focus too much on what they are missing back home, and this makes it much harder for them to adapt to their new surroundings.  Parents and friends can unintentionally feed into this problem by saying things that remind the student of food, activities and friends back home. In the old days, exchange students might only be able to exchange letters or infrequent phone calls, and so they were forced to adapt, but these days the internet has shrunk the world so much, that it's difficult to get true separation. A child at home in Thailand chatting on Facebook with friends in Thai is not significantly different than a child sitting alone in his/her room in America, chatting on Facebook with friends in Thai.  This can lengthen or worsen cases of homesickness because it is a mental roadblock that prevents assimilation and adaptation.

Fortunately, Jane's mood seemed to improve after Erng's visit, and once school started, she seemed very happy.

Our next visit was on Tuesday.  We went to Jean's school, Manitowoc Lutheran High School.  We found Jean in his science class.  He looked a bit bored, but then science classes are often hard for the Thai kids to understand because the vocabulary is difficult.  However, I thought the class was really cool, because they had a lot of really neat projects to work on and they used advanced multimedia equipment to teach the lessons.  They were even breeding snakes in the classroom!  They had a big glass tank with a python in it and another smaller tank with several corn snakes.  The corn snakes had just laid eggs, and so they were learning about genetics and DNA in order to predict what color the baby snakes would be.  Pretty cool stuff!

Next we visited Jane at her school, Bethany Lutheran School.  Wow. What a difference a few days made!  Before Jane was depressed and homesick, but when we saw her, she was bubbly and bright!  She was bouncing around the classroom, chatting with all her new friends.  Her teacher said that Jane was adapting well, and that she was very happy to have Jane in the classroom.

After visiting Jane, we stopped by the Larson home to see Jean with his host family.  They were busy packing for a trip to Las Vegas, but they showed us around their house, including their hot tub!  Jean said he really liked his host family and didn't want to come back to Thailand, and the Larsons said that Jean has been a great kid, and they'd love to keep him!  I'm very proud that Jean has managed to adapt and do so well over here.  Good job!

Joey Larson showed us their pet gecko.  Patty and Jean wouldn't go near it (Jean actually touched it before he found out it was a gecko, and then he freaked out when he realized what it was).  I don't know why Thai people are so afraid of geckos, I had one as a pet too when I was in college.  They are very cute!

Erng made pizzas with my mom.  She's learning a lot of great recipes to take back to Thailand.  She really enjoys helping my mom in the kitchen, although she doesn't like peeling carrots!

I bought Erng a coin collecting book for a present. It has a map of the United States, and slots for each of the 50 state quarter coins that we have in America.  So now Erng can try to find all 50 different coins.  So far she has about six or eight coins, so she's got to find a lot of coins out in Boston if she wants to have a complete collection by the time we leave!

Our next visit was with Lin at New Holstein High School.  We stopped by her classroom, and she was a little shy to have her picture taken, but we told her friends that Lin was a very famous movie star in Thailand and that we were just paparazzi! Haha!  We also met Lin and Abbey before they went to lunch.  Lin had a bag of Thai food with her, and Abbey explained that Lin brought enough Thai food to America to feed the whole family!

Patty and I stopped at the Chinese Buffet restaurant in New Holstein for lunch.  We both got the same fortune in our fortune cookies, so that must mean we are destined to be together!  "Two worlds are richer than one", the fortune said, and I must agree.  My life has been much better now that I have found Patty <3.

After lunch, we drove over to Hilbert to see Fern in her school.  We found her in the creative writing class.  Apparently, she told them that she wanted to learn more, and so they put her in more language classes.  She seemed to be really enjoying the class, and I could tell that the girls sitting next to her were very friendly.  Fern was talking to them after class and they all looked very happy.  Fern's teachers said that she's been doing very well in school.

On Thursday, my Uncle Terry came over to help my Dad put up the kitchen cabinets.  My parents have been remodeling their kitchen forever now, and so it was nice to see things finally coming together.  Patty, of course, was a great help.  She supervised the work and made sure my Dad and my uncle did not work too slowly!  They couldn't have done it without her!  Haha!

Afterwards, we walked up to Valders Middle School to see Erng in her classes.  She was with her buddy, Sanne, in the computer lab, and then they walked up to the science room.  It was a little strange for me.  I used to have science classes in that room too, and Erng was sitting in almost the exact same spot I used to sit 20 years ago!

Sanne was really nice to Erng, and very helpful.  I think they are good friends now.  Erng's teachers all praised how well she's been doing.  They said that she's quieter than their other students, but that she isn't afraid to ask for help or say she doesn't understand something.  That's great.  Erng has been very brave over here, and she should be very proud of herself.

Tomorrow is Saturday, and so the students should start coming back to Valders so we can get ready for our trip to Boston.  I'm looking forward to seeing them all again and hearing about all their exciting adventures!

Busy Sunday: Church, Zoo, Chocolate & Lake

Sunday, April 15: We got up early to go to church, and when we got there, we were greeted by Lin! She was one of the ushers (along with Abbey Brill). Erng was really excited to see her, and Lin seemed to be having a great time with the Brill family.  At church, Lin had to help hand out the programs at the doorway, and she also had to help collect the money for the offering.  What a big responsibility!

After church, Erng made an apple pie with my mother.  It looked pretty simple to make, and Erng said she would take the recipe back to Thailand and make one for her grandmother.

The pie was very tasty! Erng was very proud of her pie, and everyone enjoyed eating it.  She is a good pastry chef!  We were making plans to go up to Green Bay for the day when Mrs. Larson called and invited us to go to the zoo.  I told Erng and Patty to wear lots of jackets and sweaters.  It was very warm in Valders, so they didn't believe me, but I knew that it would be much colder once we got to Manitowoc.  Even though they are only 20km apart, Manitowoc is close to Lake Michigan and so therefore the lake makes the city cooler, plus it can be very windy there too, and that also makes it feel cooler.  So even though they were hot in Valders, they really appreciated having the extra clothes on once we got into town.

At the zoo, I stopped for a bit to talk to my friend.  I can speak "Pasah Wolf", and so we chatted for a bit. :-)

After the zoo, we went to Beerntsen's Confectionery in Manitowoc.  It's an old-fashioned chocolate shoppe, and they have a wide variety of ice cream sundaes too.  The inside of the shop is very pretty, and I really like their chocolate.  Erng had a sundae, but Jean did not.  Apparently, Jean is worried about gaining too much weight over here!

I'm really proud of Jean, he's been very good at the Larson home and they really enjoy having him there.

After the chocolate shoppe, the Larsons went home with Jean and I took Patty and Erng to the library.  America has great libraries, and even a small city like Manitowoc has a very big library with lots of cool books and resources.  The Thai kids always enjoy coming to the library, because they always find something interesting to do or read.  However, this time, we got there a little bit late, and so Erng only had time to play on the computer for a little bit before they closed.

We then decided to go to the beach to see Lake Michigan.  It was a bit cold and occasionally rainy, but that's spring time in Wisconsin, so we can't let the weather stop us from doing things.  We just bundle up and make the best of it!  Erng played with the water a little bit.  She can now say that she's touched the water of the second-biggest lake in the world (if Lake Michigan was in Thailand, it would stretch from Udon Thani to Rayong!). They had a rock wall protecting the harbor, so we decided to walk out on the wall to the lighthouse.  There were two paths to take. One was an easy sidewalk, and the other was on the actual wall itself. So I picked the rock wall, because it would be more interesting and we might get to see some wildlife on the grassy area between the wall and the harbor.  So we walked out onto the wall.  Patty got way ahead of us, because she was too impatient to wait for us, but I had to stay behind and help Erng over some of the bigger rocks.  It was a bit scary for her to jump from rock to rock, and so we took a long time to get out to the lighthouse.  Along the way, we saw some Canadian geese. They didn't seem scared of us at all, and let us walk right up to them to take a picture.  They are really big birds, so Erng didn't walk to get too close.  When we reached the lighthouse, Erng was a bit cold and tired, so she didn't want to stay out there too long.  We looked around and took a few pictures.  Wisconsin is mostly grays and browns in the spring time, it's not particularly beautiful, however, if you look closely, it has it's own special kind of beauty.  For example, the waters of the lake were different colors varying from brown to deep blue to a light aquamarine color. Also the rocks were covered with a hardy orange lichen which was really pretty when looked at closely.  So even though Wisconsin might look a bit bleak in the springtime (especially when compared to Thailand's vivid colors), it can still be a very beautiful place if you know where (and how) to look.

After we left the lake, Erng was a bit hungry.  When I asked her what she wanted to eat, she said, "A&W!" She told me that she's seen the A&W signs in Thailand, but she's never tired to eat it.  So we went there for dinner.  Erng had chicken strips, Patty had a chili dog, and I had a patty-melt sandwich.

When we got home, Patty and Erng did their blogs.  They've both been very good about doing their blogs.  I, on the other hand, have been really lazy about my own blog!  Oh oh! Teacher is setting a bad example!  Haha!  Actually, I've been really busy with other stuff and so I haven't had much time to blog, but hopefully after I catch up today, I will update this blog more consistently.  We're getting ready to receive the kids back this weekend, and preparing for our trip to Boston next week, so there's lots to do!