Wednesday, March 25, 2009

New Friends

So the sixteen foreign students came to our town last week, and all lived to tell the tale. No one got left behind, or run over by machines at CVA, or eaten alive by chickens at the farm, or died of eating cafeteria food at the school, or were mortally offended by their host families. Whew. I was so nervous all day Wednesday that I got a headache, but once the students arrived I just had to go with the flow. Thursday was interesting. Our day started at the PUBLIC SCHOOL, which I had only been in a handful of times, and only once for academic reasons(I took the PSAT there). The students were divided up and given tours of the school, stopping every now and then to talk to students in class, and then we sat in on different classes. Unfortunately, the class I sat in on was the Algebra class for seniors. I've been out of high school three years now and I have forgotten most of the Saxon Algebra I learned, so I didn't get much out of that experience. We had lunch at the SCHOOL CAFETERIA, which was also a first for me.

After lunch we drove ON A SCHOOL BUS to the new Central Valley Ag building outside of town. It is an amazing, state-of-the-art facility that would be worth touring on a more in-depth level, and that's something coming from me because I'm not all that interested in farming. But by that point the girls were getting tired and bored and all the students stopped so often to take pictures that it took some effort to get everyone from point A to point B. Especially since I am not a very naturally authoritative person, and especially with my peers.

Next we visited a small farm, and by that point both guys and girls were tired and bored, and from there we went to main street, which I probably should have just skipped since in the end we were late at the meeting place.

It was a stretching experience, and I won't be volunteering to do it again anytime soon! It was stressful to find host families, it was stressful to be totally in charge of sixteen college students(really nice kids, it wasn't their fault) for almost two days, and it was kind of(maybe) a little stressful to have Dad as a boss(After the first two weeks of calling people about hosting and getting only refusals, the pressure started building)??

People in town know I was home schooled, and they know I am living at home and not going to college, so there are stereotypes to fight and I wanted to prove my responsibility and maturity. Even though people may think I look 12 or 16 (Come on, people, do I really look like I'm 12? Please!), I really am 21. Anyway, I probably didn't prove anything besides I can get stressed easily, I'm not used to a school setting, and I can't effectively herd college students, but I hope to some people I was a witness for Christianity. That would be a better goal than proving my age.