Welcome Yuki

This is a story that will take place over a period of nine months. It's a story about how a young girl has changed our lives and made us look at everything a little different. It's about sharing lives and cultures. It's about opening our hearts and home to another person. It's about us growing up, maturing, taking responsibilities and risks.

Will and I decided to host an exchange student this year. It's something that we had been talking about and knew we wanted to do for quite some time. There were several things standing in the way of us doing this before now. One - I was in school and not working, or working on occasion. Two - prior to me being in school, we both worked jobs where we didn't get off until 9:00. Not the best hours to be working when you have a teenager living in your home. With my graduation from grad school pending and the job outlooks looking really good, we made the decision to host a young girl from Okinawa - Yuki.

We decided to host with the organization that I have been volunteering with for the past 10 years, Youth For Understanding I also was an exchange student with them as well. So in early May, we sat down and looked at some profiles of students who still needed families. We found Yuki, read her letter and we knew we had to host her. When we got the okay from theschool, we sent her a birthday card with us (a host family) as a gift. Not a normal gift or one she would be expecting. We wrote letters to each other from that point on and we were even more excited with each letter that we received.

We started counting down the months, the weeks, the days, then the hours and the minutes. She was set to arrive on August 5th, and we both kept checking the airline to see where she was and if she was still arriving on time. When we got to the airport, we were shocked to see she had been delayed. When the time arrived for her to be there and there was no plane, I called the airline only to find out it was delayed again. The third time we called, we found out that her plane had landed and was sitting at the gate.

Will carried a bouquet of flowers, and I carried a welcome sign. We kept looking at the people walking out of the gate wondering when we would see her. When we finally saw her, we got so excited! I had been debating on giving her a hug when I saw her, but when she walked up the debate ended and I gave her a hug.

We waited for her luggage and took some pictures. At this point, it was about 1am and she had been traveling since 10am in Japan - She had been traveling for over 24 hours at the point between Okinawa and the US.

This is where our adventure begins. When I was an exchange student I kept a journal talking about each day while I was there. Our goal now is to keep a journal for each day Yuki is here. Hopefully this gives each of us something to look back on and remember.