Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Welcome, I think?


On Saturday, our family squared our proverbial shoulders and prepared to change the rest of the summer. So far, it has been a summer of swim meets and game show network and late night lolling on the couch and front porch. That was before our house guest arrived.
Marie lives in Paris and she will stay with us in Ohio until school begins in August. We have never met her, or her family. She is a friend of a friend of friend, but she and Grace are the same age so we decided to offer her a place to stay.
We picked her up at the airport and she's been talking ever since. She's explained the school system in France, different types of flowers, climbing a glacier in France, well, the list goes on.
This French teenager is an easy guest to have. She's personable and offers to help out, but my own American teenager is bearing the brunt of the entertaining.
Marie smiles a lot and is giggly, like a teenage girl. Grace, my own not so giggly daughter, knows that she is, at heart, an introvert. On the second night when Marie fell asleep, she snuck down to the computer to spend some time with her facebook friends.
I started to feel some niggling doubts about the wisdom of a six-week visitor until Monday when I got home from work. The two of them were on the couch watching Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and laughing together. Grace dragged herself off to swim practice, came home to a dinner I had fixed.
We talked about activities for the next day. There was the zoo, or COSI the science museum, or the art museum, or the Harry Potter movie, which Marie hadn't seen yet.
"Harry Potter," Marie crowed.
I laughed and said that when Grace goes to visit Marie next year they won't see The Louvre or the Musee d'Orsay, instead they'll go from theater to theater watching movies.
"Now what?" I asked as we finished eating. I was grading papers, but I was willing to put them away to play cards or a board game.
Grace looked at Marie, "Mamma Mia or Emma?" she asked.
And they walked off singing, "Mamma Mia, here I go again, my my..."

3 comments:

Linda said...

Her English must be really great. I never had an exchange student. It must be interesting.

Anonymous said...

Face it, in your family, no matter what's going on, the end result is always FUN.

Stephanie said...

Bienvenue Marie!

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