Begin the Sokoo Chronicles - #1

It's been a looooooong time since I've posted anything much besides the group blog projects from JMCS. I'm on a project at work that is all consuming and so there is not much time to hop on the computer and blog, especially since we have "acquired" our S. Korean exchange student named Sokoo who will be with us for 10 months. With our 4 kids all grown up I kind of forgot what it's all about to have a younger teen at home.

Many people ask why we are hosting an exchange student. Unless you've been an exchange student yourself or done a study abroad you may not be able to relate to this. Being an exchange student myself though, I know how much it changed my perceptions and my world and am glad we are now in a position to reciprocate. For me it is one small way to give back to the world. My motto is "World Peace; one exchange student at a time." Cultural differences aside we are all human beings trying to survive, enjoy and make sense out of this world and our own lives. We are more alike than different.

Soo is actually exchange student number four for us. The others were only with us for summer exchange programs though. One liked living with us so much that she came back for a second summer!

Anyway, Sokoo is 15 (soon to be 16 on Nov. 1st). To be honest, even though it wasn't that long ago that our own kids were young teens, I had completely forgotten how young that really is.

Don't get me wrong though. Soo is really a riot. She is a vivacious girl, temporarily somewhat trapped behind a language barrier . . but she has been here 6 weeks and is really starting to come out of that. Her language skills are improving greatly.

The real point of this post was to relate this funny little incident that happened the second week that she was here. School had just started and I was up around 6:30 getting ready for work. I passed Soo's bedroom on my way to the kitchen to make coffee. Her door was slightly ajar and as I passed I turned my head and glanced in her room and customarily said "good morning Sokoo."

Did I just see what I thought I saw? There she was, this willowy 5'6" 110 pound girl, standing on the bed and seemingly staring into nothing. What the heck? I was totally baffled by what I had seen. I just could not imagine what she was doing? Was she praying? Was she meditating? Was she stretching? Was she jumping on the bed? Did she do this in Korea?

All day long I wondered and wondered about it and just couldn't come up with any reasonable explanation in my head. So that night my curiosity got the better of me and I just came straight out and asked her. "Sokoo, when I passed your bedroom this morning I saw you standing on the bed. What were you doing?"

The long and the short it I found out that she was drying her hair!!! That's right, drying her hair by standing under the ceiling fan that is mounted in the bedroom!!! She told me "in Korea we use fans to dry our hair." She must have thought, "boy, it's so much more efficient to blow dry my hair in Korea where I have a vascillating fan. These Americans are so inefficient."

So that's when I took her into the bathroom and showed her the extra blow dryer we have and how to use it. To this day I have still have never heard her use it but I haven't caught her standing on the bed recently either!