First of all, I know it is not goodbye for forever. However, complicated feelings are at the bottom of my heart, thankfulness and missing. I just want to write it down.
I moved out of my host family's house today. I have been living with them since January 15th, 2011. I know you can do the math, but I still want to say it has been one year and eight months. I am just so so blessed that I met them in my life. They are such a wonderful, sweet, thoughtful, and awesome family.
Tess, their daughter, asked me where I would live when she knew I decided to stay here two years ago. I said I didn't know. She said,"Oh, you can live with my family!" Well, she doubled check that with her parents after the words slipped through her mouth. First day of coming back to U.S., Buzz and Sal came to pick me up at the airport. It was so nice to see them. Our stories began with the warm hug in the winter at the airport.
The first semester, Tess and I drove together a lot when she had classes. She is a really sweet girl. She brought so many new friends to me. Maybe that's why almost half of my facebook friends are our common friends. She always took me to her girls night, worship night, hangout night, and Blend night (Blend is the only coffee shop in Washington.) She taught me so much English. On the way to school, she helped me pronounce "walmart","L" and so many other words. Thanks to her, one day at the Blend, her coworker asked me to pronounce "walmart" and I got it right! He said he teased his friends with that because most of Chinese can't pronounce it right. She is also a very fun girl! We watched movie together, we had a tent set up at the living room with many many blankets, we had snow sledding, and we had all kinds of talks. How blessing I am to have her as my host sister!
The second semester and now, she isgone for ISU, but I began to visit there quite often. We were still very close. She is the one who always, really always, listen to what I say and complain. She is a friend and a sister. :) I love her so much.
Since Tess was gone and I still didn't have a car, Buzz and Sal took care of me so well. Buzz gave me a ride to school every day. They never complained. Buzz stayed up late a lot, so did I. So whenever I had English questions, I just burst out my Chinglish and he usually asked me to spell it. :P Well, it was quite often for me to ask him to spell words too because too much fancy words is not in the dictionary of my brain. He encouraged me to go for hard classes and challenges. He gave me advice of insurance. He is just a patient, smart, and funny host dad.
My host mom, Sal, looooves coffee. She is the sweetiest host mom. She treated me like her daughter. Every once a while, we talked, humm, about many things. She is really smart too. Well, it is a smart family. :) She loves knowing international people and helping them. she revised my papers a lot. She gave me good suggestions. When I hung out with people, she was very happy because she didn't want me to be bored. Once a while, she put some good books and articles on my table. She was just so wonderful and thoughtful.
When I was an exchange student with either other Chinese students, Sal always planned for us. She took us to the mall, grocery, coffee shop, antiques, and even her house and the farm! :) Every time she picked us up at school, I always jumped into the back seat, which is the reason that she didn't really remember me by that time. :P It was because I was so afraid to talk to people in English in front of all my Chinese friends. I was afraid of mistaks and unperfect English. Thanks to Sal mom, I have practiced the language I am writing in a lot and a lot. Compared to millions of Chinese students in this country, I lived with an good Christian American family, having good host parents, nice host sister, good food, good chance to practice language, good church to go to, and so many things so many other Chinese students can never expect. How blessed I am!
Even though thery are not my real parents, they are my true parents in this country. My mom doens't worry about me at all because she thinks I have a mom here too, and yes I do. My host parents have been so good so so good to me. I still can't belive how people can be as nice and unselfish as them. Thanks God, who is the one made all of these happened.
It is not forever goodbye. Well, I live in Peoria now...Maybe I will break into their house once a while.....:P
Thank you, my dear American family. Wish you the best.
So now I am back to be a city girl? :P even though compared to Shenzhen, China, Peoria is still tiny.
No comments:
Post a Comment