The days are long but the years are short

Speaking of time creeping or speeding...it's all about perspective.

After 10 months and a whirlwind 3 days, our German "daughter" and "sister" is off on a big driving trip of the western United States with her parents, her aunt and uncle and her cousin who flew in from Germany. Our house is immediately different and Josh's comment this morning was "it's really going to be different without Julia here." We're missing her already, especially Kate who took the opportunity to open her room to Julia so that they could talk late into the night (and eventually sleep) last night.

Julia was initially supposed to fly home to Germany tomorrow, but found out a couple of weeks ago that her family wanted to take this opportunity to see the U.S. for the first time while they had Translator Julia already available here. Her aunt, uncle and cousin arrived first on Sunday night and we made sure that they were able to rent a car with no problems. They speak a mixture of Polish and German, but Julia spoke to them primarily in German, which I was able to understand with my 4-years of German language study back in high school. I didn't try too much speaking for fear of sounding very silly.

Julia was gone for the majority of Monday and Tuesday until her parents flew in on Tuesday afternoon and they came over to say hi and spend the night last night. Julia's head was clearly spinning with the work of translating all our conversations. That and the fact that she's adjusting to seeing her family and talking in German again - she hesitated more than once over the last several days to try to come up with the right word in German.

It was wonderful to have an international breakfast at our table this morning (although we had a decidedly American breakfast with sausage, bacon, waffles, and fruit smoothies). The sound of the different languages at the table highlights how big the world is. Josh said that after this experience he's more interested now than ever before to travel internationally. We hope to go to Germany next summer to catch some of the women's World Cup (Julia's family is just minutes away from one of the main stadiums).

We look forward to seeing Julia again briefly when they're back from their tour of Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California and Arizona at the end of June. Our final goodbyes will be in early July when Julia will have to go through another adjustment: being home. Despite the extra craziness of our lives this year, hosting an exchange student has been a wonderful experience. I'd recommend it to anyone.