July 28, 2012

Meet “Angel”

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Chinese name: Li Wan Ke, age 15,  from Kunming, China

She was our exchange student for the past week.

And she was AWESOME!

Seriously…she became part of our family in those 9 short days.

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This was a whole different experience than the last time (2010). Knowing she was from China made it special for us anyway. But the way she just fit right in was amazing.

 

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She was extremely outgoing, absolutely thought Kalia hung the moon (and the feeling was mutual…there were very few times that Kalia was not in her arms or on her lap), open to new experiences & foods (didn’t find anything she wouldn’t try, and she even liked most things), loved to tease & rough-house with the girls & Dan, and built a good relationship with Emilee & one of her friends (they spent most afternoons hanging out at the park).

 

We tried to give her many experiences while here. Through the group, she was able to visit St. Louis (arch & museum), visit a Clydesdale farm, visit the capitol, and hang out around our small town.

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We took her bowling one night and she had a lot of fun:

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and she got to meet my side of the family & celebrate my nieces’ birthday.

The group pretty much wore her out, and Dan & I still had to work during the week, so we tried to stick to our normal routine & not do too much throughout the week. She rode in to work with Dan one day and saw the YMCA and made a couple trips to Wal-mart & grocery stores.

I remember when she got back from the trip to St. Louis she was so excited to show us what she got and tell us about her day. She drug everything out of her bag while we stood in the parking lot. She was also extremely excited to show off her scrapbooking page she made about her week.

She was just awesome…and we miss her terribly.

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