Sylvia's Scenario

I am continuing the story of my last post about Nick and Kenji reuniting in Japan after 13 years. I received a request from the Extension office to tell more details of this success story of the two host brothers who have now reunited as adults, sort of a "then and now" story.  In the summer of 2001, Nick and Lauren were participating in 4-H with dairy goats. (They are NOT going to approve of me posting these photos, by the way.) 4-H has an exchange program through an organization called  Labo Exchange International  and every summer they host a group of Japanese students who come to the U.S.  And every year they look for host families, particularly host families who have boys to host the male students.  Most of the 4-H participates who agree to take on this task are girls, for some reason.  Well, Nick agreed to be a host brother to Kenji.   I don't think there could have been a better match. They bonded immediately, even though Ke...

Nick sent us this photo from Japan with our first Japanese exchange student, Kenji, via the 4-H program in 2001.  I can safely say that Kenji was the start of it all.  Nick now lives and works in Japan, speaks Japanese fluently, and is married to Sachiyo, who is Japanese.  Need I say more? Kenji, I had no idea the effect you would have our family.  After Kenji's visit that summer, Nick went to Japan for the first time the following summer in 2002 through the 4-H program and stayed with Kenji's family.  The ball was rolling.  We proceeded to host two more Japanese exchange students, both boys who, once again, bonded tightly with Nick.  By that time, Nick was taking Japanese in high school, competing in the  Japan Bowl  and traveling to Washington, DC.  He continued to take Japanese in college when he met Sachiyo, who was a Japanese exchange student at his college.  The rest is history. Today, I received my lette...

I've been having lots of help packing for our  move , lucky for me, so the pain has been minimum.  Two sisters and a niece came to visit me for 4 days last weekend and they motivated me to get back into the packing mode.  We accomplished packing the kitchen and the dreaded pantry. I'd say that half of the food in the pantry was out-dated and went into the garbage. I am so glad that our new house does NOT have a pantry.  I'm very bad with a pantry.  It gets out of control way too fast and soon I can't find anything or know what's even in it.  Now that I cleaned it out and packed it up, I feel so cleansed .  A big accomplishment. That's why I'm reading the popular book  The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up  by Japanese author and  cleaning consultant, Marie Kondo.  I try to keep her concepts in mind while I'm packing for this move - only keep items that bring me joy - but when I start to unpack and put things away, I wi...