It`s a world of hopes and a world of fears
There`s so much that we share
That it`s time we`re aware
It`s a small world after all
Only recently have more details about her homestay been coming in. Four weeks ago she found out it was in Wisconsin (gasp!), and two weeks ago she struggled but ultimately could not remember the name of the town. Tonight she snuck in late with a sparkling "eureka!"-like grin on her face. She had written the name of her to-be-life-altering overseas experience host city on a tiny slip of paper. The small white scrap unfolded to reveal..."Cedarburg."*
*(For those not up to snuff on the geography of southeast Wisconsin, Cedarburg is on the western border of my hometown, and also where my mother works.)
For the rest of the session, Chika asked me with barely containable enthusiasm (and me with a slack jaw) to tell her about Cedarburg and Wisconsin. Strangely, I was at a bit of a loss ("um...there are cows"). How does one put a rose-colored tint on a place as spectacularly mundane as Cedarburg, Wisconsin? So I began at the logical starting point - food. I told her about The Chocolate Factory, Dairy Queen, Jalisco`s (a great Mexican place), but she`ll have to find out on her own not to sit facing the kitchen. I told her about the professional sports teams ("they`re not very good, but you should definitely go"), the various ethnic festivals in Milwaukee, Summerfest, Cedarburg`s own Wine & Harvest and Strawberry Festivals, and my parents` address and home phone number along with the phrase, "I`d like marinated flank steak, Mrs. Normile."
After the ball got rolling, I found myself unable to stop. It was fun seeing my hometown through a foreigner`s eye. "Oh! You`ve never been ice skating because it only freezes inside Japanese apartments! Make sure you get to the river during a winter freeze or the Petit National Ice Center where Olympians train." Or, "the Fukuoka Hawks` baseball dome opens and closes. The Milwaukee Brewers have something similar, but it`s American engineering rather than Japanese, so there are a lot of technical and aesthetic flaws with it." She`s also wide-eyed at the prospect of visiting Mitchell Park (a trio of herbaceous biodomes) across from my former ballet studio and one block up from Honeydip Donuts.
I`ve also taken the liberty of giving her instant invitations to other people`s homes in Grafton, Chicago and Minneapolis (ahem, you know who you are, so you`d best be getting that steak in the marinade, Mom).
I think she`s going to have a lot of fun. Watch out Cedarburg! Chika is on the loose with the energetic moral support of a Yame ALT bound and determined for her to have a good time. Please let her have it.