We have some exciting changes going on in our lives! Last Thursday (Aug 23, 2012) we made the decision to become a host family to a foreign exchange student! After several phone calls from the AYA organization, we were in. We thought we would have to wait until next year to become hosts, but apparently this can be a VERY fast process when they're on a deadline. Our student, a young man from Germany named Jakob, will be here this coming weekend! Excited? Yes. Nervous? Hell yes.
I have to admire this young man and his family. When I was 18 I left home and moved to California. I thought I was a big girl and I couldn't wait to get out of here. When the day finally came for me to leave, I didn't want to go. Suddenly, things seemed to be moving way too fast and I desperately wanted to slow them down or stop them altogether. I managed to say goodbye to my family without turning on the water works and we (my first husband and I) headed out. Bye-bye Stillwater!
When we crossed the state line from Oklahoma into Texas on I40, he was napping and I silently bawled my eyes out behind my sunglasses. I remember looking at the state sign and thinking, "I'm never going to see it again!" And that thought immediately flew on a tangent to, "I'm never going to see my Mom again! Or my brother! Or my grandparents! Or Braum's!" I felt my heart slowly being ripped apart inside. I wanted to scream and pull over and tell him to take me home, but I knew that I couldn't. After all, this was MY big girl decision. No one forced me into it. No one held a gun to my head and said, "Go west, young woman!" Where had all of my courage gone? Where was the girl who had bragged about moving to California for the last several months? She certainly wasn't in that moving truck. I'm pretty sure she was hiding back home in my Mom's house, in the deepest, darkest corner of my old closet, shamefully saying, "I was wrong! I want to stay here!"
If you've never driven along I40 through west Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, let me tell you, the view doesn't change much. I saw a picturesque mountain off in the distance and 4 hours later I was still looking at the same mountain. Back then, satellite radio didn't exist, radio stations were few and far between and that road is l-o-n-g. We drove through the desert. Then we drove through the desert. And then we drove through the desert. Did I tell you that we drove through the desert? I thought it would never end.
We finally approached Barstow and after sitting in stop-and-go traffic for 13 days we topped the mountain and down the other side we went. The desert was behind us, the landscape had trees and grass and we were among the living, once again. As we got closer to the coast, the road became MUCH wider. I had never seen so many lanes of traffic before and all of them were congested! It was mind boggling to an 18 year old girl from a small town in Oklahoma. And I thought traffic in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area was bad, wow, this was way worse. Then, about 5 miles from our exit, there it was, the ocean! I saw it for 1.39 seconds and the view was gone, obscured by buildings and trees.
Gas in California was about $1.29 per gallon back then. I almost died. It was SO expensive! Or so I thought. Gas was still about $0.89 per gallon in Oklahoma. If only I'd known that gas prices would get worse. We finally reached our 1 bedroom tri-plex apartment that was only a block from the ocean and I was shocked to find that it did not have an air conditioner. Let me remind you, I grew up in Oklahoma. It's hot. It's real hot. There is no surviving the summer without an air conditioner. I was on the verge of a minor freak-out. I'd been holding in all of my angst since we left, but the whole "no a/c thing" was about to do me in. Do the neighbors have an a/c? What about stores? Surely someone around here has an a/c? I soon learned that when you live that close to the ocean, you don't necessarily need an a/c. You just open up your windows and let the breeze cool you down - and then you pray that some killer or rapist doesn't tear through your screen and have his way with you.
That trip was unbelievably stressful for me at that time in my life. If I were making that same trip today, with 17 more years of life and knowledge in me, I probably would be excited and wouldn't have such intense homesickness. But at 18, it was terrifying. I had spent months anticipating and looking forward to moving and "taking California by storm" and then reality hit. I cried all day while my husband was at work and would make sure I was presentable by the time he got home. I didn't want to cry in front of anyone for fear that I would make them feel bad. I wish someone had told me that it was okay to cry, to miss my family and the life I left behind. Eventually, the homesickness waned, I adapted and came to love living in California and the friendships I made there. It was a year that taught me a lot about who I am, where I want to be, what I can tolerate and what I can't. I was only a 24 hour drive from home, Jakob will be almost halfway around the world! I expect him to go through some of the same culture shock and homesickness that I did, but I pray that he still embraces his life here for the next 9 months and like me, comes to love it here. I pray that his new experiences and friendships enrich his life and that he takes something positive back to Germany in May. We're excited and can't wait to meet him!
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