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surprise exchange student reunion!!
23 Dec 2008 02:38 amI had a Japanese exchange student for the school year when I was sixteen and seventeen. She was the same age as me, but we didn't have a huge amount in common, I guess. We got along okay, but she was reserved, I was shy even though I didn't really realise it and would never have described myself that way, etc. I spent the following summer with her family in Japan, but after that we lost touch after just a year or so.
My life started to fall apart about that time ( (ie) ) So what with one thing and another, it's only in the last year that I've been thinking about trying to reach her, and had no idea how anymore.
I've been having a series of dreams - regularly! - where I visited her family, and where her family visited my family, and where she and I fought crime together in various circumstances including a surprising post-apocalyptic water world where we were helping to hold preschool in the ruins of a stadium. I ransacked my photo albums and mini scrapbook from my time in Japan, asked my dad to check his addressbooks and mail me the rest of my Japanese memorabilia in case. Nothing!
I was sort of ready to give up when I remembered that I switched wallets the week I moved to Finland in 2004, but that before that I'd had the same wallet ever since I got my checkbook when I was in high school, so I stood up and dug through the crate of old schoolbooks on top of my bookcase and - the wallet was just lying there, still full of expired credit cards and a useless checkbook and old business cards including the one her dad made for me in case I got lost, with my own picture and their name and address in Japanese! The characters were a little small and blurry, but thank goodness for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aeslis, who was able to decipher the scan after I lightened it and provide me a romanisation of my exchange family's address. I sent them a Christmas card and a letter enclosed for her.
She wrote back! I got the letter this morning! She's in France! I had apologised for falling out of touch (and for being a shy, socially awkward and kind of lame host sister, basically); but she said she actually felt she was lucky in the host family lottery, so although she obviously wasn't going to say anything rude, I did feel reassured, and I think there was a ring of truth to it. She said she hopes we don't lose touch again, too. She became a nutritionist, got married and divorced, worked in a bank and went back to what she called charmingly "the cake school" and is now working in France at a patisserie as a study-abroad program from the pastry chef program at her university in Japan.
I... am really so happy about this. My heart still feels a bit over-sized and tingly. I might actually cry at some point.
The last time we talked, I didn't even know that I was bisexual, let alone mostly-lesbian. I think I was planning to become a translator! (Um, wait. I actually am a translator, accidentally!) How to summarise the last eight years...? Oy.
My life started to fall apart about that time ( (ie) ) So what with one thing and another, it's only in the last year that I've been thinking about trying to reach her, and had no idea how anymore.
I've been having a series of dreams - regularly! - where I visited her family, and where her family visited my family, and where she and I fought crime together in various circumstances including a surprising post-apocalyptic water world where we were helping to hold preschool in the ruins of a stadium. I ransacked my photo albums and mini scrapbook from my time in Japan, asked my dad to check his addressbooks and mail me the rest of my Japanese memorabilia in case. Nothing!
I was sort of ready to give up when I remembered that I switched wallets the week I moved to Finland in 2004, but that before that I'd had the same wallet ever since I got my checkbook when I was in high school, so I stood up and dug through the crate of old schoolbooks on top of my bookcase and - the wallet was just lying there, still full of expired credit cards and a useless checkbook and old business cards including the one her dad made for me in case I got lost, with my own picture and their name and address in Japanese! The characters were a little small and blurry, but thank goodness for
aeslis, who was able to decipher the scan after I lightened it and provide me a romanisation of my exchange family's address. I sent them a Christmas card and a letter enclosed for her. She wrote back! I got the letter this morning! She's in France! I had apologised for falling out of touch (and for being a shy, socially awkward and kind of lame host sister, basically); but she said she actually felt she was lucky in the host family lottery, so although she obviously wasn't going to say anything rude, I did feel reassured, and I think there was a ring of truth to it. She said she hopes we don't lose touch again, too. She became a nutritionist, got married and divorced, worked in a bank and went back to what she called charmingly "the cake school" and is now working in France at a patisserie as a study-abroad program from the pastry chef program at her university in Japan.
I... am really so happy about this. My heart still feels a bit over-sized and tingly. I might actually cry at some point.
The last time we talked, I didn't even know that I was bisexual, let alone mostly-lesbian. I think I was planning to become a translator! (Um, wait. I actually am a translator, accidentally!) How to summarise the last eight years...? Oy.
