surprise exchange student reunion!!

[cimorene]

I 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 - nervous breakdowns, realising that I was depressed and anxious and then socially anxious, non-working medication, then my dad's car accident in which he almost died which resulted in my taking about a year off life just trying to cling to sanity with both hands, and by that time it was 2004 and I moved to Finland. 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.

Comments

[undersea.livejournal.com]

That is really, really sweet. ♥ I'm so glad you were able to get back in touch with her! That's like, a perfect little Christmas story.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

It is! For an even more Hallmark touch, one of my best friends, Sara, had a Japanese "aunt" who had been her mother's exchange student when they were 16, and Sara was well acquainted with her because their families were rich enough to exchange visits once a year despite the cost of transatlantic travel. I brought Ma-chan to Sara's birthday party and her mom took us both aside into the kitchen - "I want to talk to you!" to tell us how lucky we were to be able to gain a sister~ and how much her sister had changed her life and stuff, and she wished that we'd take her seriously and never lose each other and - etc. Obviously, since this happened about 9 years ago, it really stayed with me.

Well, Sara got married last summer and I flew back to the US for the wedding, and I actually met her Japanese aunt - I never had before. Sara said "This is Cim" and as soon as she heard my name, the aunt said "The one with the Japanese sister! How is she?" I told her that we'd lost touch and I regretted that, and she hugged me impulsively and said "IT'S NOT TOO LATE! Write her! Call her! I know she misses you as much as you miss her!" It was a good motivator.

[undersea.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow! That totally adds to it. *feels all sentimental now*

[kessie.livejournal.com]

That's really, really sweet. ♥ I'm really glad you were able to get back in contact with her.

[dreamnnightmare.livejournal.com]

I felt bad I couldn't find their address. And that I never wrote it in the address book like I shld. So glad u found her.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Well, she lives in France now! Just for a while. You guys don't have a very good address book system which is mainly Mom's fault, not yours, but maybe you could try to hunt down all the hard copies and compile them in a database. Too bad you can't type though. I can send you her temporary address anyway, then you will have it in gmail. I have a gmail tag for "contact information" which is helpful to me. Gmail is also searchable so emailing such information and keeping it there is a good system I think.

[dreamnnightmare.livejournal.com]

I use gmail that way. How do u tag gmail msgs?

[cimness.livejournal.com]

There's a drop-down menu where one of the options is "new tag" and some of the others are, for instance, "Unread" and "Read". Then, once you create a new tag, it appears in the list, of course.