Japanese Exchange

This year for the first time we welcomed a new addition to our family. We welcomed a wonderful 16 year old Japanese daughter named Kyoka. The high school where C attends tried their hand at a student exchange program where the families were asked to host one of the visiting students. The woman that runs the home stay program is a friend of mine from the primary school and was saying how much fun it would be. Convincing Sandy to take on a student was alot easier than I planned, he was just as happy to take on the challenge !!

They arrived late on the Saturday afternoon and would only be with us till the Thursday afternoon and would attend school with C for the 4 days. Trying to work out what to do with the time we had was a challenge but we had a great time and the language barrier wasn't as bad as I was expecting.

First stop on this whirlwind few days was a quick trip to Kiama and the blowhole. Kyoka loved the area and was so happy to see the ocean and kept saying how beautiful the place was and how clean the air was !!! They are used to smog in Japan, not the bright blue sky we have here !!

Welcome to Australia Kyoka

Her first Australian family sit down dinner was BBQ chicken, mashed potato and vegetables. After our trip to Kiama we stopped at the supermarket to get our BBQ chicken which was also a trip to show her how we do our shopping. K was so impressed by what you could get in one store and could not believe that you could buy already cooked chickens !! There was a also a sushi section at this supermarket. K found the ingredients in the sushi quite strange and not what they have in Japan. It also allowed us to pick up some chopsticks for K !!

We all sat down for dinner with our BBQ chicken and vegies and waited to see what K would do, and yes she proceeded to eat with chopsticks !!! It was so funny watching her eat peas, carrots and mashed potato with chopsticks as she was only eating 1 pea at a time. At that rate we would have been there all night. In the end she tried to eat with a knife and fork but did prefer the chopsticks. I even took a picture of the chicken before we cut it up so she could show her family.

On the way to our adventure on Sunday we stopped by the 747 that had landed on my birthday. As they had traveled on a Qantas jet to get to Australia, K was very excited to see one this close up and we were just as excited to see it close up to. We will be heading back when it has been worked on and open to the public.