Pissing away an opportunity

I don’t know what to make of this year’s exchange student.

She comes from a small town and, apparently, competed and won a scholarship contest to be able to come to the United States for a year, complete with a stipend for spending money and reimbursement for educational expenses. I would have expected the contest to produce a motivated achiever.

What we have found is someone interested in going to the mall, to restaurants and acquiring various electronic devices.

*Interest in bettering her English? Zip.
*Interest in busting the grading curve in her classes? Nada.
*Interest in acquiring a herd of American friends? Yawn.

She pissing away her opportunities and it’s made for a tough year. Maybe it’s because she’s the unlucky 13th student we’ve hosted. It’s still somewhat difficult to hold conversations with her because her English has not improved to the same degree as that of other students we’ve had…and she shows little interest in getting better. It’s so bad that my daughter and son can have critical conversations about the student, right in front of her, and she has no idea. My son, kindly to a fault around most girls, is routinely pretty rude to this oblivious student when she is attempting to manipulate him for some gain.

Things boiled over last week when the student, 17, and my daughter, 12, got into a catfight in the barn while feeding horses. From what I can ascertain from stories told by the girls and my son, the student tried to push my daughter out of the way (bad move, unless you want to pull back a bloody stump where your am used to be,) My daughter pushed back and kicked at her and the whole thing tumbled into a mass of hair-pulling, scratching and slapping. Doc-wife had just left for work (was a half mile down the road) and I was away at rehearsal at the time, or I would have personally packed the student’s bags and taken her to the exchange coordinator’s house. Things had simmered down by the time I got home and have not, as yet, heated back up…I guess she’s aware enough to know that she is on exceedingly thin ice.

We host students because we like to interact with these bright young foreign visitors and, because we’ve been fortunate in our lives, want to share some of our bounty with others. We expect the visitors, however, to have some appreciation for what we offer and to try to make the most of their time here.

Plainly that’s not the case this year. We’ve asked the children whether they want to host a student next year and both responded with an enthusiastic “yes,” indicating to me they see this year’s hosting experience as an aberration. At present, Doc-wife and I are still debating whether to continue our hosting streak.

The student’s flight home is scheduled for May 15.