Global Connections

For the past four weeks, we've had an eleven-year-old girl staying with us from Northern Ireland--Amie.

She'll turn twelve next week, the day we take her to the airport to return home. Tomorrow we're throwing her a birthday party with an Adventure Time theme cake. Amie did a poster board for the fair, in a category called Global Connections, reserved for children who spend time in other countries and share their experiences. She won a reserve champion ribbon. As I supplied the photos and the editing, I'm reproducing some of her essay here.
[ In this photo, she's eating fresh strawberries she picked herself with whipped cream. For the first morning, she was homesick, but after that, she and my daughter Emily were too busy. ]

The family that I am staying with here in America are Tammy and Scott Rhine, their two children Emily, who is ten, Pierce, who is twelve, and their three pets: Angel, Ninja, and Clay. They have been so nice and so welcoming, and it’s great to be staying with them. [ She is standing second from the left in the photo. After several hours of delay in Chicago, she fell asleep about ten minutes into the drive home. ]

I got the opportunity to come here from the Children’s Program of Northern Ireland (CPN). I heard about CPNI from one of my teachers from my primary school, Brooklands. He told the p7s could go so I signed up for it. I have never been to America,  so its been a great experience.

Back home I live in the city, and here I’m in the country. It’s a big change but the country is beautiful. It’s also a lot sunnier here. Some of the things I like about America are: it’s very warm, strawberries, candy, chocolate chip pancakes, swimming in the lakes, horse riding, and tubing. Things I dislike are: long drives, mosquito bites, and all the insects. [ Photo of the girls waiting for fireworks to start on the Fourth of July. ]

[ photo of the girls with the quilt Tammy helped Amie make for her bed--also a reserve champion winner at the fair. Last photo is of the donuts, cinnamon rolls, and caramel rolls Tammy made from scratch with them.]

Mum tells me that my Irish accent is starting to fade.

In America they use different words for some things:

Northern Irish	American
Mum	Mom
bin	trash
chips	fries
crisps	chips
boot	trunk
winding up	teasing
lift	elevator
sweets	candy
yous	you all

County Fair Photography

This week is our county fair. My children, in 4H, have been busy readying all manner of projects. I stayed up till 4 a.m. on a work night with my wife to quilt Amie's nine-patch. She's our exchange student from Northern Ireland. (more in another blog entry) The next day, I helped the children narrow hundreds of photos from the year down to five each. Then I had to edit, crop, print, and mount each. Here is a sampling of this year's entries. All the photos below won blue ribbons. We'll find out today if they won anything bigger.

Emily

Her favorite photos have always been of pets and flowers.

 

Pierce

He managed to capture the dragonfly wings in sunlight--not easy to do.

Amie

 She had a "Twilight" theme this year.