Day 32 ~ Exchanges

Today we had the last meeting in preparation to host a student from a sister city in Taiwan. He arrives Saturday and will spend a week with us as part of a delegation of twenty-five students. I took part in a student exchange for the first time at age twenty. I spent two weeks in Paris in September and the following year, one of the girls from the family who hosted me came to Madrid. I loved the experience of staying with a family abroad and repeated it six years later in Rome. And the same year again in Saint Petersburg. Every time my goal was to improve my language skills and get to know the culture. The idea stayed dormant for many years, until my son was almost six and I was looking for a music school for him. I contacted a distant friend who plays piano really well to ask her if she could recommend one, given that I didn't like any of the schools I had visited. She said, "I just had an idea. How about if we swap lessons?" So for the next five months we spent Sunday evenings at her home, where she taught my son piano at the same time that I taught her three children Spanish. We are currently part of a more longlasting one. For the past five years my son has been learning German from a native speaker every Saturday. In return, I have taught him Spanish. His teacher (now friend) and I share our rigor to teach. We correct all mistakes, we don't just listen to whatever. To round up his German learning, I have set up my son with with two different exchange families in the past three summers, first in the North and then in the South of Germany. I like exchanges because they makes you put your whole heart into doing a good job, given that you want the same quality in return. Money doesn't quite do that.