Day Three

...That is, Day Three of having Celia, our french foreign exchange student, living with us. And so far, it's been a great three days!

Saturday morning we went to go pick her up from the family that had got her at the airport. Immediately after lunch (at Portillo's...how else would we introduce anyone to Chicagoland?) we went to Driver's Edge in Villa Park, a four-hour class on defensive driving and better understanding your car. Kathy was there too, so we had fun.

Part of the class included making an emergency lane change, the first time infamous for my managing to take out almost every cone there. I got better my second time, but never quite managed to get it exactly right. In this excersize, the instructor (by the way, all the instructors are professional racecar drivers, so they know how to have nerves of steel, even when telling teenagers to drive eratically) tells us that we're driving on the highway and that the truck in front of us drops a box of puppies, which we have to avoid because "everyone loves puppies". Kathy, unfortunately, killed the puppies on her first run. But Celia eventually learned the word "Puppy" from this experiance, so it was all good. After a few more hours of different lectures and a skid practice, we headed home.

Celia told us that the lectures were a lot of words and tired her out (I don't blame her...I didn't understand them half the time!), so I have no idea how long and confusing church the next day must have been!

My friends who've taken French I had the time of their lives running up to Celia and saying whatever French expression they remembered. Although it amused both her and me to hear nothing but "What time is it?" "What's your name?" "How are you?" and "What's the Weather?" from them, I have to admit, I hadn't even used that much French since she'd come. Sister Mitchell really enjoyed talking fluent French with Celia before we left, though. Which made me feel a lot more inadequate than Jenessa and Kaydee had. ;)

After church we had a picnic for the ECI families at Herrick Lake. It was a lot of fun- Mom and Dad got to hang out with the Fishers, who they used to know from another ward, and I got to meet Celia's sister Margault, and Margault's boyfriend, Bruno. We also met some other very nice families, comparing notes about students, and I used a bit more of my French, talking about soccer and explaining what a raffle was. The raffle, by the way, got Mom her very own Macy's gift card. She was going to give it to me, thinking it was a Pizza Hut gift card, but quickly reclaimed it as her own when she realized its true nature.

When we got home from the picnic, we looked at pictures from the cruise, videos from the cruise, (as well as the Nairs' and Browns' Variety Show preformance from EFY) and then ended up watching a very stupid ABC teen movie. I would have changed the channel because it was so stupid, but Celia AND my Dad came bounding in to watch it, so...we all endured it together.