Welcome, China, India and Germany!

So many families from around the world (Puertollano, Sevilla, Brussels, Parma, Perugia, Québec, Cherkassy, Shevchenko, Yalta, Jonquoi, Santiago, Addis Ababa) have invited me into their home and taken very good care of me.  For some time now, I have wanted to do the same for those newly arrived from Elsewhere.

Every year a woman from our church organizes what has become to be known as The Tour.  Newly arrived international students sign up (This year there were 200!) and then they are grouped and assigned a driver.  The driver takes them on a very informative and fun (Swings over the river?  Yes, please.) tour of the city, ending with dinner in an American family's home.

Due to the difficulty of the past three years, this is the first year that we have participated in a long time.  Rob and our downstairs neighbor did the tour part and then brought them back to our house, along with a carful of Germans, for dinner.

It was such a blessing all around.  No one wanted to leave when it was time.  I am so thankful for these new friendships.  We have tentative plans for a Chinese feast cooked by "Maggie" (I say xiexie in advance!), a trip to the archery range with the Deutschers and maybe a bit of golfing with "Doris."

Thank you, God!

O pile of plates!  I was ready for thirty guests; but two of the carsful got lost, ending up elsewhere for dinner, leaving us with twenty.

"So, welcome to the U.S.  Have some Mexican food!"  In addition to the Mexi-feast that RaRa and I prepared, only some of which you see here, Rob made venison kabobs.  It was the first time for all of our guests to have that meat (Google deer!) and it was a huge hit.

One of the five seating areas that I had prepared.  Who knew that we lived on such an enormous compound?

This book is always such an ice breaker.  We ended up having every one share their home town.