Family, friends and frequent readers of this blog know that my 16 year old daughter is obsessed with languages. From an early age, she was a mimic, always cracking us up with her imitations of people's speech. When she was 14, she asked us to send her to a Korean language immersion camp in Minnesota and she has been going ever since. This past year she started teaching herself Mandarin and she will be taking Japanese in a self-study program when school starts. Her love of languages makes my heart happy. My mom was an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher so growing up in a small town in MI in 1970-80's, I think we were the only Caucasian family eating pho, curry, and rau cau. Their shared love of language is a link they never knew; my mom's dementia took hold before my daughter's love of language. But wanting to nurture it, we decided to open our home to a Japanese exchange student who will be arriving this afternoon and living with us as she attends her senior year at Metuchen High School. We are looking forward to sharing our small, multicultural town with her and sharing her with our town. I'm sure we learn as much from her she will learn from us. Welcome to America, Miu!