Welcome to Peach Week! I declare it so because peaches are in season in Ohio and I love them! Before I get to the fruit of today’s post, let me introduce the creator of the recipe, Anna. Anna is a 20 year old Japanese college student staying with us for two weeks. She is a chaperone to a group of 100 Japanese youth staying with host families throughout the state of Ohio. Anna was matched [...]

Article first posted as ‘Guiding Children Through Tragedy’ on Technorati, where it made the Thursday front page! News of the Japan earthquake and resulting tsunami and nuclear disasters is hard to stomach as an adult. Around the world, people are struggling with their feelings of helplessness, insecurity, and anxiety. In this information age, children are often witness to images from a disaster. Even if parents manage to keep them sheltered from media, kids can sense [...]

On Thursday night, Alex and I watched the No Reservations episode in Dubai. The excess, building on shifting sands, and rapid multi-culturalism pictured in that show led us to discuss the meaning of our way of life. Is it possible to make a difference on a small scale? Can the world handle Dubai style consumption? How does instant communication affect things? We concluded that it’s best for us personally to live our life in a [...]

We have ‘people’ in Japan. People who have lived with us, vacationed with us, and treated us to tours of their home cities. We have people who mothered me during my pregnancy and attended my wedding. People who were foreign exchangees and are now family. We met our people, Miyu, Naoko, Kaoko, Kristiina and more, through the Ohio 4-H International Program. Ohio 4-H has been arranging exchanges between Ohio families and a Japanese English language [...]

Snow covers soil, the medium of my most real work. My hands are too clean when idle from planting and tending and harvesting. Choices and possibilities swirl through my hibernating mind. I am considering: a fellowship application, attending and speaking at conferences, homeschooling and unschooling and public lottery, preparations for winter cooking classes, acting on the whispered suggestions to start an extended family homestead, chaperoning American teens in Japan, or tossing it all aside to [...]

When I was twelve, my family hosted a Japanese girl named Megumi for one month during the summer through the Ohio 4-H International Program.  Hosting challenged us all to communicate differently, show off our community, and open our hearts to new relationships.  We learned so much about ourselves and had so much fun that the next year, my parents agreed to host a high school girl, Miyuki, for the whole year. Miyuki became a lifelong [...]

On Thursday we welcomed Kayoko to our home.  She is an adult chaperone for a group of 110 Japanese students visiting Ohio for the next four weeks.  The Japanese youth are organized through the Labo organization and host families are organized through the Ohio 4-H International program. My family hosted several Japanese youth when I was young. In 1994 I traveled to Japan for two months with the Ohio 4-H International Program.  This early exposure [...]