I learned a lot when I hosted a 16-year-old German exchange student, many years ago. For one thing, I discovered I felt personally responsible for the United States of America.
Take our first supermarket trip. As we parked in front of the grocery store, my thoughts started running like this:
Will she be impressed with how big Kroger's is? Do they have bigger ones in Germany? Oh, nevermind big. That's stupid. That's so American. Just please let
there be no rude people. Well, at least no people yelling. What about food quality? Probably the tomatoes in Germany are
redder and plumper. Will the green
beans have brown spots like last week? Maybe we'd
better go to the Farmers' Market tomorrow.
So, I headed for the
cereal aisle. Now there's an
aisle that makes you proud to be an American. But wait. Do they have cereal in Germany? Maybe she doesn't even know what cereal is.
"Do you eat cereal for
breakfast in Germany, Tina?"
She hesitated a little before answering. It was her
first day here, and I didn't know yet how much English she knew. Maybe she didn't know the word
"cereal." Maybe I should
explain. I looked for a cereal box
picturing a bowl of cereal. Instead, I
found pictures of Batman and the Smurfs and Count Chocula. I imagined her letter
home. "Americans eat cereal with marshmallows and fictional characters."
After a couple weeks, I began to understand a little more that the point of the exchange program was to educate the host parents. That is, I didn't know for sure how much Tina was learning, but I sure as hell was learning a lot.
That cereal business, for example.
First we had
Rice Krispies. I explained that Rice Krispies were made in Michigan, where I was from.
"Yes, we have Kellogg's in Germany, too." Of course they do. I couldn't have figured out that Kellogg might, maybe, have an international division?
The next morning I held up the Quaker Oats box before I started making the oatmeal. "Do you have this?"
Tina looked inside. "Yes. My little brother especially likes it. He has
it every day."
Great! I smiled as I heated the water for the oatmeal. Another German-American bond! Imagine my surprise when Tina didn't want the cooked oatmeal and instead put raw oats in a bowl to eat with milk and sugar,
the way they eat oatmeal in Germany.
The next day I brought out the Wheaties—Breakfast of Champions. Tina didn't know the orange and blue box, but after trying some, she announced that they had the same
thing in Germany. "But we call it
corn flakes."
