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toward him.
“Some people may turn and stare,” he said non-chalantly, but “it doesn’t bother me.”
His new sisters share his feelings and they all laughed together when they remembered the family portrait they had done in a local studio. “The photographer looked at us really funny when we said Frank was our brother,” Marie said laughing, adding the unsuspecting photographer thought Frank was with another group in the office.
Many things remembered bring laughter from the foursome now. Becoming familiar with the American slang brought embarassment several times to Frank and laughter to the girls.
Frank remembered once trying for several hours to open a can with the can opener and finally giving up to wait for his mother’s return from work and rescue. “When she came in I just said ‘Oh, I was just going to open this can,” Frank said with a smile, not telling her of his earlier defeat.
There was another time when he was mowing the grass on the riding lawn mower. “I couldn’t hear over the mower and I couldn’t stop the thing,” Frank said, adding the entire time Mrs. Davis was standing on the porch trying to give him directions over the mower’s loud roar.
Memories bring back Frank’s arrival to the United States. “He was the last exchange student to arrive,” Mrs. Davis said, adding prior to his arrival letters and photos had been exchanged several times. Fighting traffic and time, the Davis family arrived late to Dulles Airport to meet Frank.
“I got off the plane and everyone is running to their families,” he said with a smile. “No one was there to meet me,” he threw a teasing look to his mother, adding soon they arrived with homemade welcome sign in hand. “I called her Mom right off,” Frank said with pride.
“Living here made it a complete exchange,” he said of his placement with the Davis family. “It’s a different country, a different language and a different family,” he said with pride in his new home.
The Davis’s say it’s their easy way of living that helped Frank to fit in almost immediately — Frank says it’s because they did not smother him or treat him as a guest — but instead let him have any needed space and treated him as one of the family.
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