Both Vincent and we were just barely time to join other returning Brown School Danish exchange students and their families at the Louisville airport at 8:30 p.m. Saturday night. Vincent seemed jet-lagged - and probably sleep deprived in general - as it was 2:30 a.m. in Denmark. He obviously had a good time - maybe even more than we had realized - as after a while it was pretty clear he'd rather have stayed (and he was already plotting ways to return). There was no need to opine - perhaps somewhat optimistically - that part of it was being in this pure vacation mode - with kind strangers apparently taking care of you, almost no homework or chores, etc. - somewhat like our Guatemala mission trip the year before - and somewhat like the 2-2 1/2-week National Latin convention/bus tour adventures that my sister and I used to go on every July in high school - plus this intense experience with several dozen other people - in this case, Brown School folks and Danish folks - much like our bus tour folks (this is the second time in the past week I've reminisced about the Latin convention expreiences with Penny and Mr. Gilpin - and both without parents.) Vincent also seemed a little depressed - just as he was after another intense group experience - the Ten-Minute plays - were over - but maybe more so than that. We also opined that he was going the some of the same sort of withdrawal from living with a buddy - as he did after Simon and after Jon, after two different Danish exchange students - left - and, in this case, perhaps also now separated from a young woman or two in Denmark.
That being said, it was still a little hard to take, Vincent saying he was unhappy to be home and would rather be in Denmark. Usually he goes off with his father and he comes back tired and sick, and subconsciously a little relieved to be home. Plus, if he says anything we obnxious, we can chalk up to his father's conniving. But this time we can't chalk up to any conscious conniving by Carrie and Tim and Tim's father, mother, and stepmother.
Vincent and Tim spent half their time with his mother and half the time with a father, stepmother, and stepsibling. As we'd expect from our experiences with Danes here, much as at Brown, the Dane young people's lives there are relatively unstructured. Vincent said that all of the Danish students smoked, almost all of the Brown students tried alcoholic beverages, and even our second exchange student, Jon, got kicked out of the music and theater festival Vincent's last week there for doing drugs. Vincent also clearly had no bed time.
But besides eating lots of meat, Vincent also picked up some peculiar good habits. With no bedtime, Vincent apparently spent lots of time marauding through the Danish countryside on long nighttime (though he said it was only dark from 12 midnight until 2 a.m. - so mainly by "day"light) walks, and tonight he walked mostly home from a restaurant, almost two miles - which is good for him except if it gets too dark on roads with no sidewalks (Vincent also had no cell phone and no parents checking up on him apparently.) (Somehow - with help from Tim, who accompanied him most of the way, Vincent made it on his fourth day in Denmark to take the SAT at the Copenhagen International School. He's already got an e-mail with some information, but - since the SAT now includes a written essay - it'll be some time before we get his score. He had just completed taking Algebra 1 again (this time on-line) for review, and hopefully this helped his score. He didn't actually take the final for the on-line class until today (his score probably dropped after a month doing no math, but he got a B). We hope he'll take Geometry on-line for review before taking the ACT again.) Vincent also has decided he's against eating trans fat and so he may have picked up a Danish version of some of our Weight Watchers habits (though they do eat lots of beef).
As when Vincent comes back from his father's, we're going to have to work to incorporate back into his life things like following bedtimes, cleaning his room, chores, doing homework (or the equivalent), going to martial arts class, not using bad language, etc. Vincent will head off Sunday morning for nearly a week of Presbyterian church camp, after doing some volunteer work for his senior project this week. Once he's gotten his 20 hours of volunteer work in, we'll have to negotiate with Vincent and his father about him possibly going up to Ohio for part of the time between mid-July and early August, when he has to be back in Louisville in time for an orthodontist's appointment and recuperation time for school. My planned-for late-night movie reintegration activity failed - we were all to tired. But we did go to a movie yesterday (Sunday). Stephanie took Vincent to downtown 4th Street Live - just minutes after my colleague and I had left - after he passed the final, and they may go to an amusement park later this week. Vincent had sushi tonight with two of his Brown classmates (not on the trip) before the two-mile walk tonight.
That being said, it was still a little hard to take, Vincent saying he was unhappy to be home and would rather be in Denmark. Usually he goes off with his father and he comes back tired and sick, and subconsciously a little relieved to be home. Plus, if he says anything we obnxious, we can chalk up to his father's conniving. But this time we can't chalk up to any conscious conniving by Carrie and Tim and Tim's father, mother, and stepmother.
Vincent and Tim spent half their time with his mother and half the time with a father, stepmother, and stepsibling. As we'd expect from our experiences with Danes here, much as at Brown, the Dane young people's lives there are relatively unstructured. Vincent said that all of the Danish students smoked, almost all of the Brown students tried alcoholic beverages, and even our second exchange student, Jon, got kicked out of the music and theater festival Vincent's last week there for doing drugs. Vincent also clearly had no bed time.
But besides eating lots of meat, Vincent also picked up some peculiar good habits. With no bedtime, Vincent apparently spent lots of time marauding through the Danish countryside on long nighttime (though he said it was only dark from 12 midnight until 2 a.m. - so mainly by "day"light) walks, and tonight he walked mostly home from a restaurant, almost two miles - which is good for him except if it gets too dark on roads with no sidewalks (Vincent also had no cell phone and no parents checking up on him apparently.) (Somehow - with help from Tim, who accompanied him most of the way, Vincent made it on his fourth day in Denmark to take the SAT at the Copenhagen International School. He's already got an e-mail with some information, but - since the SAT now includes a written essay - it'll be some time before we get his score. He had just completed taking Algebra 1 again (this time on-line) for review, and hopefully this helped his score. He didn't actually take the final for the on-line class until today (his score probably dropped after a month doing no math, but he got a B). We hope he'll take Geometry on-line for review before taking the ACT again.) Vincent also has decided he's against eating trans fat and so he may have picked up a Danish version of some of our Weight Watchers habits (though they do eat lots of beef).
As when Vincent comes back from his father's, we're going to have to work to incorporate back into his life things like following bedtimes, cleaning his room, chores, doing homework (or the equivalent), going to martial arts class, not using bad language, etc. Vincent will head off Sunday morning for nearly a week of Presbyterian church camp, after doing some volunteer work for his senior project this week. Once he's gotten his 20 hours of volunteer work in, we'll have to negotiate with Vincent and his father about him possibly going up to Ohio for part of the time between mid-July and early August, when he has to be back in Louisville in time for an orthodontist's appointment and recuperation time for school. My planned-for late-night movie reintegration activity failed - we were all to tired. But we did go to a movie yesterday (Sunday). Stephanie took Vincent to downtown 4th Street Live - just minutes after my colleague and I had left - after he passed the final, and they may go to an amusement park later this week. Vincent had sushi tonight with two of his Brown classmates (not on the trip) before the two-mile walk tonight.
(We did cede to Vincent's request and go to a nearby Waffle House with his classmate Alex and his parents (pictured in the bottom two pictures. And we paid back Vincent's teacher Carrie and a parent who had gone on the trip - described in "Prom night" - who had both lent Vincent money - and we chatted with the family of Vincent's classmate Nathan, with whom we had occasionally exchange e-mail about the trip. They had talkd with Nathan by Skype half a dozen times, while we had gotten three short e-mails, telling us he was Ok but focusing mainly on money. I'm not seeing we didn't enjoy aspects of a month off - though I was mainly gone - but I thought even he would come home at least more implicitly homesick and not quite so sad. Already, we've done stuff with him, he's started to catch up on sleep, and he's re-connecting with his friends - remindingi him of nice things about him - even if he won't return his prom date's phone call.
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