Meet Jenny, our Chinese Foreign Exchange Student

Meet Jenny.  

That's not her real name, just one she choose when she arrived in America.

Her real name is Jia Jiao Li and she is from Shanxi, China.  

She is fourteen years old and her birthday is January 13th.  She describes herself as active, athletic, nature loving, neat and social.  Her hobbies include aerobics, cooking, music, and swimming.  While she was here we learned she loves dancing, running and basketball as well.  She has two brothers, age 10 and 18 and her family had animals including horses, sheep, and birds (pigeons that they race).  She loves purple, American food and board games.

While Jenny was here we took her paddle-boarding and kayaking at Lake Natomas. 

She smiled the entire time.

 She jumped right in to make a silly face with the rest of the kids.  

(Our friends, the Wagners were in town from Utah).

After this we took Jenny to the Sacramento temple for family home evening.  We had a short lesson and Spencer found a Mormon Message on lds.org in Chinese for her to watch.
It was awesome to share what is so important to us!

Once we got home we sat around the fire and introduced her to smores. She liked them!

We had a swim party with the other exchange students in our backyard.

It was darling this night because kids were swimming, playing basketball, ping-pong and Uno and some gathered around the piano. Aubrey started playing Taylor Swift and I thought they may ask for her autograph!  They kept commenting how "good she is".  "She is so good" they would say over and over again while they recorded her on their phone.  Then they started making requests and finding the English words to sing along with her.  It was the cutest thing!  The JOY in their faces as they united over common music was so sweet!!

 She loved rice krispie treats and so Katelyn taught her how to make them.

We fed her a lot of her favorite food, ice cream and even introduced her to rainbow sherbet.

After Aubrey went to class with her and saw that they were learning a lot about California history and some specifics of Northern California, we took her to Coloma to see where gold was first discovered.

We took her to the mall with friends and to swim parties.

We played American card games, which she loved (Uno was her favorite).

 We played with her version of Snapchat filters.

We danced Gangnam style (she was awesome) and taught her the "whip".

It was hilarious!

We learned a few Chinese words (they are tricky!  I really only mastered "nee-how" for hello) 

and even their version of pat your head and rub your stomach.

We took her to church and shared a few of our basic beliefs through the google app.

Matthew offered checkers.  It was the cutest thing.  She said no.

Since she loves ice cream what could be better than 31 flavors to choose from at Baskin Robbins, she sampled a few and decided on strawberry.

 Jenny and I went for a morning run one day and I also took her to Winco.  She picked out lots of snacks to enjoy and take with her to the East Coast.

 We sent Jenny with a lunch everyday. I am not sure how much she ate though.  At home it was hardly anything, even though she said she liked the food.  Aubrey went to school with her a few times and helped out discussing everyday life and politics.  For a split second Aubrey thought she would be called on for her opinion of Hillary Clinton...phew was she relieved when she wasn't!

  We made a cute photo book with all the photos from the things we did with her.  I think she liked it:)

 The last night of her visit in California the EF group hosted a farewell party complete with a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.  The good-byes were sweet.  We took our last selfie and Megan made Jenny some of her favorite rice krispie treats and Jenny even said "thank you" for them.

She gave Aubrey the longest hug and shed some tears. 

We are grateful for this experience and what we learned.
We wish Jenny the best and hope our paths cross again someday!