A Dog Named Potato
Host family gifts, including a photo album and an Our State magazine from North Carolina.
Panda charms made by my dad and I.
In just a few days, I'm going to be living with my Chinese host family. Through the NSLI-Y program, students are given a family to live with throughout the duration of their program. On occasion, students have a different living situation depending on the country, program duration, and year. My Chinese family consists of three people directly: 吴建锋 (Wú Jiàn Fēng), 邬俊 (Wū Jùn) , and 吴璨 (Wú Càn). 吴璨 (aka Charlotte) has been communicating with me these past few weeks through email and WeChat. So far, I've gleaned that 吴璨 likes spicy food, the color pink, and is two years my junior. Her father works at the train station, and her mother works at the police station. I've also learned that they have a dog named 土豆, which means potato (hence the name of this post).
As a welcoming gesture, I have purchased and made a few gifts for my host family with the help of my family here in the states. For 吴璨, we bought "The Cats of Mrs. Calamari", and my sister made her two scrunchies: one pink and white striped and the other red with white polka dots. You may be wondering, "Why The Cats of Mrs. Calamari?" The answer lies in the name of their dog, 土豆 (aka Potato). Upon learning they had a dog named 土豆, I told everyone in my family. Everyone. When I told my mom, she remembered that Everett T. Gangplank had a gigantic white dog named Potato in the "The Cats of Mrs. Calamari". This was one of my favorite books as a child and still is to this day, so I thought it would be a nice present for 吴璨 since she's learning English as well.
For 吴建锋 and 邬俊, my dad and I went to R. Riveter, a company that's known for employing spouses of military personnel to make handmade purses and bags, to purchase a few gifts. At R. Riveter, we purchased a nice pouch/purse for the mom and a comfy tee with a picture of a town right next to my hometown for the dad. Everything I'm gifting is made in the USA. If you give a gift to someone who's from another country, make sure its unique to your home country or hometown. Those kinds of gifts are more meaningful and representative of who you are and where you come from.
In addition to the aforementioned gifts, my dad and I made little panda charms (pictured above). We purchased scrap leather, some of which was from R. Riveter, and used wood and acrylic to laser engrave a panda design I made in Adobe Illustrator. My panda inspiration came from the inside of a box of Panda Puff EnviroKid Cereal. There was a picture showing you how to draw a panda bear inside the cereal box, so I cut open the box, took a picture of the graphic, and used Adobe Illustrator to trace the outline of the panda bear and add text. We had some issues with the leather, so we mainly used wood and acrylic to make the panda charms. I used some of the leather and some orange yarn as ties. These trinkets will be for my host family, friends, and teachers as a little memento serving as a reminder of this summer and this experience.