Ten years ago, my husband and I stood at a departure gate at the Denver International Airport, watching the plane pull away from the terminal. Our oldest daughter Anna was on board, headed to Germany as a Rotary foreign exchange student for the entirety of her junior year of high school. (How we got to stand at the departure gate rather than being turned away at the security check is a longer story, but let’s just say it involved a mother’s tears.)

We were going to miss her, but we knew she would be gaining experiences of a lifetime, including different lifestyles, different foods, different cultures. And we knew she would return a better person for having learned about other people, but also hoping she would have a better appreciation for her own home, town and country.

Fast forward 10 years…

Earlier this month, my husband and I, along with two fellow host parents, the Rambali's, stood at the DIA international arrival gate, waiting for our own Rotary exchange student to arrive. 

Emerging from the sliding doors, our exchange students Juls strolled out after more than 13 hours of flights from Barcelona, Spain, dragging two suitcases almost as big as her but with a smile on her face. 

Arriving with a good understanding of the English language (compared to our non-existent Spanish skills), she has transitioned into her host community wonderfully. This has been aided by community members who are welcoming her with open arms and wanting to share what they love about their community. 

If you want to grow a deeper appreciation about your community or learn more about your own community, look at it through a visitor’s eyes. This is especially true when that visitor only knows about your country from television and movies. 

And thanks to her presence, it has given us and others an opportunity to appreciate and embrace what makes our hometowns and our communities unique.

When we finally got to our house on her first night in Nebraska, it was dark, so she couldn’t comprehend the environment she was going to be calling home for the next 11 months. 

On her first full day in the US, we started the process of getting her settled into the community, including enrolling in school and preparing for the upcoming fall sports season.

For those who don’t know, Barcelona is approximately 8 million people. As a reminder, McCook has less than 8,000 residents inside the city limits. We knew there was going to be a bit of culture shock based on the population difference alone.

Instead, what seems to have caught her attention is the vastness of the space around us. As we drove down the country road toward McCook, she marveled at the openness on both sides of the vehicle. The field corn towered on both side of the roads and stretched on for miles and miles. 

Because we live it everyday, we take for granted that we can see for miles over the open fields and across the clear skies. How often do we overlook the fact that we can walk outside nearly every evening to a sky shining full of stars?

Her next comment was about the number of vehicles. Those who know my family know that we have a lot of vehicles, even by American standards. It regularly looks like we are having a party, when it just means everyone is home. With seven kids combined with living in the country, a fleet of vehicles is almost a requirement to get anywhere.

I had to explain that nearly everyone gets around our community in a vehicle because we are so spread out and because public transportation is not as abundant as her in her hometown. Although I would be remiss not to mention that we are blessed to have Amtrak stop in McCook and many of our city governments provide some transportation in the form of vans.

On her first full weekend in the U.S., we shared another tradition that many of us take for granted but could be seen as anomaly by others: camping. 

Actually when you stop to think about it, camping really is an odd concept. We drove 15 miles from a perfectly good, air-conditioned, bug-free home with privacy, running water and soft beds for all the resident.

Instead, we loaded up in the RV and headed to the nearby state recreation area, yet another blessing that many of us take for granted. The lake had only a few other boats on the water, many of them fishing. The campground was nearly full with friends in their own campers, providing plenty of options for the kids to visit, games to play and snacks to steal.

And that is just in the first two weeks.

We along with the other host parents get the joy of sharing with Juls many more experiences over the upcoming year. 

She has experienced more than her fill of Americanized-Mexican food, but we are looking forward to sharing all the different ethnic foods available because the U.S. is great about assimilating so many other cultures. She gets to experience her first school bus ride to a high school sporting event and the bonding that comes with it. And she gets to experience a high school dance and the awkwardness that comes with it. 

We don’t have to go abroad for a year to gain all these experiences. We need to simply take a few minutes, look around us to gain a greater appreciation for our communities.