"International House" by Marie Mitchell
Bonus episode
—welcome everyone
A welcoming family in eastern Kentucky becomes the delightful hub of international sharing as students come and stay and go and write back and invite and . . . well, you get the idea.
Marie Mitchell’s 30-years as a broadcast journalist, plus 15-years teaching communication classes at Eastern Kentucky University, have provided plenty of material for her newspaper columns, short stories, plays and Kentucky-based books for kids and adults. She thrives on writing collaboratively with her husband, Mason Smith, or her sister, Rebecca Mitchell Turney. Marie has joined four other EKU professors in writing novels under the penname Quinn MacHollister. All books are available on Amazon. Marie also shares her research on EKU’s first woman President, Mary Creegan Roark, through the Kentucky Humanities Council’s Speaker’s Bureau.
Author’s Talk
Early on in parenting I discovered that saying “yes” to my four children whenever possible, instead of an indisputable “no,” opened up more exciting possibilities for us all.
For instance, when we were asked to host international students on several occasions. My immediate response was “no way,” we already have more responsibilities than we can handle. End of discussion.
Marie Mitchell
But kids have a way of surprising you. One offered to share his bedroom. Or give up his room entirely and sleep in the family room. His siblings promised to help out with housework so we could welcome others into our already crowded household.
We knew friends and acquaintances with bigger, fancier, and cleaner houses who were clearly more creative cooks than we, lived a more structured lifestyle and had better behaved kids. But they valued their privacy and felt they didn’t have the time or resources to sponsor international students.
We were the family that said “yes” to squeezing one more guest into our at-capacity home and chaotic lives. Even if it meant moving people and furniture around like chess pieces to make everything fit.
The lifelong friendships forged through living and learning together for weeks, months and years, have been priceless. Such diversity exposed my children to a much wider world. It aroused their curiosity about other countries and cultures. And they’ve each embraced opportunities to explore fascinating places abroad.
Our oldest daughter is teaching English at a school in Madrid. Our youngest daughter and I have traveled on five mission trips to Guatemala, her birth country. Our oldest son is investigating the possibility of filming a movie in Ireland. And our youngest son seized the chance to visit his “Big Buddy” in Germany.
We’ve enriched our own lives simply by saying “yes” when it would have been more practical to say “no.” It was well worth the extra effort of making one more serving, setting one more plate and washing a few more forks in order to engage in lively conversation with such an assorted bunch of folks who quickly became family.