Nonparenting a 17 year old

Dr. J's sis (Vito) is living with us until mid-January. Vito is coming from a different culture, can understand quite a lot of English but rarely attempts to speak it. She's been here about three weeks and I think she's averaging about 1 sentence every other day. And then we have Spanish Day every Saturday ... and then it's like living with a mute-turned-hummingbird-paced talking for 16 hours straight. I think she even gets up early.

At home, Vito has a very different culture, having someone to cook all your meals, do your laundry, and clean your home. I think she's been blown away by the nonstop amount of things to do at our house. If we aren't cooking, we are cleaning up, or the dishwasher needs to be emptied, or the trash should be taken out. You guys are Americans, you know what we do all day long.

So she's been helping and hasn't ever resisted when we've asked her to do things, which has been great. But she isn't always familiar with how. Things she's learned since she's been here:

- you can't stack bowls one on top of the other in the dishwasher
- there's a lever on the vacuum so that the upright handle reclines
- how to run a dishwasher, washing machine, dryer
- how to clean a toilet
- every one has to stop at stopsigns (this was scary and driving lessons warrant their own post)
- that she likes peanut butter. a lot.
- that she likes eggplant, tuna salad, fish, and blue cheese. all of which she said she didn't like
- and she's already found a love of Aeropostle

That about summarizes our first few weeks with our houseguest (minus the driving lesson days). I'm now in my weeks that I'm going out of my way to stay low stress ... so I may turn over all driving lessons to Dr. J for a while. :)