Last week I was staying the night with my best friend when all of a sudden I received a text message from my mom that said, “You need to come home, we have a surprise for you.”
I instantly thought it was a puppy.
So naturally, I yelled to my best friend who was sitting in the other room that we needed to head down the street to my house for a minute.
When we pulled into the driveway of my house, there was a large, silver, pick-up truck sitting out in front of my house. The truck looked just like my grandfather’s truck, so I thought he was the surprise that my mom was referring to in her text message.
I walked in my front door, looked around, no grandfather.
By the time I realized my grandfather was not in my house, a girl walked out from our front hallway.
It was Kira, our German foreign exchange student who lived with us for 10 months just over a year ago.
As I screamed, hugged her and reminisced with her in our living room floor, I realized how much I missed having her live under the same roof as me.
While she was living with us we bonded over sports, Mexican food and we even got to go see Macklemore and Ryan Lewis together in concert in Louisville.
We also had our fair share of disagreements and petty arguments while living together.
Kira and my sister are the same age, so during the time she was staying with us it was literally like having two of my sister’s in the same household… STRESSFUL… which led to tension and petty fights, just like normal sisters have.
However, those fights were always outweighed by the good times and laughs. During those 10 months I gained another little sister that would eventually change my life for the better.
I learned what it was like to live with another person whose background, upbringing, culture and way of everyday life was different than my own in nearly every way possible.
I also gained a life-long sister in her and that is something that I would not give up for anything in this world.
That is what happens when you give a girl a sister from another country.
Body Photos by Abbie Long