Marina and A Trip to Yellowstone

January 01, 2023

Marina and A Trip to Yellowstone

We were celebrating the 4th of July at the cabin- having a crazy week of everything going wrong when we received a phone call. With Zac being the Bishop of our LDS Ward, at times he gets crazy requests for help. A lady in our ward that works with summer exchange students helping to place them in homes had a family back out last minute and she was hoping our family might consider taking an exchange student for two weeks. The girl needing a home was Marina Ventura Valverde a 14-year-old girl from the town of Alicante, Spain. We took a vote from the family and it passed with a majority. We agreed to take her in... even though we learned she had a Vegan diet and that made us a little nervous as almost every food item in our house is non-Vegan. But we took her in and it was a good experience.

Marina brought us gifts from Spain, some olive oil, a Christmas treat that they eat in Spain and a couple of fun trinkets. We learned all about Alicante Spain and looked at pictures of her town and family. It turns out that Alicante is a very beautiful tourist destination on the Ocean. The beach is quite close to Marina's house and she spends a lot of time on the beautiful beach. It was fun for the kids to learn how similar things are in Spain and also learn about the differences. Marina pushed us to get out of the house and go to the movies, shopping, to the Idaho Potato museum... which is in our town, but we had never been and we also took her to Island Park and to Yellowstone National Park.

She was at the cabin with us when Tanner and Ashlyn celebrated their 18th birthdays and we hung a pinata to celebrate. We also learned that Marina would be celebrating her birthday the week after the twins when she went home to Alicante, so we loaded her up with some souveniers from Yellowstone and the Idaho Potato Museum to celebrate her birthday and remember us by.