We?re not the Cleavers. Or even the Cosby?s. Never mind that our dinner table conversations, on the rare occasions we?re all together, inevitably turn to the gross, disgusting or X-rated.

Or that my 15-year-old and I can?t spend five minutes in the same space without screaming at each other. Or that a house with three daughters is already so loaded with estrogen that chocolate is a major food group. Or that we are so rarely home the dog and cat welcome kennel stays just for human contact.

Why did we agree to host a foreign exchange student for the year?

Well, I suppose my experience as an exchange student to Japan many years ago might have had something to do with it.

After all, in this increasingly shrinking world, where technology links us together and borders seem to be growing fainter, it is absolutely essential that all of us throw off our ethnocentricity and embrace the global neighborhood.

I probably thought that my girls would make a great new international friend. I probably thought that I was doing my good deed for the year, allowing a student to spend a year in America, learning English and making new friends.

Okay, so I probably didn?t really think at all.

Nevertheless, I am now the “mother” of a 15-year-old Austrian girl named Judith.

And here?s where the real lessons begin.

First impressions count. So she finds her mother a mere rumor for the first two weeks, due to a severe kidney infection.

Okay, so bad first impression.

But she?s fitting in quite well. She goes to school, does her homework, and is making friends beyond my daughters? circle of friends.

It?s taking some getting used to, having a new person in the house. I can?t even liken it to getting a new child, because a baby grows into the codes of the household without having to be taught consciously. By the time my daughters were ten, they knew the rules, the chores, the limits and the boundaries. I don?t think we even really put them into words until we had to tell Judith what time to be home, how late she can receive calls, where she can go after school.

Keeping up appearances lasted a very short time. It?s too much trouble being the Cosby?s. We?ve given up trying to keep the house clean, since that?s far beyond our limited time. And we argue with each other, even when she?s sitting in the room, because all families argue, don?t they?

She seems to take it all in stride. She?s quiet, helpful, always cheerful. I asked her if she ever got cranky, and she said, “Sometimes.”

This is a yearlong project, turning Judith into an international girl. I look at her and remember my year in Japan, certainly a foreign place for a 19-year-old American girl. I remember the fear, the homesickness, the longing for even five minutes of my own language to help assure me I wasn?t in some twilight zone from which I could never return. It?s kind of like going away to college for the first time. Even though the language is technically the same, there are nuances and slang that just don?t make sense.

I imagine there are times she wishes she had never gotten on that plane. I imagine there are days when she?d rather pull the covers over her head instead of getting up and going to school. And I imagine there will be days when we all wonder what were we thinking.