This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Once upon a time there was an  exchange student from Finland, let's call her Riika; who traveled to America. During her year she had three different host-families, of which the first one was utterly awful for her.

She arrived to the house of the Brown family, where her family consisted of host-mom, dad, sister, and a brother. The sister, Sally, was her age and had just returned from her exchange year in Finland.

Right from the beginning something seemed off. Riika had just arrived and obviously needed some time alone to get used to things. But her host-mom didn't approve of it. Also, one night Sally had her friends come over, and Riika did spend some time with them but after a while returned to her room. This was all too much to the mother, who one night stormed in Riika's room and told her very angrily that she mustn't spend any time in her room because she was here to learn about American culture.

Yes, anything else was fine. Hanging alone in the living room, hanging alone in the kitchen, even hanging alone at the pool. Because she had no friends to hang out with. But at least she was learning about American culture.

AMERICAN CULTURE. This girl, who had written in her "letter to the parents" that her greatest interest is Japanese culture. And let me just say this: Riika was really happy to come to the U.S.! And she was more than willing to learn all about it. But that doesn't exclude still having Japanese culture as a hobby, right?

Bullshit. She should've just forgotten about that stupid country that bombed Pearl Harbor (which she was kindly reminded of.)

Remember the way the mother stormed into her room and ranted about Riika's bad behavior and all the things she had done wrong? That kept going on for every week. Even though the mom told her once: "I wake up every morning and pray god that this day will be better."

The Brown family was Catholic, but since the father didn't join others in church, Riika was also saved from the weekly boredom. Riika doesn't belong to any religious group. That stood very clearly in her files that were sent to America beforehand.

But yet, the non-believing exchange student was a real issue to the mother. She liked to do sarcastic remarks, such as ridicule her for using the word "miracle," because A MIRACLE IS WORK OF GOD. And she didn't believe in god, right? Ha! Ha! ...?

Also, apparently the way Riika dressed was some sort of a problem to the mother, too. One summer day, when Riika was wearing shorts, and a T-shirt, the mother came to her and said: "Put some clothes on." She replied: "Oh, are we going somewhere?" The mother told her bluntly: "No."

Sally, the sister was a whole another story. She was the drama queen of the family. She was always singing and screaming hysterically about pretty much everything. She was hysterical when she was happy, angry, excited, sad, anything! And Sally was also the most SENSITIVE PERSON anyone has ever met. Riika really was just being herself, she had nothing against Sally (in the beginning) but yet, the sister constantly took offense about ANYTHING Riika said. She never meant to be mean, but Sally always got mad and stopped talking to her.

At school Sally held a happy-go-lucky role and pretended to get along with Riika, but that ended quickly after they got home. (Although, during the last month, she treated Riika like air, which was actually a nice change...)

Needless to say, those three months were but terrifying, scary, and lonely three months.

Riika still got shivers after many months from seeing a similar SUV that the host-mom had. She could only sleep well after moving to the next house, where the first few weeks she just anticipated the first time the next host parents would yell at her.

They never did.