We have probably had more than the average number of exchange students. Since I have been married, we have hosted four. When I was a kid, we had two. I guess that I cannot technically count those two but I can add those to the numbers that I have been exposed to. With the exception of one, the rest have been very positive experiences.

My very first exchange student was Japanese and he was a year or two older than me. This was a short term exchange which I think that it lasted three weeks. One of the things having a short term exchange does is kind of move you to bring out your best. That means travelling to see the local sights, festivals and all the things that you wouldn’t normally try to do in a condensed time frame.

I distinctly remember going to visit my grandfather. He was going to be in the local parade with his 1957 convertible Ford Thunderbird. We didn’t visit that often and we rarely went to the local lamb festival. I think that we went twice in my lifetime, both of them as a child. But, we happened to have our exchange student with us when we went.

As I said above, we didn’t visit often maybe once or twice a year was pretty typical. His house happened to be adjacent to the main North/South rail line. Consequently, my most favorite thing to do when we visited was to put pennies on the rail for when the train came by. Most of them flew off somewhere never to be found again but usually we would get a couple smashed flat.

My grandfather knew how to show a good time. Our exchange student got to drive his Thunderbird in the pasture for ten minutes. Then he broke out his 22 revolver. We all got to shoot a couple of shots but none of us got to shoot much. That was my first time shooting a handgun. My father did not own any, nobody did as far as I remember. Come to find out that those were all violations of the hosting rules.

I knew better, so that when we went to the informational meeting for our year long student (2019), I asked. No risky behavior is permitted and shooting is considered risky behavior. That was the year that I got involved in trap shooting, so that was going to be off the table.

In my experience, that general rule of no risky behavior is pretty par for the course with most exchange programs. Ironically, it is not the case with Rotary. They allow culturally acceptable alcohol use and shooting as examples. Many of the students end up going back to their country and going back to school with this year not counted whatsoever in their education pathway. My experience with Rotary is that they don’t even really get involved when the student is failing classes.

We have had a very busy spring. Myself, I didn’t even get to the range for the first time this year until late April. It is not like I didn’t want to go but I was hyper-focused on my hiking earlier so I deprioritized potential range time. But, we are staring down the barrel of my exchange student’s departure within less than thirty days. So, I wanted to take him while there was still time.

One thing that is quintessential American is recreational shooting. Many countries have some sort of mechanism to own firearms. In most cases, owners need to fulfill very stringent requirements such a by permit only. Firearms need to be stored at a range or hunting club that you belong to and to be used at said facility. To top that off, many have a quota for the numbers that can be in your possession.

At least there is a way but lets say that you were a target shooter, it is not likely then that could both target shoot and hunt. The freedom to have 22LR for target shooting and a 22LR for small game hunting and a 22LR handgun for shooting cans in three different settings is almost impossible. Hence, I have not been exposed to an exchange student that comes themselves from a ‘gun culture’. Even if I did, I would still probably take them to the range just so that they see the differences.

We had a fun couple of hours. I had made some repairs to a revolver from my last trip. I wanted to see how I did and I am happy to report that the repairs were solid. I also took a rifle to get just plink away at ground spinning targets just for fun. There were a lot of smiles and a lot of videos that got made that day. One thing that I didn’t want to do was punish with a lot of recoil.

End Your Programming Routine: I guess that I am getting older. I enjoy going out and shooting but it is almost more fun to introduce someone to something new. Since I can shoot almost any time, I just sat back on a chair and watched as he and my son shot and reloaded and shot and reloaded. Don’t get me wrong, doing stuff repetitively can get a little boring. This is why I have introduced the chronographs and testing that I do. But when I get a chance to watch someone have some fun, maybe for the only time in their lives, that is priceless.