In my wife's desk at the high school where she teaches in Tokyo, there is a notebook. Every exchange student reads it before they fly to America. Twenty years ago, a boy came home from a year in Kansas, handed my wife a cheap spiral notebook, and said, "For the next kid." On the first page, he had written one piece of advice. Every student since has added one line when they came home. Sixty-one kids. One notebook. Title on the cover in marker: "THINGS NOBODY TELLS YOU ABOUT AMERICAN FAMILIES" My wife let me copy some of it. "Your host mom will ask if you're hungry. 'No' is not an answer. 'No' means 'make me a smaller sandwich.'" — Kenta, Kansas, 2007 "There is a second refrigerator in the garage. It contains only drinks, and one casserole nobody will claim." — Rei, Michigan, 2011 "Every house has a junk drawer. Dead batteries. Forty rubber bands. A key to nothing. Soy sauce packets from 2015. Do not organize it. A girl tried in 2016. The family held a meeting." — Emiri, Wisconsin, 2016 "Ranch dressing goes on everything. Do not fight ranch. Ranch will win." — Kosuke, Iowa, 2012 "When they say 'We're leaving in five minutes,' sit down. Have a snack. You have forty minutes." — Misaki, Texas, 2018 "In Texas, 'y'all' is one person. 'All y'all' is everyone. 'All y'all' can include the dog." — Takumi, Texas, 2010 "In Ohio, you will be assigned a football team before you unpack. Do not ask about Michigan. Do not even say the word." — Sho, Ohio, 2015 "Your host dad will teach you to drive in an empty church parking lot. You are not allowed to drive. He knows. He does it anyway, 'just so you know how.' He will hold the door handle and say 'You're doing great' in the voice of a man who is not doing great." — Yusuke, Nebraska, 2009 "Grandpa will call you 'kiddo' and secretly hand you twenty dollars 'for gas.' You do not have a car. Take the twenty dollars. It's not about gas." — Chihiro, Kentucky, 2014 "At Friday night football, the band moms will adopt you. You will not be consulted." — Asuka, Georgia, 2019 "Your host brother will fight with you like an enemy. If anyone at school is mean to you, he will fight them like a soldier. Both are love." — Jun, Michigan, 2017 "If the dog sleeps in your bed on the second night, you're in. It is more official than your visa." — Momo, Minnesota, 2021 "Your host mom will tell you she isn't going to cry at the airport. She is lying. Pack tissues for two." — Natsuki, Missouri, 2022 Two years ago, a girl named Mina borrowed the notebook to read on the plane to Ohio. She forgot to give it back. It spent a whole year in Ohio with her. Her host mom, Carla, found it on Mina's desk. She couldn't read Japanese. So she typed every single line into a translation app, one by one, at the kitchen table. All sixty-one. When Mina flew home, the notebook came back in the mail. With a note: "Sorry, I added something." On the last page, in neat American handwriting: "To the next kid, I read all of these. I laughed until I cried, and then I just cried. Here's what nobody wrote down, because none of you could know it. We were scared too. Before you came, we cleaned your room three times. We practiced your name in the car. Your host dad watched YouTube videos on how to make rice. He still can't. We worried you'd be lonely. We worried you wouldn't like us. We worried you'd like us, and then leave. You will leave. That's the deal. We know it the day we sign up, and we sign up anyway. So eat the second sandwich. Let the dog in. Text me when you get there. You're not a guest. You're just family we haven't met yet. — Carla. Mina's American mom. Ohio." My wife made a copy of that page and taped it inside the front cover. Now it's the first thing every kid reads. This spring, a sixteen-year-old boy flew to a farm in Iowa. He was so nervous he couldn't eat for a week. The night before he left, he read the notebook cover to cover. Then, under Carla's letter, in pencil, he wrote the sixty-second line. Before he'd even gone. "Okay. I'm a little less scared now." To every family who ever cleaned a room three times for a kid they had never met: Sixty-one of them wrote about you. They're still writing.