It WILL be a happy experience. And, as always, I am proud of her.

I'm horrified by what it cost her in lost opportunities. She was planning to go to Japan as an exchange student in the Fall (we suspect that fell through before this came up, though) and was well on her way to being Valedictorian at her school (although I think Sophmore year is too soon to be thinking of things like that). Japan is off (I'm sure she will get there again someday in some other way) and the other is in doubt because she will unavoidably miss quite a bit of school which will probably bring her grades down. My wife and I will obviously do what we can to minimize the problems, but some of them are unavoidable, and she has to take care of a lot of them herself.