Haha, that's definitely the opposite direction most people want to go. But since she loves the car so much it might be worth doing the swap. If I was going to do this, I'd probably find a good auto to manual swap write-up and kind of reverse it. Here is one from a very good 3rd gen site.
Auto To Manual Swap
I know there are other write-up out there. You'll just need to look through them and you should be able to figure out what parts you'll need. Good luck.