Exciting New Adventure for Our Family – Hosting a Foreign Exchange Student!!!!

I know this doesn’t have anything to do with reading, but I wanted to share our news on this blog too, especially since it may influence the time I have to put into this blog once school starts again too!! I copied this from my other blog, so those who follow both can just ignore reading it the second time around!

Just over a week ago, on Thursday, July 14th, I happened to look at the Austin Community College Facebook page. I hardly ever look at it, but I happened to see a post on my news feed where they mentioned something about a foreign exchange student needing a host family. I went to their Facebook page to look at more information. I started doing some other things, but couldn’t stop thinking about it. I emailed the information to Richard to see if he’d be interested. I kind of figured he wouldn’t be, especially with “Dahlia” starting middle school this year and with me being busy with my own school work too. However, he responded and said it was okay to get more information and at least find out about the program. 

We filled out the paperwork and were approved for the home visit on Friday last week. We do not live like slobs, but we also were not sure what things they’d be looking for during the home visit, so we spent the next three days cleaning frantically. I gained even more respect for my friends who foster and adopt kids because I can’t imagine the stress of those house visits and the stress of waiting to hear about whether you’re chosen or not! My stress level was CRAZY! However, I prayed and prayed and prayed and really tried to leave it up to Heavenly Father to work out if we were supposed to be able to host someone – if it would be right for her and for us.

They came on Monday night for the house visit, which was pretty simple and not as intensive as I expected. They told us they’d probably know by Thursday who the student would be placed with because they had 2 other families who were interested also. The program only has one student come to Austin. Again, we prayed that things would work out if it was right for her and for us.

On Wednesday, I heard back that we were not selected to host the student we had been told about. However, there had been a new development with another student who was going to originally go to another state, but the host family backed out for some reason. Therefore, they were sending another student to Austin. They said that if we wanted to be her host family, then we would be the ones chosen right away. We read her information and talked about it some just to make sure we thought it would still be a good fit for everyone. Late Wednesday afternoon, we told them that we would be happy to be the host family for the other student.

This afternoon we were given Franzi’s contact information and we have emailed each other and become friends on Facebook too. She is 22 years old and is from Esslingen, Germany. She will be taking classes at ACC for the fall semester and then will be working from January through June next year. She arrives in the US at the beginning of August and has an orientation and other things in New York City (talk about a culture shock right off the bat!!!!), and then will arrive here in Austin on August 15th, so she’ll be here just under a year.

I love her profile picture on Facebook………..

We are all thrilled for this opportunity! We know it will be challenging, but we hope it will also be great! I found out today that Franzi is from the same German state that my ancestors came from when they came from Germany to the US in the 1750s. Although the state is big and I don’t know what city they lived in, I think it’s cool that she’s from the same general area. 

Our daughters are thrilled to both have a “big sister” now. They are looking forward to learning some German too! Franzi actually knows some Spanish also, so I can practice Spanish with her and maybe teach her more Spanish along with English. 

We received a manual from the program today outlining some things that we should talk about with Franzi when she gets here just to make sure she knows our “house rules” and things like that. We honestly laughed out loud to some of the things suggested to talk about! They seemed quite ridiculous to us because we will consider Franzi as another family member and will treat her the same way we treat our own daughters. I’m sure that there are all sorts of host families out there, but I really can’t even imagine having someone join your family for a year with some of the things that are mentioned that could be restrictions for a student! She will be just as much a part of our family as anyone else and as much as she wants to be included. Hopefully, our friendship will continue for years to come and not just for the year she is here!

We are looking forward to this new adventure!!

Mommy Bookworm

DON’T FORGET – Tomorrow (7/23) is the last day to enter the 3 giveaways I have on the blog right now! We will be starting a new giveaway on Sunday also, so check back again for the new one!