It's a surprise to be here again after I swore I wouldn't host this year. Last year, we had an exchange student and it didn't pan out so well, and I thought even though we had a year off, maybe we should have another year off to just relax and get Leah a little bit older and see what was what. However, Leah and fate had other plans...
Before I get ahead of myself, let me introduce our little family! My name is Susan and I am a single woman in my 40's, as I was widowed almost 4 years ago. I live in Virginia with my daughter, the aforementioned Leah, who is 7 and going on 17. I have been involved with AFS as either a host sibling, host parent, or volunteer on and off since 1990, when my parents hosted a lovely young woman from Japan for 3 weeks in the summer. About 6 years ago, I had the bug to host a student, and we hosted Penny from Thailand (link goes to our blog of that experience) for a year as first time host parents. Leah was a year old, my husband was still alive, and it was quite a year. I will never forget it as long as I live. The following year, we were a welcome family for Kristin from Iceland, but unfortunately a death in our family kept us from completing the year with her. It was a very interesting experience and culture to learn about. A year later, my husband passed away and I took two years off from doing anything with AFS while I tried to get the ground back under my feet. However, we got a new area team leader, and she called to ask if I would consider volunteering. I happily agreed. A month later, she called back and asked if I would consider hosting. That took some additional thought. I genuinely wanted to host again, but I was also terrified of being a single parent of a teenager and a kindergartener. Eventually, I decided to take the plunge, and we hosted Ine from Belgium for a year. It was truly one of the most incredible things I have ever done. It went so well, I got cocky a little bit, and decided to immediately host again. But I think it was too soon, and our student wasn't well suited to life with a younger sibling, so we hosted Urara from Japan for about 6 weeks before she left and went to the first of several families following our home. It was definitely a hard experience, and a disappointing one, but I learned that I need to give myself downtime between exchanges and also that I need to look for certain things when reading the students' applications. Specifically, I need to find students who are either interested in having younger siblings or enjoy being around younger children.
So this year, I have really thrown myself into AFS and doing a lot of volunteer work. I have interviewed quite a few students for scholarships to travel abroad, I've been interviewing host families, making lots of recruitment calls, helping coordinate family trainings, I have even worked on getting our students' arrival orientation moved to Fredericksburg and all that entails. It's felt like a full time job from time to time, but I have really enjoyed it a lot. I've gotten to read lots of really great student applications, and there have been a few here and there that kind of piqued my interest, but no one really got me excited until I read an application for Astrid from Denmark.
Leah has always wanted to host another student or adopt another sibling, or pretty much anything to have more people in the house. She absolutely loves having big sisters, and she says we don't feel like a family until we have more people in the house. So I decided to take a chance on Astrid. I read Leah her application and she agreed that she sounded great. Astrid listed her main hobbies as running and doing make up, and her parents said she has an excellent way with children. Astrid in fact wrote in her letter of introduction that she hoped there would be children in the home who would be happy to have her there. Leah's main hobbies are running and doing make up, and she is extremely enthusiastic about having teenagers around.
So I put in an email to our area team leader, and asked if we would be able to host Astrid--in our case, our local high school is closed, so it requires AFS to pay for a private school education at a local school about 10 miles from our home, and requires me to provide transportation, but I don't mind doing it. Alex, our team leader, agreed to see if it could be worked out, and so she started the wheels in motion, we filled out our application, and here we are, two weeks later, hoping to hear that Astrid is coming.
The main hold ups are the school wanting to do an interview with Astrid to get a sense of who she is, and then Astrid and her family will have to agree to her being placed with a single parent here in the US. Then I believe we will be in business! I'm very excited to be able to start communicating with her, hopefully soon, and start learning about Denmark--about which I know Hamlet, butter cookies, and Hans Christian Andersen. I'm dreaming of the fun we can have, the things we can do together, and just looking forward to a positive experience for us all...
So I'll keep you all posted as we hear that Astrid is going to join our family, what I learn about Denmark, and eventually about our experiences and adventures in hosting! Stay tuned!
