It's Official

Well - I suppose it's time we announce that this next school year, we will be hosting a German exchange student - Marisa from Solingen, Germany.

Today, we had our host family orientation with other local hosts - many first timers, a few with some more experience with hosting.  MANY questions answered today, and a lot of good suggestions for things we probably would have never thought of ahead of time - though we are really trying our best to imagine and plan to all of a sudden have a teenager in our home.

We applied to host and were matched with Marisa last October/November.  Her family was very happy to be matched so early in the process - they know some kids who got matched 2 weeks before they had to leave so 10 months is generous.   We have been able to get to know her and her family very well in that time and both sides have asked many questions of each other - we email almost weekly and met over Zoom.  It's fun to hear what their family is up to - a trip to Greece for them is like us going to Florida.  At this point, it seems that we feel like we know exactly who will be living with us and do not feel that there will be anything too shocking.  Technology has drastically changed the exchange programs of modern day.  It has also been interesting for us as their family is much closer to the war in Ukraine, and hearing that perspective has been eye opening.

But - now it is nearing closer - she will be here around August 20 (date still being sorted), and with today's orientation, it feels more official.

For those interested in following our journey with Marisa - welcome!  I will try to post photos and updates here throughout the school year. Please send some ideas of things for us to do that are "must sees"!  We have a running list of things to do and places to see.  While we know we will not get to them all, there may be things we have not thought of.

The first thing we are asked when we have told people we are doing this is "why?" or "what made you think to do that?".  It's definitely not for everybody, but we feel it is for us.

Scott and I have had some parallel experiences with foreign students growing up that probably shaped or influenced us.  When I was in 3rd grade (1993), my family was supposed to get Alexandra from Yugoslavia - but the war broke out and her family fled the country.  We ended up with Chiara from Cortina d' Ampezzo, Italy.  I thought Chiara was so beautiful, I admired her clothing and her curly hair.  She was a bit rebellious, but I was too young to know what my parents actually had to deal with.  It was a great year and learning experience for me at that age, but I also remember strongly thinking "if I ever get an exchange student as an adult, I am definitely not getting one when my kids are teenagers - it will be before that".  When I was a junior in high school, we also helped Rana from Germany (Turkish descent) finish out the last couple months of high school as it didn't go well with her original host family.

Scott grew up on a farm and they had a work/study program with college students from Brazil.   Both of us enjoyed these experiences.

Ultimately, I'm not sure what made us have a strong feeling that this year is "the year"...it really just hit me all of a sudden and I told Scott I strongly felt now is the time and he was on board instantly.  We had very casually brought it up a couple times before, but nothing serious.  There really wasn't much more discussion and we both felt our kids are at great ages for this experience and now is the time. We asked the kids if they were up for it and they screamed "YESSS!!!".  We applied the next day and after our application approval and a home interview, we were matched.  The application process was fairly straight forward, but we did have to answer a LOT of questions about ourselves and submit references...things like "describe your parenting style", "is there any place in your home the student could not go?", etc.

While there is an overwhelming number of students to choose from, Marisa's profile was the first one that popped up, and she seemed like a great fit for our family.  In this program, the host family chooses their student, and the student has to be ok with landing wherever they land.  She doesn't seem disappointed to be coming to Minnesota at all and was so excited someone picked her.  She is very excited to experience everyday life in America- we'll see how she feels mid-January ;)  She has had fair warning of our cold winters.

Her parents and brother all speak English exceptionally well.  I took 4 years of high school German and 2 years at the college level - I'm sure it will come back fairly easy.  We were fortunate enough to travel to Berlin after we were married and I could read and understand very well when I was there - the speaking part can intimidate me, but I hope we all come out of this a little more fluent.

What we know about Solingen so far - it's where Haribo gummy bears are made and is very well known for knife-making back to medieval days.  Think Wustof knives.  It's about 160,000 people, but Marisa says it feels like a small town (I'll be interested to see how she feels about that after she experiences New Prague with a population of 8,000).  It's in the northwestern part of Germany, near the border with the Netherlands, which I am not as familiar with that area.

Just a few funny cultural things to note as of our experience virtually so far:

1. Marisa takes French and English.  It's very important to her and her family to keep up with French while she is here (our local schools offer Spanish and German).  They were surprised we do not speak French as we are so close to Canada which we thought was humorous.  Luckily, the school counselor helped us find an online French program for her through the public schools.

2. They could not believe we close schools down all summer.  Over there, they take 2 weeks off every season, and a longer summer break, but not nearly as long as here.

3. We took our kids out of school for a week to go to Mexico this past March and they were surprised we took them out of school that long (not in a judgmental way, but a very interested way like that just is not allowed there).  I could only justify it by saying that our kids are young enough and good students, that we don't have much to worry about.  The teachers also send work along in this situation.

4. From our discussions with other Americans that know Europeans well, it seems that it is hard for Europeans to wrap their head around how big America is (like taking 8 hours to drive from northern MN to southern MN).  Sometimes I do think "yeah, we all should know many languages in America", but if you think about it, we are so huge and just do not come across the amount of languages that Europeans do being so close together and able to travel across countries as fluidly as they do.  Not to say we shouldn't know other languages, because we should - it's not all about us - but we have way less opportunity to use them here than they do, so naturally I think we lose it easier.

We are waiting to hear Marisa's arrival date - it sounds like her group will spend a few days in New York before they go to their home bases.  She has had a few issues getting her visa.  Her family took an arduous journey by train to Frankfurt to speed up the process by visiting the American Consulate.  The consulate would not let her go in with her parents and she had to do it all on her own.  This may sound scary, but at the same time, if your child is choosing to travel elsewhere for almost a year, they better get used to doing things like that on their own.

It will be an interesting experience, for sure!  We are so excited, especially Quinn!  Hopefully Marisa has her visa soon and we know her arrival date so we can start to make some more official plans.

Let us know if you have any tips/ideas of places to go or if you have any questions for us!  We are definitely excited and can't believe it's here already!