Student Selection

I thought I would reflect back on to almost two years ago when we decided to host an exchange student.

Once you are approved to host a student through a valid exchange program, you have access to tons of profiles and you do get to choose your student based on VERY basic information.  You do not get access to more information on a student until you have selected them and matched/gotten approved with them.

When we talked about hosting, a very basic profile for a girl from Germany came across my computer, something about being a good student, a little bit quiet, liked singing and liked going to church.

For some reason, this piqued my interest - I felt it was easy, non-drama, seemed like it would be a good fit and it sparked my conversation with Scott about now being the time for us to host.

We submitted our application and background check info.  

We were told we were approved which gave us access to thousands of more student bios.  I thought that would be fairly overwhelming, so we decided to stick with the student that we had come across, so during our application, we requested a match to her.

Once our match was approved, it unlocked more information about the student and we were told to wait for her to reach out to us.  Marisa probably submitted this information 3-4 years ago, and her English has come a long way since then, but it is kind of fun to look back on.  This is what she said when she applied, before she was matched, before she came here.  I'm sure she has grown a lot from this, she would laugh at her grammar mistakes and I wonder what her responses would be now.

Nonetheless, kind of funny to look back on.

Below is Marisa’s profile information we got access to.  I remember thinking “Why is her picture upside down?”  “Did she do that on purpose, and why?” or “Did the exchange program put it in upside down”?