Welcome!

It's hard to believe another school year has rolled around.  Of course, with that comes the latest round of emails from AFS, begging us to take students into our homes.  Although AFS works diligently throughout the year to secure host families, it's always a rush to the finish to find homes for students.  Unlike many families, who volunteer at the last minute, I've been working on this for months.

Before I get too far ahead of myself, let me introduce myself!  I am Susan, and I am a host mom with AFS USA.  Yes, that sounds like a 12 step introduction, but in a way, it is.  Hosting exchange students can become addicting.  This year, we are hosting Ine from Belgium.  She is our third student.  Previously, we hosted Kristin from Iceland and Penny from Thailand.  You can read about our experience hosting Penny at our former hosting blog Family Thais and our experience as a welcome family for Kristin at A Funny Story About a Foreign Student.

When my husband died, I took a 2 year break from AFS responsibilities.  I stopped volunteering, much less hosting.  This past spring, I thought, "Well, maybe it's time to host again" so I contacted the local high school, but they are not accepting exchange students this year due to overcrowding.  So I thought, "Well, forget it."  This summer, we had Penny home for 3 weeks, and I was so enjoying her visit.  One morning, I got a call from our new area team leader, asking me if I would like to be involved in AFS and helping to expand AFS Virginia beyond the reaches of northern Virginia.  I said I would love to, and signed on to be a host family interviewer.  This led to me becoming a liaison to lovely Kathy from Germany (you can read her blog at Kathy in den USA) and that just really hit home how much I really wanted to host, either as a welcome family again or permanently.

So Alexandra asked me a week later if I would be interested in hosting.  I said I would love to, but explained the situation and how there was no high school around.  This led to 5 weeks of us calling, networking, harassing, and haranguing every single high school in F'burg city, Stafford, Spotsy, and King George Counties.  And no luck.  I tried private schools as well, but the tuition was more than AFS's program fee.  In the meantime, I had chosen a student, a lovely girl from Austria, and was trying to get used to the idea of hosting her and what that would mean for Leah and me.  Well, during the course of all these negotiations, our Austrian friend was snatched up and moved elsewhere.  So I chose a girl from Germany.  Again, everything was taking so long, she was removed from our queue. 

Last week, I sent Alexandra an email that basically said, "I'm done.  I can't put any more time, energy, and effort into this.  I am just not meant to host this year."  And she agreed with me.  She had put a lot of time into it and had gotten nowhere as well, so we agreed I would continue my volunteer activities and try hosting again when Stafford High School re-opened in 2015--I've been given assurances from the principal that they will accept exchange students next year.

Later that same evening, Alexandra sent me another email that read, "Would you consider hosting Ine from Belgium?"  I have to admit, I rolled my eyes just a bit and emailed her back, "I'm happy to host whoever you throw my way, but how can I if we don't have a school for her to go to?"  So Alexandra let me know that some tuition money was made available and asked me to see if I could negotiate with one of the local private schools.

Because we are a secular household, I chose to start with Fredericksburg Academy.  I had already been in touch with them once, so I knew the director of admissions.  I asked her if she could accept AFS's tuition amount, and to my surprise, she said yes, she would be delighted to accept an AFS student!  So I relayed the news to Alexandra, and we were officially paired with Ine yesterday when all the paperwork finished processing.

I am very excited about hosting a student from Belgium, although I know next to nothing about the country other than chocolate, waffles, and frites.  So I have a lot to learn from Ine and I hope she learns a great deal about us.  She will be doing a blog this year, which is at Ine in the USA if you want to read it.  It's quite something to read about yourself in Dutch.  But you can use Google Translate to read along if you want to.

For this week, I will be getting her room ready--we've had company almost all summer, so the room has gotten its use.  it needs a good cleaning and I need to empty the closet as much as possible, as well as assembling a welcome basket.  I'm heading out to find curtains and drawer liner for her room!  I hope you'll visit us often as we enjoy our journey as a new AFS family!