Luckily G has been recovering nicely from whatever sleeping virus she had. She still takes a nap now and again, but not every day and not for long. It really got a lot better after the Thanksgiving holiday break. She tried out for track, but found having practice everyday left no room for any other activities. Now she is running on my treadmill a few times a week. She worries that she is getting fat. She has gained a bit of weight here! Still, she has a long way to go to be fat!!

We have been busy getting ready for Christmas. We sent off a box to her family, but it was hard to figure out what to put in it, so it went out late. She told me they do the full 12 days of Christmas, so then it won't be late afterall. One box has arrived form her family here, and another one is on it's way.
G finally cooked a dessert for us this past week. It was hard to convert everything from metric- mostly because I do not have the right sized measuring things. We had to use a chart I had in one of my cookbooks, but it was often an estimate. It turned out ok. Tasted better than it looked! She really has no kitchen skills at all. I guess that is typical of most teens here too.
I have now offically signed up with ASA International to be an area rep. The way they have set up the program seems much better than the way YFU is with all volunteers. These kids pay some big bucks so I think it is fair to pay the reps a little. I had taken a job at a local ski resort, but they have not had me come in yet and I am thinking since it has been exceptionally warm so far, that I may be laid off. No biggie, except I was looking forward to getting back into skiing- and for free. Oh well. I know I can be a great area rep!!
Merry Christmas!!

Things have been going so great! We have really settled in so nicely with G. She really is like a daughter to me. We have been going to the mall a lot lately- for me more than once is a lot! Ha ha!

The only problem is that G is sleeping all the time. At first it was just a short nap after school. Then it was a long nap after school. Lately she has been coming home from school and sleeping until dinner, then after dinner doing her homework and going back to sleep. I was getting very worried, so I took her to the dr. He ordered a blood test for mono, but that came back negative, as did the test for anemia. He said that even though we were testing for mono, it could easily be another strain of the Epstein-Barr virus. I think knowing that it is not normal, but not depression makes us feel a little better. It would be nice to have a definite diagnosis though!
Our area rep called last night, and I explained what was going on. He was not too helpful suggesting that maybe she was just bored. Yeah right. She has friends that she does go out with and some she has over here. Lately she has been home a lot more as she is too tired to do anything. It is sad for me to see as I know she does want to go do things, and this is her big year in the US. Her Mom was kind of freaked- wanted her to come home. I feel for the woman. I think I will write to her, but then I know that G doesn't tell her everything knowing her Mom can't do anything and not wanting her Mom to be any more upset.
Today was the meeting for winter track. Since she did not come home on the bus I am assuming she was feeling awake enough to stay for it. That is a good sign! She did leave her cell phone home by accident today, so I am hoping she will get a ride home.
Tomorrow we are heading to PA for Thanksgiving with my family. This is unusual as I usually am the hostess! It is great since I did all my baking for it today ( pies, cookis, etc)and now after dinner tonight I don't have to cook til Saturday when we get home. Possibly Sunday if we hit traffic and have to stop for dinner on the way home. G does help with dishes, so that is a wonderful perk I will miss when she leaves us.
I am looking into being an area rep for another exchange company. I have not pursued it aggressively as I am not sure I will be able to place enough kids. Heck, any kids! I am not a real social person and have a hard time trying to "sell" anything. I think it has been a great experience- the actual hosting that is. So maybe my talking about it will convince others to do it. We may do it again- I haven't decided yet if we will do it next year again, or wait another year.
Let me know if you are considering hosting ( especially if you are in New England!!)

Our student arrived and immediately became part of our family. It has been two months now, and she is just an absolute delight to have here. She is polite and respectful. She loves to be with the kids. She is responsible about doing her homework, her chores ( dinner dishes and keeping her room neat and bed made) and social time. She has made friends and has gone out with her girlfriends. We had a little trouble getting a cell phone for her- it was more about coverage availablity. Now that is costing more than expected with a pay as you go, so we are looking into a family plan on my account. Although this is not recommended, I feel safe that she is going to pay me. Why? Because she has been having great difficulty with her bank card from home. ( doesn't sound good , right ? wait) We tried several banks and not one would work. Then the last bank suggested that maybe the magnetic strip was deactivated when she came through security at the airport. Highly unlikely, but the card was not working at all. So, now her mother has sent a second card, which did not work yesterday. Her mother also is trying to wire money into my savings account so I can take it out for G. I could easily work out with G to keep $100 to use toward the phone bill. Then I don't have to worry about her running out of money to pay me. Although, we made a deal to treat her as one of our own, and as such I give her $10 a month towards school lunches. Each child in school gets to buy 4 times a month. It was once a week , but then some weeks there was nothing and other weeks there were two that they wanted. So we could call it even and have no exchange of money- assuming she doesn't eat into my minutes too much. She is very respetful of our home and our generosity in hosting her.
Everyone who meets her says how great she is! She truly is an ambassador of exchange students! I can't say enough great things.

Now YFU- that is a different story. The woman who was fired or quit left an awful mess. We just got an area rep last week. Then we had a required meeting this weekend. First of all, we were told that we all had to attend. That was not true. So we all took an hour ride- each way, we ate lunch in the car, and the little kids had no naps. Then there was nothing for the kids to do but sit through boring meetings! Boring because it was the same information we have gone over twice now!!! Then we had to have dinner out on the way home. Arghh. The only good thing was G got to meet some of the other students. She had not gone on the first sponsored trip as she is not a great car traveler. Also, there was a big expense for the first trip, and they were expected to sleep on the floor of someone's house! There is another trip in the spring, but it is even more money. That is to NYC and Washington DC. However, today she is in NYC with the HS International club for a rather small amount of money. Plus, she is with her school friends. There will be other activities she will get to do with the exchange students.

Hosting has been great, I would just recommend you choose your agency carefully!

I had not realized I had not posted in so long! A few days after my last posting I got an earlier travel date for G. August 17th! It wasn't as early as I had hoped, but it was better than the 24th by a week. She was scheduled to arrive at 6pm, so we had planned to all go and have dinner at or near the airport and then have an hour and a half ride home together. Well then last week we had the increased threat level, so the second flight was bumped back to allow enough time for her to get through customs. Now she will be arriving at 11 pm, so I will get her myself and she won't get to meet the family until she wakes up the next morning. Not an ideal situation. Still, I want her to have enough time to get through customs and not miss her flight here!

We ended up having our pre-arrival orientation done by conference call. This was much better that rushing home from our camping weekend to someone's house we don't know and taking the kids with us. There was a huge mix up at the beginning of the call and we ended up missing the first hour. We could not get back into the call!! Normally you get a number to call and a code to get in. With this, we had to wait for them to notice we were not there ( or check their voicemail) and then call us back. Luckily is was primarily just going over the handbook.

Then yesterday we found out that our co-ordinator has been fired- either that or she quit suddenly. So now we have our region's director as our contact. There are no local volunteers in our area. It is one of those ripple effects where there has not been an exchange student in our school district for 10 years, so there are no volunteers, so there are no new students, and so on. I suppose after this year is over we will be asked to be a local volunteer.

Our student arrives tomorrow night, so I have been trying to look around the house with a more objective eye. We keep it clean, so I don't have too much to do there. We found her a nice desk yesterday, so I think we are all set!
Part of me is really excited and the rest of me is terribly scared! I think she is probably feeling the same way.

Today I got so frustrated, I actually called the national office and left a message with the travel deptartment. I don't think it was a coincidence that I got an email within a half hour from my rep. No apology for taking so long to get back to me with No news. So I write back- " what can we do?" she writes again saying nothing -that we are lucky to be as early as the 24th.
Then I go out to the mail, and there is a mangled letter from YFU (I just love the post office sometimes - ugh) giving us the date of July 24th. So I guess that is it.
Of course, I still don't have the meeting dates.

I feel like all I do is complain here. I had so hoped for a fun experience, and I still think it will be once the orgainization is out of the way and we actually get our student. She and I have been e-mailing and it has been great. She doesn't always answer my questions, but she writes back fairly quickly. She is now starting to ask me questions, which is good. I asked what she does in the summer , and she told me what she did last week. Then I asked about what she eats for breakfast, and she wrote a simple answer, then asked about American's and fast food.

I think if I had been told in the beginning she would be coming in late August and not early August, much of this frustration could have been avoided.