I am starting this blog to memorialize our new experience, both so we can look back and remember how it felt to Host a Foreign exchange student for the first time, and so that anyone curious about hosting can read an account from Host Mom perspective.
A little about us.
I am a Stay at home Mom, I cook, I clean, arrange activities for my kid and miss her terribly when she is out of the house.
Husband works full time, he will be starting a new job with better pay in September (Yay!)
Daughter, who I shall refer to as Little sister, is six. Bright funny and loving, she loves people and is very excited to meet her big sister.
Our foreign exchange student, I will refer to her as big sister, is from South Korea. we will learn more about her as time goes by, but from her essay she likes animals and kids and playing the piano.
A couple weeks ago I came across a post in one of the facebook groups I belong to, looking for families to host a foreign exchange student. I was sitting at the table, and I saw that one of the countries that was sending out students was Korea. I asked my husband "how would you feel about hosting a foreign exchange student from Korea. He said that it sounding like it could be fun. So I contacted the poster and got the ball rolling.
Later in this process my Hubby asked me "which Korea? North or South. and I laughed, and replied South Korea, I don't think Kim Jong Il wants to expose the youth to new ideas." Thats about when he realized it was a silly question. He was not alone though, I got asked that a couple more times as we told people our plans.
I read through a couple of essays, and while both girls (we knew we wanted to host a girl as our spare bed is in our daughters room) were intellegent and personable, felt that one fit us a little better than the other.
We passed the background checks, which took no time at all, and got to see pictures of the girl we will be hosting along with pictures of her friends and family. it makes it a little more real! We also set up a time to have our local rep come out, which was just a day or two later. He came out, we chatted for a while. Went out to get pictures of the outside before we lost daylight, than back inside to take pictures of the living areas. He was very friendly and while we didn't have many questions, he answered the ones we asked.
Not long after, a couple of days maybe, we knew she had been accepted to our local high school, and the interviews with our references had been held. Got a call with a flight for her, asked if she could come a little earlier since the day of her flight was the Saturday before school would start, and now she arrives on the Wednesday before, allowing us to all go to the School Open house.
I am now working on my welcome banner. I have little pendant cut outs to hang in her room to welcome her as well. Tomorrow we are going to go on a family outing and spend the night out, and then the next day go pick up our new family member! Here is the banner 😊
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