Over the weekend I received an e-mail from another placement agency with a student profile. Actually, the volunteer sent me two profiles. One looked really good. I wrote back telling her how I was already working with another agency and had picked out a student. We agreed that if the current student didn't work out, I would try for this new student. Now I am wondering which studnet would be better for our family. I am inclined to think the second one. Still, we may end up with no one if the school balks again.
As to that, I sent an e-mail to my co-ordinator asking for an update. The school commitee passed the budget for next year without a fight. I don't know if that will have an impact, but I think it may be good that the superintendent got what he wanted money wise. Now it is up to the 5 towns to pass it. The last few years there have been major budget battles and I think that was one of the factors in the school turning us down last year. It is amazing to me that 1 student could make a difference, but it was one of the reasons sited. I hope that my co-ordinator let me know what is going on.
Sometimes I am so excited to host- I like thinking of what we might show her and how we will include her in family activites. Other times I wonder if it will be too much. I was shutting off the TV last night and I saw a tiny bit on Dr Phil about teenagers and their fresh mouths. I hope we get a nice student!

Ok, so as of today I am not a host "mom" to anyone. We won't get a student until August! We had tried to host last year, for this current school year, but the school turned us down saying they didn't have the room, didn't have enough notice and the high school is under construction. Well, this year the school is still under construction, but I am giving them lots of notice, and we have a new superintendent.

So far, due to last year, I have been working with the area coordinator. She says she only does that when there is a problem ( in our case a difficult school district). Hopefully we will meet the local volunteer soon.

We are looking for a student who speaks German, and is female. We have 5 kids so we wanted a girl who likes little kids. Not that we are looking for a nanny or au pair, since I am home full time we don't need childcare. My husband travels a bit, and right now I have a wonderful college student who comes out to help me when he is gone, but she doesn't stay the night. One night I was up all night with the baby who had a really high fever. I wondered if my husband wasn't here and I did have to take her in to the ER, what would I have done? Woken up all the other kids at 3AM?? I don't think I have any friends nearby close enough I could call at that time of night! Plus, we live in New England and people are not so friendly here. You are expected to take care of "you and yours" by yourself.

So, we have been looking at student profiles since January when they started showing up online, and this week I found a good prospect. Of course, this now made it real and my husband started expressing some doubts about the whole thing. I had him do some reading and we talked about it a lot, and then decided to keep going with it.

The student we are looking at has some siblings and says she babysits and likes children. Our coordinator sent me an e-mail today saying she has sent in the paperwork to the school. We will have to wait for now on anything else to see if she is approved by the school. Her grades are not great, so I guess that could be a factor.

So, the reason for my blog is that there is so very little informtion out there - that I could find- on hosting an exchange student. So far I have found one good website- but it hasn't been touched since 1998, one book on Amazon ( ok, really 2 but the second one was written in 1962!), and a few posts on an iVillage message board but that was other people looking for info.

So, if anyone actually reads this and has found any information on hosting an exchange student, or even better, has done it themselves I would greatly appreciate your comments!

Also, just fair warning, this is my first real blog and the first time I have used blogstream, so we will see how it goes!