Well, the girls from Sweden finally wrote back after I wrote again. Apparently they each thought the other had written back. They are not coming after all. One is moving to India! So that ends that.

I got so fed up with YFU, I contacted AFS again. They said I really needed to find out if the school had approved our student or not. I was going to send out another e-mail to the school when I received one! The school thought they had sent off the approval, and YFU said they never got it. My issue is why do I need to constantly step in? I should not have to do any of this! I worry that if I have a problem with my student I will be out in the cold. AFS said that if I decide to so this again someday, to call them first! You bet I will!!
So, I have asked by e-mail twice, " what happens next?" and I have not received an answer. AFS would have us have a home interview and fillout a more detailed questionaire- or maybe we would have done that already...?? All I know is we have not done those things yet.
I wonder how many times will I need to call to get this to move forward again? Grrrr..sometimes I want to give up and just forget the whole idea.

This week I was supposed to hear from both the school and the co-ordinator at YFU. I heard from neither. I am getting annoyed that everytime I have to intiate contact. I have received another profile from AFS. I have been getting more attention from them than I have from YFU, which makes me wonder if I made the right decision to go with YFU first.

We have also started e-mailing with two Swedish teenagers- friends of my mother's friends in Sweden. They are looking to come here for a few weeks this summer. I tried to find a second family to take the second girl, but with no luck. My sister in law is somewhat interested in taking one of them, but the girls would not be together like they wanted. I also gave them the option of taking turns coming here with us. They also are not good at communicating.

Is it so much to ask that people resond within a week?? Apparently so.

I am amazed at how long this takes. No wonder it gets crazy during the summer when the students are on their way and they still are scouting for families. We have not had an in home interview or received any real literature other than the application stuff- which I did online.
I had to contact the person who handles "pupil services" at the school district office last week about a different issue with my children, and asked her about the status of approval for our exchange student. She responded that she had met with a guidance person at the high school. They only accept 5 exchange students in a school year, but she saw no problems for us. She told me she would contact me next week as it should be all set by then.
Meanwhile, we are working on getting the room ready. My husband built a huge wall shelf unit and we have a wall of toys now! It is crazy, but we finally got the spare room back. The kids would clean it up just about every night, but with the babies pulling things out and dumping the bins, it always was a mess. Now the little kids can't get to a lot of it- mean? No way- the toy box is at the bottom and they have all their own toys in there. I am sure my parents and in-laws will appreciate being able to get to the spare bed when they visit!
I have been lurking on Freecycle trying to get a desk and a folding room dividing screen, but so far no luck. Good thing I have some time. I have a funky blue dresser we might bring up from the basement. We had bought it really cheap years ago and it actually would match nicely in the room. I have decorated it in yellow and blue as the room used to be a nursery. Gender neutral!

Well, I hope to have more to write soon.

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!