This all started with a phone call at the end of the school year from the company that places many exchange students in the New England area, including the school our children currently attend. The kids' school, Sant Bani, had given this company our name as a family who might be willing to host a student. After going back and forth with placements, we were sent Florenz's application. He is from Germany, and looked like a nice kid. We knew from our contact that he was extremely excited to be placed within the US and was anxious to find out with whom he'd be staying during this school year. We were very clear that we needed a student who could be very flexible with time, was an athlete, and liked to ski. As one of our friends said, "Does he know your family isn't just ski, it's SKI!!" Well, one of the reasons Florenz liked our family was precisely because we like to ski! Good thing!
We started communicating on email and shared information about ourselves. Within days of finding out he had finally been accepted in Sant Bani, we found out he would be arriving in the US. We were excited to find out all was going ahead as planned, but my father is currently living with us in the same space we planned to have Florenz stay. We immediately had a glitch. My father came to visit this summer and got a job in MA while he was here, and needed to come back and have a place to live until he could get settled. Rob was more than concerned with how this would all play out. I kept a positive attitude - I could deal with this. I deal with a lot because of Rob's travels.
I communicated with Florenz and his parents about my father staying with us, and also shared with them an expectations sheet that was given to the host families at Sant Bani. As I typed this extremely long email to Florenz and his parents about our family and how we function - everything from daily routine to computer use in the house - it occurred to me that this information should be part of the information that is placed online for the families who send their children to another country. Not that a family can pick and choose who their child is placed with, because that indeed is not the purpose of the program, but at least the families sending their children to a foreign land could help their child best prepare for the experience their child was walking in to. Fortunately, Florenz's parents got the email before he left for the US and emailed me back and said they felt like our families were closely aligned. This put me at ease, in the sense that I knew I was likely to have a new member of the family who was raised in a similar fashion to how I've raised my own children. There would be less of a culture shock for Florenz and my children in that regard.
The day Florenz's flight was to arrive, I got an email from his parents saying his flight went off as scheduled. They also said leaving him at the airport was extremely difficult. Not that it hadn't occurred to me before this, but it hit home with their email. Could I send my own child off to a foreign country where they'd been never before for 10 months? To a family I didn't know? And to a family that didn't speak a single word of my native tongue? To a place where my child had no family? I wasn't so sure I could. I cringe at the thought of McKenna wanting to go away to a boarding high school for skiing. As McKenna and Reed get older, I realize they are one step closer to leaving home. Rob and I talk about this constantly. We're not ready to let our children go. Thankfully, we have a few more years before that reality hits home. And here, we've been entrusted with someone's child for 10 months from a family who willingly agreed to allow their teenage son to go around the world to live with an unknown family. Just so he could have the experience. Perhaps, it's part of letting go as your children get older. But it hit me hard as I read their email.
So far, Rob has 'allowed' our family to move forward with this experience. I've been the one who has been saying we need to do this. He had legitimate concerns about adding a 3rd child's schedule to an already crazy 2 kid schedule. But when I read Florenz's parents email to him, I think it hit home for him, too. This isn't something we're just 'doing'. This is a human being we're adding to our family. He will become our 3rd child while he is here. He doesn't go home during the holidays, and we will have to help him work through any homesickness he experiences while he's here. We will include him in all our daily experiences from the most mundane, to the adventures we can often have as a family. We will need to learn all we can about him and make sure he knows everything he can about us so we make sure he feels at home while he is here. Like I said in a Facebook post, "I left with a 10 & a 12 year old, and came home with them and a 16 year old." It would be like I started having kids at 23 instead of 26! I merely said to a colleague who questioned why we were doing this, "I always wanted more kids." And I did. Sometimes still do. For now, Florenz is my 3rd child.
On Wednesday 8/24, McKenna, Reed and I made a poster saying, "Welcome to the USA Florenz!" and we arrived at Manchester in plenty of time to greet Florenz's plane. We entered the airport and headed up the stairs to greet him outside the gates. We even went to the observation deck to watch the plane come in. We waited and waited. The arrival time passed. We looked at the arrivals sign again, and they said the plane was on time, but we were now a good 10 minutes past the arrival time, and there was no one coming off any plane that we could see. We headed downstairs to see what was going on, and we ran into a friend who works at the airport, who informed me that United flights come into a different part of the terminal. We had never flown out on any other airline than Southwest Airlines, so it never occurred to me that he would be coming into another part of the airport! Reed, McKenna and I took off running through the airport. As we came upon the United gate, Florenz and I immediately recognized one another from pictures, and we hugged each other. I profusely apologized for not being at the gate. I could only imagine what he was thinking when no one was there to greet him! I felt horrible! I had missed an important moment. He hugged Reed, and went to hug McKenna who sort of leaned away from him. She's not a touchy, feely kid, but she then hugged him, realizing he was her big brother for the next 10 months. Florenz then proceeded to inform me his bags never came through from Washington DC. The welcome wagon to the USA just kept getting better and better.
We came home and on the car ride, immediately starting talking about all sorts of things, from what his hometown was like, what games he liked to play, what sports, etc, etc. His English is very good, but there are some things that he wasn't translating until we explained them differently. It struck me how odd some of our language is to someone who needs to translate it. We use so much slang on an every sentence basis, it's got to be near impossible for someone to literally translate some of the garbage we say! Florenz is very good at asking what something means when it doesn't make sense, and this is helping us to be more clear about how we communicate.
Florenz is funny, smart, very polite, and fits well into our family. He strikes me as a typical 16 year old, but one who's willing to take on adventures others might not be willing to try, perhaps. Having worked in a private boarding school which had a large international student population, it was rare to find a kid who said they had come abroad because they were begging to have the experience. Most of the students were there because they were being made to come by their parents. Florenz has taken on this experience willingly with his parents' consent. Last night, I saw that Florenz had brought his tennis racket. He said he played competitively 2-3 days a week in Germany. I said that would be hard here, but we knew people who played tennis well, and we would work to get him set up with some partners & playing time throughout his stay. He commented, "It would be weird to go 10 months without playing tennis." As we continued to talk, he said, "If I get to play 1x a month, that would be good." We talked about perhaps finding a school where he could play since Sant Bani didn't have a team. He then said, "If I don't get to play, it's OK. I came here to try new things and sports."
The last 2 days are certainly part of the 'honeymoon' phase, but it's going well. We'll take it. The kids LOVE Florenz. Reed gave up his bedroom so Florenz has a place to stay while my father is in what will become Florenz's space. Reed starting out by saying, "NO way am I sharing my bedroom," and last night he accepted the air mattress in our bedroom so Florenz felt at home in Reed's room. Reed said last night, "Mom, I really like him. A lot. He's so cool." I guess he always wanted a big brother. And for the next 10 months, he will have one. Florenz has been wonderful with McKenna & Reed; he's even figured out some of Reed's quirks as he's played games with him. Flo, as he is nicknamed, has already told Reed he needs to plan his moves in pool and chess, and that cheaters don't win - Reed is notoriously for doing tiny things that allow him a cheating advantage in games. And Reed is listening. It's not just Flo who will benefit from his time here. And I am grateful for that.
The kids were throwing a pool torpedo into the pool and seeing who could get it 1st!
1 comment:
What a great experience this is going to be for your family!
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