In late summer of 2017, my husband and I felt compelled to bring an AFS Exchange Student to our community because we believe so strongly in the mission of the program. However, I was pregnant with our second child, who was due in March. I wasn’t sure about hosting a student when we welcomed a newborn, as I was afraid the exchange student might be left out during the chaos of sleepless nights and helping our toddler transition to becoming a big brother. Thus, we signed up as a Welcome Family for Sandro from Switzerland (because he had a cat allergy and we didn’t have pets at the time).
Knowing we weren’t going to host for the full school year, we started making connections for Sandro even before he arrived. We were clear with our liaison that we were happy to have him in our family as long as needed, but that it would be helpful if he had a new family by January or even earlier. Not having a teenager of our own, we also asked our teenage neighbor if he would be willing to bring Sandro to high school each morning as a way to help Sandro meet peers right away.
Sandro arrived in the U.S. and started school “late” – on September 11th. Because the school was already finished with the back-to-school rush, the counselor had more time to connect Sandro with a student leader who showed him around and ate lunch with him on the first day. We encouraged Sandro to join at least one extracurricular activity too to help him connect with kids with like interests. And our liaison invited Sandro to connect with her family – inviting him out to dinner and on boat rides with other families with teenagers. One family they bumped into at a restaurant had hosted exchange students when the dad was a teenager, and when they found out that Sandro needed a more permanent family, they agreed to host him – just weeks after he had arrived in the U.S.! We couldn’t believe how quickly it happened. Thankfully, we were able keep in touch with him after he moved out of our home. He and our son had a wonderful time trick-or-treating together, and my husband taught Sandro to golf. We still keep in touch even though he lived with us for less than a month!
Sarah Radermacher
AFS-USA Former Host Parent and Current Staff