Let me recap:
- We sold our house and moved into a bigger house!
- We transitioned our old life on the East side of Orlando to downtown Orlando, where our house is just over a mile away from our Central church location!
- We started homeschooling the girls, 90 minutes a day using ABC Jesus Loves Me. So far, we've completed 9 weeks of school, learned 5 bible verses, almost all our letters, numbers to 20, shapes, colors and more! The hardest part is getting back into the swing of it since summer, and figuring out our schedule...This year we are moving it to 2 hours of school a day!
- We started to make headway in a normal life routine!
Then, we went to a Home school conference and spoke with a Foreign Exchange table (back story on that in a minute)...and from there we made a brand new, life changing decision...
We decided to host a foreign exchange student!
Now, this wasn't just because of the conference, it actually was stirred up before then. But God finalized our plans through the conference!
It all started when Brian and I began learning our respective languages (Japanese & Italian). We wanted to take our learning to the next level, which of course, is conversation. At my MOPS group, I was talking with my table moms about us learning a language and someone mentioned hosting a foreign exchange student. I thought that was a neat idea, posed it to Brian and he was shocked I was interested! But of course, he was all in. At that point, we decided we would not do it right away, I mean come on, we still have 3 toddlers growing and changing every day. 2 of them were still peeing the bed at night, and one we just started potty-training!
Well, at the Homeschool conference we decided to visit the booth for CCI-Greenheart, a foreign exchange program. The coordinator was surprised when she asked us, "Ever consider hosting a foreign exchange student?" and we answered, "YES!" We told her we were interested in a girl only, and this time around, from Japan. She showed us 1 teenager who just fell perfectly inline with our family. 1) She loves to dance, 2) She loves to bake, 3) She loves to learn english. The coordinator kept pushing us to sign up, but again, hesitant because our family wasn't ready for this change yet, but we said we only wanted HER if we did do it this year. We were also concerned about the school, and we wanted to make sure that she could attend a specific charter school instead of the one we are zoned for.
The next day, the coordinator called us, she said that she was waiting to hear back from the charter school and if they would accept a foreign exchange student. She asked us to complete the first step - registering online. We did, just to have our name in the database, for future reference.
A day later the school got back with our coordinator. They would accept her! We just needed to complete the "Interest form" and turn it into the school. The coordinator then asked us to complete the ENTIRE form to move forward.
This is when we really started praying about it. Are we really ready to have another person in our life for a year? Can we financially afford another person?
Well, after 2 days of praying about it, and avoiding phone calls from the coordinator, we decided to go ahead and do it! We completed the form. We finished our background check. We selected our girl-if we didn't get her, then we would stop pursuing the exchange program at this time! Thankfully, we were paired immediately with Yuka (the one we fell in love with!)
And then everything was set in stone. The balls were rolling, flights were scheduled, and e-mail communication began.
This blog is to share our newest journey with you! Our life over the next 10 months as a host family with our foreign exchange student! My goal will be to post every week, have Yuka write a little in Japanese - have both perspectives, and just let you know about our Host family experience!
'Til next time friends, I can't wait for you to join us on our journey!
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