When hosting a foreign exchange student, you never know what you are going to get.

My family was living on an Army base in Fort Drum, New York, when my parents decided to host a foreign exchange student. At that time, if you wanted to host a foreign exchange student, you just applied for one, and they just gave you one. You were taking a gamble. We got a teenage boy, Chris, from Norway. He was an only child, rich, and was only doing the program so he could get away from his step-dad. He was hoping he would get put with his uncle in Florida. But no, he got stuck in a small house with three children, all younger than him. He did not like this at all. I have heard stories where Chris was banging on his bedroom wall at ten in the morning on a Saturday yelling at us to turn the TV down in the living room. He was only at our house for two weeks until we polity told the foreign exchange program to take him back.

I was sitting in the living room on a sunny spring day when my dad brought up the idea of hosting a foreign exchange student. I never really thought of the idea of having another sibling in the house. After my sister went off to college, I was just so depressed I never really thought of a way to fix it. Without thinking, I jumped up and said “Yes, that would be cool!” I have heard about the exchange program, and I even did an interview on an exchange student that lived in Grimes. But I never really thought about hosting one. Now, when you go to the EF website (EF stands for foreign exchange) you get to pick the gender of your student, where they are from, and the website also provides a handwritten autobiography each student wrote about themselves in the country’s language that they want to go to.

“Hey honey, would you want to host a girl or a boy? Where do we want them to be from?” My dad was excited! My mother did not want an exchange student again because of her experience with her first one. But we finally got a “yes” out of her eventually. We decide to get a German girl because we are familiar we the German culture and we are used to girls being around the house. My dad is also extremely good at German, so in case she is having trouble saying any challenging English phrases. We looked at a couple of girls autobiography, but we finally decided on Jana. Jana had a younger sister my age, had a cat, and played the piano. I have always wanted to learn the piano,. We thought she would fit right in.

Now I am in the Sacramento, California, airport. My heart is exceeding the normal rate as I am holding up a welcome sign. I now see a bunch of people gliding down the steady escalator. I have an enormous amount of butterflies fluttering in my stomach. Every time I think I see a teenage girls legs coming down, I hold my breathe. It feels like I have been here for hours. Oh wait! I think I see her. Should I hide? Should I put the sign down? Is my hair ok? Is my face red? Oh no, she sees us; she’s smiling. Oh my goodness, she’s tall and skinny; she has really bright red hair! How well will she speak English? How strong will her accent be? “Hello Jana!” I guess my dad wasn’t nervous at all. “Hi,” Jana seemed nice. “You're really tall!” I can’t believe that was the first thing I said to the girl who I would grow to be extremely dear friends with, I would call her my sister.