What It's Like to Host an Exchange Kid...

When you first decide to do something like this, the agency tells you, “All you need to do is provide them their own bed, a place to study, and 3 meals a day… and treat them like your own.”  Sounds easy enough, right?

The good news is: most exchange kids  are on their best behaviors.  Their parents are spending a small fortune to let them do this - and the deepest consequence of poor behavior is to be sent home, without a refund.  They take this seriously.  They want to impress their families and make their own parents proud.

For us, the beginning of this process was super easy. She was respectful, she kept her room cleaned, did the things asked of her, participated with our family.  “We got this,” we said.  Easy Peasy.

But what I didn’t realize is how much of a mental and emotional toll having this girl would take on me.  

Taking a foreign teenager in the middle of a pandemic, while our salary was cut by 30% seemed like a GREAT idea!  A few people thought we were nuts, and maybe we were…. but we have long discovered we have a tendency to act on impulse and more times than not.  However, God always uses these moments to work out beautifully magical things.  This was no different.

One of the biggest burdens I carried throughout her time here was her mental and emotional well being.  School during a global pandemic was different than she or any of us could have imagined.  Foreign kids look at America as what it is: the Land of Opportunity!  They watch movies like High School Musical and have the expectation that their experience will be similar.  It is difficult, however, to navigate when their expectations do not live up to the realities of the situation.  That’s what I spent most of our 9 months doing.  Helping her process her thoughts, feelings, disappointments, and frustrations.  Something most teenage mothers are familiar with I am sure, but I am not yet a mother to a teenager, so this was all BRAND new territory for me.  It definitely helps that Maja and I are kindred spirits and so I could relate to her in so many ways.  

Our worlds are so different and finding the balance took some time.  She was used to using public transportation to go anywhere she wanted, anytime she wanted.  Danish teenagers are extremely independent. Here, she wasn’t allowed to drive, so if she needed to go somewhere I had to take her or she needed to ask.  Making friends was really difficult for her, only being at school two days a week. She spent a lot of time at home, time that she wasn’t used to and there was a push-pull when It came to finding that balance between longing to have plans, not having plans, and having too many plans.  

Over time we did find our balance.  She fit in with our family perfectly - so much that she even looked like she belonged to us.  It didn’t take much time for her to feel at home with us and for her to blend right in with us.  We loved learning about her culture, her life, her family, her friendships… and teaching her about ours.  We learned her little quirks and the ins and outs of her personality.  We learned to love her absolutely and completely.  

We went on adventures together, we travelled together.  We laughed together and cried together.  We spent nights watching movies together and singing at the tops of our lungs together.  She became our daughter.  She became a sister.  And we became a family of 5.

Eventually school started meeting 4 days a week and she did make friends at school.  She found her place.  She found her people.  And she had the adventure of a lifetime!  She referred to our house as her home and by the looks of her room, she definitely meant it. The fact that she felt completely comfortable with me - venting all of her frustrations, sharing her feelings, her sadness, her anger, and her joy - further confirmed that. 

As I write this she has exactly one week left in our home…. and I have come to realize that our lives… that my life, as a mom, will never be the same.  This once-stranger has become a part of our home, a part of our family, and a part of me.  Forever.  Our coordinator told us in the beginning that she would - and she was right, but at the time I didn’t fully understand just how deeply we would come to love this girl… and what that would mean.

  What it means is that our family will never feel complete. There will always be a Maja sized hole in our hearts… and that part of our hearts will live 4,599 miles away.  I won’t get to see her toothpaste splatted all over the mirror every day.  I won’t get to see her bright smiling face or watch her dance through the hallways and up the stairs.  I won’t have to hunt through the house trying to find my eyeshadow or hair straightener that she never returned to my bathroom.  I won’t get to drive her everywhere she needs to go and know every detail about her day.  I won’t get to hear all the stories about her friends and the silly nicknames she gives them.  I won’t get to sing car karaoke with her or stay up after midnight watching high school/teenage movies.   I will never get to drive by Quick Trip and not think of her walking out of there with the largest raspberry sweet tea they have.   I won’t get to go to Panda Express or Yogurtini without seeing her overwhelming excitement.  I won’t get to help her decide what to wear to church or an event or just out with her friends.  I won’t have a shopping buddy or a gym partner.  The girls won’t get to hug her every day or go and jump on her fluffy blanket.  She won’t get to tuck them in every night or let them wear her clothes.  Our house will no longer smell like her.  It means we have to say goodbye.

But it also means that we will have a little piece of us on the other side of the world.  We will always have a family in another country.  Our family will now see the world with a slightly different lens.  We have this connection to another culture that will never be broken and that will last a lifetime.  The girls will always have a big sister that will love and support them and give them advice when they need it.  They have gained an older sister who has loved them deeply and will love them forever.  She will have an American Mom who is always just a phone call or FaceTime away.  She will have an American Dad who she can always count on.  No matter where life takes her, she will always have a home here.  And we will always be connected, no matter what.

Hosting an exchange kid is full of its ups and downs.  There is a learning curve, but it is an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything.  This part of our journey is hard and it hurts.  Saying goodbye is not easy and I do not know what the coming weeks and months hold for our hearts.  What I do know is that if you were to go back and ask me, knowing then what I know now, if I would do it all over again - my answer, without hesitation would be YES.  And I think the Lord knew way back in July, when we jumped in with seemingly blind eyes,  that our yes was worthwhile, it had a purpose, and there is no doubt that Maja was hand selected for our family.

Will we do it again?  Maybe one day…. It is impossible to imagine anyone other than Maja filling our home with a weird language and foreign desserts.  Our family loves really big and this week is one of the hardest things we have ever had to do.   For now, our hearts need some time to heal and navigate the next steps of this journey…. a journey that will never truly be over.