Almost 30 Years Later, My Exchange Host Parents Are Still Family

Friends, our reader Iris has finally, finally gotten to see the host parents from her high school exchange year again. It was an incredibly emotional few days for her and her family. She's wanted to answer our questions on the blog for a long time, and now she's thrilled to talk about this wonderful experience of living abroad.

Iris is 44 and has three kids, ages 4, 9, and 12. She lives with her husband in a small town in the Münsterland, a rural region in northwest Germany. She spent her year abroad at 16 in the state of Michigan. Now she's had a reunion with the host family she never lost touch with.

Dear Iris, you waited a long time to see your host parents again. Why did it take so long?

Well, the last time I saw my host parents was actually seven years ago. I flew over to visit them with my two kids, who were 2 and 5 then. And before that, I'd gone back by myself eight times after my exchange year.

Each trip had a different reason: homesickness for my host parents, weddings of my friends and host siblings over there, extending my work-and-travel stay, or just vacation. Both sides felt the longing a lot of the time.

My host parents desperately wanted to see me, and I wanted to see them and my friends there. But it was always much harder for my host parents to get time off work and step away from their family obligations. Over those 28 years, they kept telling me they wanted to come visit me someday. They even applied for their passports once. But then something always came up.

I should add that my host parents had two kids of their own (10 and 12 at the time), and seven years after my exchange they adopted two more children, ages 6 and 11, from an orphanage in Albania. So they always had kids at home, and after the adoption it wasn't an easy time for them either.

On top of that, my host dad worried for a long time that the flight would be too exhausting for him. He's 6'10" and his legs don't fit into a "normal" seat. For their flight this year, they booked "extra leg space."

What was it like back then, when you lived with them? What was the best part, and how would you describe your relationship? 

My exchange lasted 11 months. That meant I had two weeks of summer break with my host parents before school started. Ahead of time, they asked whether I wanted to come with them on a vacation to Niagara Falls, or whether they should go without me first. I think that says a lot about how kind and thoughtful this family is.

They saw me as their child from the start. I had the same rules and agreements as their own kids. I had my chores around the house all year, but at the end of the year I also got to go to the same sleepaway camp as my host siblings.

Since I was the oldest kid in the family for that one year, I was also the one who had to hash out the teenager rules. How late could I stay at my friends' houses on weekends? Which events could I go to?

Honestly, I almost always got what I asked for. Partly because I always behaved sensibly, and partly because I had good friends who reliably picked me up from home and brought me back. I can say there was always a lot of trust between my host parents and me.

I also got along really well with my host siblings that year. My host sister is more reserved, so we spent a lot of time at home watching TV and playing board games. I think she really enjoyed that.

I was always curious about new things and new experiences, too. So I went to pretty much all of my siblings' school events, even when nobody expected me to.

What else did you take away from your time abroad?

How wonderful it is to have a beach and a lake close to home! 🙂 Getting to know other ways of seeing things. That being friendly wins you friends very quickly. More self-confidence. And a ton of life experience.

How did you stay in touch over all these years? 

At first by email or with good old AOL Instant Messenger. When I first moved out of my parents' house for my FSJ (a voluntary year of social service that many German teens do after school), my parents gave me an old PC (with a dial-up modem, back then) just so I could keep in touch with my contacts in the US. For many, many years we also sent Christmas and birthday presents back and forth by mail. These days everything goes through messaging apps.

My friends in the US mostly keep me updated through Facebook now. There's not much private back-and-forth anymore. But the connection holds. Just two years ago, a friend came to visit me with her whole family. That was wonderful.

After such a great experience, did you encourage your kids to consider going abroad too?

Actually, two weeks after my host parents left, my 12-year-old son took part in a voluntary two-week student exchange in the US. It was four hours from where I used to live. The exchange boy stayed with us for 10 days last year, and we had a really nice time.

Whether one of our three kids will go abroad for a longer stretch is still to be seen. I'm definitely in favor. Even if, politically speaking, the US wouldn't be my top pick for my kids right now. But there are plenty of other interesting countries out there.

How did you plan the reunion with your host parents?

It was clear from the start that my host parents didn't want to stay in our house. Honestly, I thought that was a good thing. They wouldn't have gotten any peace and quiet at our place. And my kids would have been on edge the whole time, since strangers would have been living in their home.

So I booked a vacation rental for the ten days, just a short walk away. I looked up different day trips we could do. Since my kids were in school during that time, I planned ahead which excursions made sense on which days. So: Where could my own family come along? Where did it make sense for me to go alone with my host parents? Which days could my husband take off so he could take care of the kids and keep my day free?

In the end, I really only booked the rental ahead of time, plus one day at the Volkswagen Autostadt in Wolfsburg with an English-language tour (my host dad is such a nerd for German cars that I absolutely wanted to make that happen for him). And I planned a rehearsal with my own accordion orchestra (because I wanted to finally prove that the accordion can do more than folk music. I also played accordion during my exchange year, but they never got to hear it).

In the end, we did a small or big outing every day, with or without the kids. Whether it was a Roman and Germanic history museum, a small medieval town, or the market in Münster, the city known for bikes. One thing that came in handy: because of high gas prices, the three of us had the Deutschlandticket, the nationwide monthly pass for regional trains and public transit. That meant we could get around by train a lot, which was a real experience for my host parents.

Was it what you'd imagined? What did you feel when you saw them again? 

From the very first moment, it was just like always! We talked and talked and caught up, pretty much the whole ten days. I loved that my kids showed their own interest in my host parents. My 12-year-old son had the advantage of already speaking English, of course, so he was happy to come along on our city trips.

My 9-year-old daughter especially loved it when my host parents spent time at our house and we pulled out the board games. We even dug out my old American games. My husband really had my back the whole time. I hardly had to worry about anything family-related while they were here.

What I hadn't planned for: it mattered to my host parents to get to know my everyday life, my friends, my town, the kids' school. I never would have guessed that. I figured if my host parents were coming to Germany once in their lives, they'd want to see the sights. But in hindsight, a good mix was best.

We skipped two day trips so we could spend the afternoon with my family. To cook white asparagus together, to go along to the kids' activities, and even to make a trip to the home improvement store. I loved that.

Did it feel like old times right away, or had something changed? 

It really was just like always! Maybe I was even pleasantly surprised by how their way of thinking has changed. I remember conversations 28 years ago about environmental issues that ended with the line, "We don't need to separate our trash, God will have a solution for everything." And now I heard my host dad say, "Maybe we should think about solar panels, too."

How are you feeling now that you've finally seen each other again?

On the one hand, I'm very happy with how the whole visit went and what a wonderful time we had together. But on the other hand, I'm also sad, because my host parents are now over 60 and the trip was exhausting for them. So when we see each other next is probably up to me…