sarah nguyen

After one week and three days, Anna, our student for next year finally emailed us. It turns out she was on a class trip to England and she didn’t have internet access there. Those Europeans have it good over there - we only get class trips to Southern California or Yosemite. The Washington D.C. and New York trips cost almost $2,000 each for us NorCal kids (not that I went to either).

So in her e-mail, Anna mentioned the lovely SJ weather she will be enjoying, asked if I have any questions about Germany, and requested photos of her new home and so on which we will of course oblige her with. For now though, I sent off a gigantic e-mail about introducing myself and Lynbrook. First on the agenda is making sure she gets good classes for next year. I’m not quite sure how much privacy I should give Anna on this blog, so if any of you readers know blog etiquette or have an opinion on that, insight would be greatly appreciated!

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On March 11 we got an e-mail from Rotary saying that our chosen student has been confirmed, and on the 20th we received a call from another guy saying the same thing. He came over on Sunday to get some signatures from my parents on the Guarantee form, and on the Thursday before that to drop off a hard copy of our girl’s application. It also included her transcript and a copy of her passport, which were both pretty interesting. The coordinator sent Anna this e-mail on Friday:

Greetings from Cupertino California. I am Harvey B——- and I am the Cupertino Rotary Youth Exchange Officer who is organizing your stay. Irmgard L——- will be your Rotary Counselor while you are here. She will be meeting with you on a regular basis.

Cupertino is a small city in Silicon Valley. Cupertino is the home of Apple Computer and Hewlett Packard. We are a very mixed community mainly of white, Chinese and Indian. At the end of this email I will add some links to some web sites that will help you to know more about the area.

You will be attending Lynbrook High School in the Fremont Union High School District. Lynbrook is a high achieving high school with many varied programs and activities. Mr. Rich Amlin will be the vice principal you will be assigned to. He can help you to select the courses this spring that you can take next school year. I encourage you to email him soon to start the process so that you get the courses you want. Mr. Amlin’s email is: r—_amlin@fuhsd.org. Please take some time to explore the school’s web site. It is: http://www.lhs.fuhsd.org/home/.

I have also asked Mr & Mrs. Nguyen your first host family to be in touch with you to introduce themselves.

I am looking forward to meeting you.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns before your arrival.

Harvey

Prettyy exciting. Apparently a few of the Rotary people know Amlin pretty/semi well. Anna hasn’t replied back to Harvey yet, and my parents won’t be e-mailing her till she does that. I guessing her family was celebrating Easter. I’ve already written my e-mail, but I don’t want to send it till my parents send theirs.

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On Monday I received applications of inbound students to check out. There were eight students for us to choose from. I printed out the applications and whisked them to my parents. There was/were:

• 1 girl from Thailand
• 2 girls and 1 boy from France
• 2 girls and 1 boy from Brazil; and
• 1 girl from Germany

My dad skimmed through a few of the apps and thoroughly read the one German girl’s application. After that, he didn’t feel like reading any more and just said “Let’s host her.” Funny, because he was the one most interested in hosting in the first place.

Mom on the other hand looked at all of them, taking notes (example: “saxophone, hard to wake up”). Weird because my mom wasn’t as interested in hosting as my dad before. She particularly enjoyed laughing at the letters (one girl, describing a typical day, wrote “Then I take a shower” three times). We ended up picking the girl from Germany, because she liked her letter and because she wanted to get some German practice in.

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My parents are possibly hosting an inbound student through the local Rotary district, and I just received an email from Don Fox, one of the people in charge of Rotary Youth Exchange in my area:

Good Morning Sarah,

The applications for the inbounds are starting to arrive and we have the opportunity to select from among them. In other words, although we assumed that we would be hosting a student from Germany, that is not necessarily the case. Your parents (and the other host families) could review a number of applications
and select the student who perhaps shares a hobby, etc. most interests them in some way - perhaps shares a
hobby, etc.

On the other hand if they have their hearts set on a German girl I can see if one is available.

Please let me know as soon as possible.

Thanks,
Don

I forwarded the e-mail to my parents - I think they’re pretty open, though they might want to host a boy more - Don probably got mixed up when he wrote ‘German girl.’ Through Rotary, my parents would only host for one semester, and another family would take care of the other one. I’m excited to look at applications, even though I won’t be around to welcome them, sadly. Sounds super fun!

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