New holiday traditions

I haven't written in a while, so this will be a long one.  The celebration of holidays has been in full swing since November.  Max was excited to have his first American Thanksgiving.  Normally my parents host 20 to 30 people for dinner, but since they moved to TN just before the holiday, my sister hosted a smaller affair at her house.  Max was just thrilled to be able to go to Chicago again.  We stopped in central Illinois to visit my mom and step-dad.  They live in a geodesic dome home and Max was fascinated by it.

He was interested to know about our traditions and I explained that Thanksgiving is mostly about family and food (oh, and being thankful for what you have).  And that's exactly what he experienced at Thanksgiving.  He met my step-sister and her family, my step-brother, and other extended family members for the first time.  We played games and ate lots of food.  I was surprised that he hadn't eaten roast turkey before.  We had quite a feast of food and he liked all of it, especially the lemon jello fluff.  Afterwards, he said Thanksgiving was exactly what I said it would be - relaxing with family and good food.

We went into downtown Chicago on Friday.  We went early and beat the traffic.  We were able to zip right through the queue at the Sears Tower ( now Willis Tower) and go up to the SkyDeck.  I haven't been up there since I was a kid and we've never taken our son there, so we all enjoyed the views.  Max and Dylan had a great time on The Ledge (all-glass enclosures that jut out from the building) and we took some fun pictures.  We walked around the city for the rest of the day. On our way to visit the Christmas tree at Daley Plaza, we stumbled upon a German Christmas Market.  Max was so excited to see it.  We walked through a few aisles, but it was so crowded that our 9-year-old was getting crushed.  We gave up and just observed from the outside.  We went to Garrett's Popcorn shop and I think the boys thought we were nuts for waiting in line for 20 minutes for popcorn, until they tasted it.  Yum!  We pushed our way to the Macy's holiday window displays on State Street.  At one point during our walk, Max said that Chicago feels like home since he had been there before.  He seems to have fallen in love with that city, as a lot of people do.  That night we ordered pizza from one of our favorite places, Nino's, and Max proclaimed it was the best pizza he's had.  Well, that's what Chicago is known for, right?  We hung out with my parents the next day and they suggested taking Max to Woodfield Mall and the Rainforest Cafe for lunch.  He enjoyed both places.

When we arrived home from Thanksgiving, Max started peppering us about when we were going to get our Xmas tree and our holiday traditions.  Later in the week, we went to get a tree.  In our area, there aren't places to cut down your own tree (I miss living in WI and MI for that), so we went down to Lowes and picked out an acceptable specimen.  That weekend, we hauled boxes out of the attic and the decorating commenced.  Dylan and Max hung the ornaments.  Max hoisted Dylan onto his shoulders so he could place the star on the tree.

Max wanted to do a little Christmas shopping, so I took him to Barnes & Noble and Target.  It was fun watching him pick out thoughtful gifts for Rob and Dylan.  Since their birthdays are right before Christmas, he also ordered some items from their Amazon wish lists.  We enjoyed dinner with other local AFSers at a Japanese hibachi place.  This was the students' first experience at such a place.  Everyone enjoyed the show and the food.

Since we had read about exchange students getting homesick this time of year, we were watching Max closely.  We tried to incorporate some of his traditions into ours.  He told us about the tradition of candy in the shoes on Dec. 6.  He was surprised that morning that we had remembered.  He had his mom e-mail us his favorite holiday cookie recipes.  Imagine a 16-year-old boy who doesn't cook trying to translate a recipe from German and metric measurements to English with American measurements.  We had a friend who speaks German and bakes a lot come over and help with the translations.  Then Max called his mom to get more instructions.  We attempted one recipe that called for ground almonds.  My friend and I brainstormed where to find ground almonds, but Max insisted that they be freshly ground.  Finding that I had nothing to grind almonds with (I tried old-fashioned elbow grease, but couldn't get a consistent finish), I called my friend over with her Magic Bullet and we ground a pound of almonds, by the handful.  Max and I followed the recipe and had quite the time rolling out and cutting the sticky dough.  The cookies smelled great cooking.  Max's mom said we needed to store them in a container for a few days to allow them to soften.  We waited with anticipation for a few days, opened the container and tried our first cookie...which was rock hard!  It was so disappointing and funny at the same time.  We're not sure what we did wrong.  We have another recipe using ground hazelnuts (quite an adventure to find those around here) that we may try soon.

A couple weeks ago, Rob decided he wanted to start looking for a new truck.  His 10-year-old SUV runs fine, but the truck he wanted to replace it with had been discontinued last year.  I found an option within driving distance, so we went to look while Max was at an away soccer tournament.  We ended up buying the truck a couple days later and I think Max was more excited than my husband was.  He even wanted to skip a soccer game so he could come pick it up with us.  We said we didn't think that was a good idea, but it was up to him and his coach.  He decided to go to the game, since he was skipping the one before it to go to a friend's birthday party.  He was so excited when we brought it home, he even asked to sleep in it that evening.  He has been bugging us to try driving it, but we reminded him about the AFS rule.

Since we were spending Christmas in Iowa with Rob's family, we decided to do our little family gift exchange and dinner the weekend before.  Max couldn't believe that we would open gifts before Christmas.  I explained that for us, we celebrate Christmas whenever the family can get together.  And with our family being in different states, that often means multiple celebrations.  So, we went through our traditions of a big breakfast, gift opening and a big dinner on the Sunday prior.  Max's family had sent us gifts from Germany - candies, wine, some lovely figurines, and Legos for Dylan.  We had fun picking out gifts for Max, even though he told us we didn't need to get him anything.  My son and I wear fuzzy socks around the house in the winter.  Max had wanted a pair, but I couldn't find them in men's sizes.  I finally found a pair of LL Bean fleece socks.  He wore them for a week straight after opening them!  Dylan gave Max a T-shirt from his favorite burger joint and he was thrilled.  At one point, Max commented that we had the most organized gift opening he had ever seen.  He said his family rips open their packages quickly and all at the same time.  Our family tradition is to take turns.  He thought that it was funny that we even had scissors and a trash bag at the ready.

The next week, we dropped the dog off at the kennel and drove up to Iowa.  Max met Rob's sister, brother-in-law and their three boys.  We all stayed in his parent's new home.  Thankfully it's a very large home, so it didn't feel like we were on top of one another.  Max said it felt like his house in Germany with all of the boys (he has 3 younger brothers).  We didn't find out until Christmas Eve that Germany celebrates Christmas on the 24th.  Max tried to convince my in-laws to open gifts on the 24th, but they wouldn't budge.  Max was very anxious to Skype with his family for their gift opening.  He tried to reach them by phone, but the call wouldn't go through.  And they weren't connected to Skype.  He was finally able to message one of his brothers and we set up the Skype call.  What wonderful technology that enabled us to have his family, his grandparents and our family in Iowa see and talk to each other on Christmas!  He was relieved to be able to "participate" in their gift opening.  My in-laws did a wonderful job making Max feel included in the family.

We went to Christmas Eve church services.  Rob's father is a minister and they had a candlelight service that evening.  His current church is very small, and it was standing room only that evening.  I always enjoy his sermons because he pulls the lessons from everywhere - books, movies, music, everyday life.  In the sermon, he told the story from World War I about the Christmas Truce.  He told of the German soldier singing "Silent Night" on Christmas Eve, and the English soldiers joining in.  When he recited the opening lines of the song in German, Max just about jumped out of his seat and whispered "Hey, that's German!"  Max laughed when my father-in-law described the soldiers coming out and exchanging photos and playing soccer.  He had never heard this story before.  After the service, my father-in-law gave Max a hug and told him they were glad he was here.

Our Christmas morning was filled with anticipation.  Since Rob's dad had another church service that morning, we didn't open gifts until after lunch.  We had explained to Max that Rob's dad likes to give gag gifts and they are just for fun.  The family follows our same tradition of taking turns to open gifts, and Max requested to go last in the rotation.  When he got his first package, he opened it carefully, the exclaimed, "Pig poop?!!"  He had opened one of the gag gifts first.  He had a great sense of humor about it and it became a running joke that he brought up the rest of the weekend.  He was surprised and pleased when one of the gifts was a gift card to his favorite burger joint.  The gift opening was long since there were 11 people and a lot of gifts.  But it was a lot of fun and Max seemed to really enjoy it.  That evening, Max asked if he could take a family picture.  He set up his camera and we took a couple of formal shots, then came up with silly themes for a number of the pictures.  He said that was one of his favorite parts of Christmas.

We decided to go ice skating the day after Christmas.  I haven't put on skates in about 15 years and my son has never been skating.  Max tried to convince Rob to put on skates, but he didn't.  So, it was me and the five boys.  Dylan and I made it around twice holding on to the wall.  Max and our oldest nephew Mason took to racing around the rink.  That evening, Max started not feeling well.  By the time we left the next day, he was sick.  Max has been lucky not to be sick yet.  He says he usually doesn't get sick, and he's very particular about not taking any medicine.  He said he just rests through it.  So for the next couple of days, he slept a lot.  And sure enough, seemed to feel better quickly.  Maybe I need to try that the next time I have a cold.

We gave the boys tickets to Memphis Tigers basketball game as a stocking stuffer.  The stadium is near the famous Beale Street in downtown Memphis.  The city was busy getting ready for the New Year's Eve festivities.  When we explained that to Max, he begged that we go down there that night.  Now we're not big New Year's Eve party people, and you couldn't pay me enough to go down to Beale Street that night.  Hanging out with 40,000 drunk people crammed into four blocks is not my idea of fun.  Getting out of there would be a nightmare.  So, he asked if he could find some friends to go, would we let him.  Not only is 40,000 drunk people in four blocks not fun, it's not safe.  The police do a good job keeping things under control on Beale that night, but it's the journey leaving the area that is not safe.  So, I guess we have to put on our parent hats and set the boundaries.

Max has said that he had a memorable Christmas.  He's looking forward of taking the tradition of gag gifts back to his family. We still have one more holiday celebration with my family next week.  He still thinks that's strange, but he's not going to argue with more gifts and food.  

The teenager has finally arrived!

For the first several weeks after Max arrived, we thought to ourselves, this "raising a teenager" thing is a breeze!  He wanted to eat healthy, go to bed early, didn't want to get into texting, preferred to spend time with the family, and was up early on the weekends.

Fast forward a couple of months, and the typical teenager has finally arrived! :)  Now instead of fruit for breakfast, he eats the boxed toaster pastries that our youngest son favors (waffles, pancakes, french toast sticks, etc.) and "muffins" (which are really cupcakes).  We can easily go through a 2-liter of coke in less than 2 days (although I made a comment recently about how I think he's drinking too much pop, so he's decided to go cold-turkey for a week to prove that there are no side effects - um, yeah). 

Bedtime has gotten a bit later.  I claim it's the caffeine from the 3 glasses of Coke consumed after school.  He disagrees.  Wake-up time has gotten later and later as he's been able to negotiate a ride with a neighbor to school, rather than ride the bus (although he does have an early-morning soccer practice once a week before school). 

We've been encouraging him to do things with his friends outside of school.  He finally went out this past weekend and had a great time.  So great that he tried to negotiate a later curfew on Friday and Saturday night.  We allowed Friday night since it was a late-night movie, but didn't allow the Saturday spur-of-the-moment sleepover at someone's house we didn't know.

And last week he said that he thinks he needs to get a texting plan on his phone.  We even got text messages when he was out this weekend, letting us know when he changed locations and what he was doing.  

He still struggles with some of the rules at school.  Our school is quite a bit more strict that his school in Germany.  Last week he was written up for socializing in class.  He was annoyed by it, but now knows the limits.  However, it was a good lesson for our youngest son, who in 4th grade struggles with talking in class.  He was shocked that Max got written up for that. 

Overall, he's still the respectful teen that joined our family, and is still such a joy to have with us. Yes, I think he is integrating nicely into an Americanized teenager!  Although I'm still dreading when he starts dating - yikes!

Lessons in Economics

When Max first arrived, we commented on how little luggage he had - just one suitcase, a camera bag and a backpack.  He explained how his parents had agreed that he would leave some things at home and buy new when he arrived, "because things are cheaper in the US."  His parents sent along a debit and credit card for his use.  He mentioned that he had a monthly budget as well.

Max has learned some valuable lessons about money already.  In the first month, he blew through his monthly budget in just a couple of weeks.  He went a little nuts on buying "school spirit" clothes.  Then the yearbook fee was due.  Then he needed soccer shoes for the school soccer team, and then running shoes because the team runs often.  We've also made a couple of clothes shopping trips since many of the items he brought didn't comply with the school dress code.

He's commented a number of times of how quickly the money goes, but is always prepared to justify the expenses to his parents.  He's also looking at purchasing some electronics while he's here.  We've found that the process of getting funds transferred inexpensively has been a bit of a hurdle.

We track all of our accounts and expenses in Quicken and Max has been interested in that whole process.  We had an interesting discussion about investments and the difference in risk tolerance between Americans and Germans.  He said it seems like Americans have a much higher tolerance for financial risk than Germans.  I pointed out the importance of diversifying and balancing a portfolio to withstand the ups and downs of the market.  And how to enjoy things in the short term while making long term plans.

We had a couple of "money talks" recently.  We struggle with how much to guide him on the finances issue, since it's his parents' money.  We started teaching our son about good money management when he was 5.  He's now nearly 10 and knows a lot about budgeting his money for the things he wants.  So, we're supposed to treat Max like our son, which means at least talking through these decisions and letting him decide how to use "his money."  He recently decided to scale back on an order for some optional school soccer team clothes in order to stay more within his budget.  

We'll see how this continues to play out during the year.

Max in the Big City

Labor Day weekend gave us an opportunity to visit my family in the Chicago area.  We had mentioned this trip to Max a couple weeks ago and he’s been excited to see Chicago.  I was a little worried about the long drive (about 10 hours) when Max said he hadn’t been in a car for more than 6 hours.

We picked up Max and our son early from school on Friday and left around 1:00.  It was a very long drive, especially since I took a wrong turn in the middle of Illinois and added about 50 minutes to our drive.  We arrived at my parents’ house just before midnight. 

Saturday morning was spent hanging around the house.  My dad, husband, son (Dylan) and Max played a couple of games of Ladder-ball.  Then we headed off to Arlington Park Racecourse for an afternoon of horse racing.  My dad explained how to read the race program and horse stats to Max and Dylan.   We had agreed we would give each boy $2 per race to put on their horse, and they would keep the winnings at the end of the day.  Max started out with the strategy of picking a horse to Win.  Dylan started with the strategy of betting on the long-shots.  The both quickly changed their strategies to picking horses with good odds to Place or Show.  Max tried cheese fries for the first time during lunch at the track.

Before the last race, we cashed in their winnings and gave them the option to use those winnings to bet more on the last race or walk away.  Max decided to add another $5 to his bet.  Dylan decided to use $2 to bet on a second horse.  During the post parade, Max saw that his horse was gray.  My husband teased him that a gray color meant the horse was old.  During the last stretch of the race, Max was yelling that his horse was winning and went nuts when a gray horse crossed the finish line first.  But, alas, it was a different gray horse.  Easy come, easy go, right?!  In the end, Max came out with a loss overall, and Dylan had a few bucks “profit”.  Max’s lesson learned: The best way to earn money is to work hard for it.  Dylan’s (9-year-old) lesson learned: I can come out ahead if I bed Mom and Dad’s money.  Hmmm….we need to work on that one.

That evening we took Max out for some Chicago-style hot dogs.  He was surprised at the HUGE serving of fries that came with them.  Somehow he managed to finish two fully-loaded dogs, the big bag of fries, and some of the cheese off of Dylan’s pizza.  He even tried Mountain Dew for the first time.

On Sunday we drove up to Milwaukee, WI to visit my sister in her new house.  We had lunch at Cracker Barrel and talked Max into eating breakfast food for lunch.  Dylan also taught him how to play checkers there.  We then drove to the subway station to take the train to downtown Chicago.  When we walked up the stairs to street level in the city, Max’s eyes turned huge.  He started snapping photos of the buildings around us.  He said he had never been in a city with skyscrapers.  Our plan was to take him to the top of the Sears Tower, but it was a 2-1/2 hour wait, so we opted to skip it.  Then we took a cab over to Navy Pier, during which Pete, our cab driver from Greece, gave Max and Dylan all kinds of advice about life.

Navy Pier was extremely crowded and it was difficult to get around.  We planned to go on the big ferris wheel so Max could get some pictures of the city skyline, but the line was long and Max preferred not to wait.  My husband suggested we walk along the lakeshore so Max could take pictures.  That turned out to be the perfect suggestion.  We walked back to Millenium Park and found the Cloud structure, which was pretty neat as it reflects the skyline from all angles.  Even though we spent only a few hours in the city, Max absolutely loved it.  That evening we enjoyed some Chicago pizza at Gino’s East.

American English doesn't make sense

Wow!  Max has been with us now for three weeks!  Where did the time go?!  Because he arrived just after school started, he's had a lot of adjusting to do all at once - with our family, making new friends and going to school.  After the first weekend, my husband and I agreed that Max fit in so well with our family.  It seems like he's already been with us for months.  He's a great kid, easy-going and easy to please.  Our 9-year-old son had very high expectations for his new big brother, and Max has lived up to those expectations (mainly being willing to play basketball and board games).

Max started school on the Monday after he arrived.  He's taking some challenging courses - chemistry, calculus, law-related education.  The first few days, he came home exhausted and went to bed early.  While he speaks English well, there are still many written words that aren't in his vocabulary.  And, a couple of his teachers have thick southern accents, so that probably makes it even more challenging.  We try to help him understand his homework, and I've issued many apologies that it's been 18 years since I took calculus and don't remember a lot of it!

Max seems to really enjoy the social aspects of school.  The concept of extracurricular activities and school spirit is new to him, and he's really embracing it.  We're glad he's been able to make friends pretty easily.  He even seems to have his eye on a girl on the dance team, and "she's pretty AND smart!"  He's joining the Science & Math Club and he tried out for the soccer team.  The try-outs didn't go as well as he wanted because it was about 100 degrees and humid.  He hasn't acclimated to the extreme summer temps we have yet.

He has commented numerous times at how nice and helpful everyone is.  Yup, that's Southern Hospitality at its finest.  The first couple days of school were filled with funny adventures.  He got off the bus at the middle school instead of the high school, so a teacher had her daughter drive Max over to the right school.  He missed the bus home one day.  He had trouble with his locker and was given his first tardy to class.  But a teacher helped him get it excused.  He started his Spanish II class, and surprised the teacher with his fluency in Spanish (he already had 6 years of it).  The things he doesn't seem to like about school are the dress code, all of the rules, and how long the day is.

We've had fun showing him different things around the community.  We took him to his first baseball game, and enjoyed the fireworks at the end of the game.  We took him to our favorite hamburger joint and he declared that America has the best hamburgers.  We went bowling with another host family and their exchange daughter from France.  We attended his first high school football game and he said "it was amazing!"  Max made his first batch of potatoes gratin for an AFS pool party event.  He claims it wasn't as good as what his mom makes.  We have always enjoyed showing our son different experiences, so now we have double the joy.

We had no idea how silly and difficult that American language can be until trying to teach it to a foreigner.  I told our dog to "back up" and Max looked at me strangely and said "Back. Up?"  No, it really doesn't make sense when you stop and think about it.  We've been playing word board games on some evenings to help Max expand his vocabulary.  And try explaining our government and some of our laws to a foreigner.  Forget about it!

Overall we're off to a great start to the year!

Getting Started

We hadn't really thought about hosting an exchange student until last year.  A friend, who volunteers with AFS, contacted us in January with a request to host a student from Egypt that needed a new host family mid-year.  We had just returned from a trip to Egypt, so she thought it might be a good fit.  We felt didn't know enough about hosting to commit so quickly, so we passed.

Several months later, that friend approached us again to see if we would be interested in hosting.  That opened the door to researching it and many family discussions.  We started the process with the understanding that anyone in the family had the opportunity to veto it up until the time we selected a student.  Our biggest concern was finding the right fit for our family, so AFS allowed us to look at as many bios as we wanted.  We selected some base criteria and were given over 150 bios to consider.  We quickly worked down to a top 20, then a top 3.  We had our friend weigh in on the top 3 and she recommended Max from Germany as a good fit.  We agreed with her and set things in motion.

Getting school approval turned out to be a long ordeal.  Since it was summer break, we had a difficult time contacting people.  It took about a month to get the approval.  Then we were finally able to contact Max and his family about three weeks before he was due to arrive.  We cleaned out the guest room, bought basic school supplies, and waited anxiously for Arrival Day!