Planning for the future

Time is speeding by now.  We survived the winter humdrums and now realize that we have three short months left in this experience.  As we begin to plan our summer activities, we realize that we’ll have one less person in the household at that time.  We have just a few months left to plan a few more “firsts” for Max.  We’re taking him to his first major concert (who is Bruce Springsteen, he asked!!!).  We’ll take him on a tour of a local university and he’ll enjoy his first prom.  He wants to play golf with us sometime.  We’ll take him out to the driving range first before committing to play 9 holes.  It can be a very frustrating game on the first time out.

Max recently came home from school and proclaimed he had an emergency.  After clarifying what a true emergency really is, he informed me that he had a soccer banquet the next evening and had nothing to wear.  This gave me a glimpse of what it must be like to live with a teenage girl.  So, I arranged to have our younger son play at a neighbor’s house and Max and I headed to the mall.  I told him that we had 90 minutes to find something and that was it.  He informed me on the drive there that he wanted to buy a suit.  Hmmm…find a suit off the rack for a tall skinny boy in 90 minutes…I had my doubts.  Plus I was concerned that he hadn’t talked to his parents first about buying something so expensive.  We failed at the first two stores and I was trying to talk him into something simpler.  There was no chance to change his mind.  At the third store, we found a great salesman who found a suit that would fit Max right away and they even had an amazing tailor that did the alternations on the pants in less than 15 minutes!  When Max came out of the dressing room at the store, he looked like a college graduate going for his first job interview.  I wish his parents could have been there.  He had a little bit of sticker shock at the price of everything all put together, and I worked with the salesman to find a less expensive shirt (he did not need a $70 shirt!).  The next day, Max was the best dressed student at the banquet…just like he wanted to be.

We can sense the end of the year coming.  Before, Max had talked about not wanting to go home and trying to make plans to extend his stay.  Now he is working on the process to enroll in the International Bachelor program in Germany.  He has started to transcribe his school notes to the computer so that he doesn’t have to transport his binders and notebooks back home.  He is talking a lot about his future and wanting to attend a university in the US.  We’ve fielded a number of questions recently about how to become a US citizen and if it’s possible to have dual citizenship.  Mostly our answers are, “I don’t know” and “I’m not sure, but you can probably Google it to find out.”  As he talks about his dreams for the future, we reflect back to when we were that age and success was defined by what school you went to, a good job with good income, and your lifestyle.  As our parents did, we now talk of other factors of success – enjoying what you do for a living, providing a good quality of life for your family, good health, friends and family.  It’s funny to realize that our parents knew what they were talking about all along. 

6 months flies by

I can't believe that at the end of this week, Max will have been with us for 6 months!  Time flies!  We remember his first few days here and taking him to meet some neighbor boys that go to his school.  Max had a hard time keeping up with the conversation and looked to me to help summarize for him.  Now he has no trouble keeping up.  Max says that his family is really missing him.  I can imagine, he's a great kid.

Max took on a few challenging classes this semester.  He's in AP English and the books they are studying are advanced, even for those whose first language is English.  He's reading "The Scarlet Letter" and really struggled through the first few chapters.  He needed help translating about every fifth word.  I didn't know I'd end up reading the book again (I had read it in high school as well).  His teacher suggested buying an easier version of the book, which he did.  That helped, and now he only needs help on every 20th word.  :)

We celebrated his 17th birthday in January.  I attempted another German dessert.  It turned out a little better than the Christmas cookies, but not much.  Max said it was pretty good, but I noticed that he only ate one piece.  Knowing how much he eats otherwise, I figured it wasn't that good.  Max chose his favorite restaurant, Huey's, for his birthday dinner and ordered TWO bacon cheeseburgers.  And we surprised him with an introductory flight lesson as a gift.  Since Rob is a pilot and I also studied aviation in college, flying is a big part of our lives that we wanted to share with him.  We solicited approval from AFS and his parents.  AFS's insurance limited the experience a little by not allowing Max to take control of the aircraft.  We told him on his birthday that we had a special outdoor activity planned for him later that weekend.  We were rained out of the first attempt, so had to reschedule for the following weekend.  The next Sunday was a perfect day.  We took some back roads to the hangar at the airport and Max was completely surprised and excited.  He was able to help do the preflight, then sit up front in the cockpit with the instructor during the flight.  Rob and Dylan went along in the back seat.  Max thought it was a cool experience and they gave him a little logbook at the end of the flight.

We also took Max to a couple of Memphis Grizzlies NBA basketball games last month.  He had wanted to see the Bulls play, so we went to the Memphis v. Chicago game.  He wore the Bulls shirt that my parents had given him.  The rest of us went in Grizzlies gear.  The Grizzlies were up by 20 points at the half, so Max put his jacket on to cover his shirt for the rest of the game.  Grizzlies won!

Max has been asking to go to a good steakhouse since he arrived.  We told him about Texas de Brazil, an all-you-can-eat Brazilian steakhouse in downtown Memphis.  It's pretty expensive, so we decided to take him as a thank you for some baby-sitting he did for us over the holiday break.  He was in heaven!  Prime cuts of meat, served on demand, as much as he could eat!  What teenage boy wouldn't love that.  I think he had about 5 or 6 filet mignons, several sirloins, and tastes of everything else.  We think he went through about 6 plates, until he was "150% full".  Then he had a slice of cheesecake for dessert!  He was in bad shape on the drive home, but said it was worth it.

We had a bit of a tough situation recently.  When Max arrived, people asked how long he was staying and we would say until June.  Max would answer until July.  He told us that his family would be coming at the end of the program to pick him up and they would go on vacation for a couple of weeks.  We figured they would pick him up at the end of June and vacation into July.  When we contacted his parents later in the fall to try to get a better idea of the dates for their visit for our planning purposes, we found out they weren't planning on coming until mid-July.  We tentatively agreed to the extension.  Then recently we heard him saying that he may be staying into August.  We knew we couldn't accommodate that long of an extension, needing time for our family to transition after he leaves and before school starts again in early August.  Plus, we had other plans we were trying to coordinate for July.  We worked a bit with the AFS liaison and then contacted his family to discuss their plans and our situation.  Their vacation time had been moved to the end of July and they decided that it wouldn't work out this time.  They broke the news to Max, and true to his character, he found the positive in the situation and said he wasn't disappointed because he knows he'll be back to visit us someday.  Yup...great kid!