Stories: The Marez Family

We had just moved from Albuquerque, NM to Charlotte, NC in the summer of 2016. I had been a host mom in August 2015 after answering a plea from my friend on Facebook. We had signed up to host another year, a boy from South Korea for the fall of 2016 when we found out Jerome’s transfer to North Carolina went through. We had to bow out of our commitment as we were going to move in the middle of July, way past the deadline for placing exchange students, or so I thought. We couldn’t guarantee we could have an open school district in Charlotte – we didn’t even know where we were going to live until two weeks before we left. When we arrived to Charlotte, I made contact with the single person I knew in North Carolina, a local coordinator I met at ETC’s annual conference that previous February. I was hoping she would give me a job. She did. She let me know we had 4 days before Charlotte’s deadline for applying and there was a spot available at our school. I told her I would look at profiles of students. *Jerome was going to kill me.* I promised that we would take a semester off from hosting because we were so new to Charlotte. I’m a liar.

I got on our database of students and started looking. I found a girl named Louisa, the last semester student. Maybe I could convince Jerome that a semester student wouldn’t be such a big commitment and I could get him on board. He saw right through it, but agreed – after all, Isabel was going to be starting high school where she did not know a single person. Might as well as have an instant friend and someone to go through it with. Louisa, a semester program girl that we would never have chosen under normal circumstances. Seriously. She was into things that Isabel had zero interest in: fashion, make-up, Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars. Worse, she wasn’t into soccer, which was Isabel’s passion. Even worse, when she showed up at the Charlotte airport, she was *vegetarian*, borderline vegan. What?!?!