Host an exchange student
In 2021, a teenager from the Netherlands moved into our guest room for a school year. He was living with us when the hardest chapter of our life happened, and he's family now. His family became our family. Half of everything you'll see me build traces back to saying yes to hosting.
I'm not a program. I'm a guy who said yes and got a bigger life out of it. What I can do: connect you with our coordinator, who walks you through what hosting actually involves. The real commitments, the real support, the real questions.
The honest part: it's not always easy. It's a person, not a plant. It's also the single highest-return yes we've ever given.
Thomas was the first, and he rearranged us. The Netherlands stopped being a country on a map and became a family who answer the phone. His parents are not our student's parents anymore. They are our people, and they keep coming back to stay in our house.
Then came Jakob, from Germany, our second official student, for the 2024 to 2025 school year, and we learned that lightning does in fact strike twice. A whole second family. A whole second set of holidays that suddenly matter. He flew home when the year ended, and the house has been too quiet ever since.
And then the ones who were never officially ours at all. Kids we met through the program, hosted by other families, who ended up at our table anyway. Moritz among them. We kept those relationships going, and their parents became people we text on birthdays. Nobody assigned us to each other. That is exactly why it counts.
Which is the whole point of this page. You do not build a life across an ocean by planning it. You build it by saying yes to a stranger's kid, and then finding out you have relatives in three countries.
If you are thinking about hosting: do it. It is the cheapest way to change your whole life.