NEWSLETTER

MARCH

2008

HOSTING/SENDING NEWS

Host Families Needed

We are gearing up for the big push ofsecuring host families for the coming year.We would love to have permanent homesfor all of our 43 students and 3 teachers byJune 1. Many schools are moving to earlydeadlines and other schools fill theirallotment early, so now is the time to makeour move!It is always a good time to “speak AFS” andidentify families who you think would makegreat host families. Current host familiesand hosted students are the best recruitersof new families.Please discuss the ideas below and call ifyou want further direction.Think about families who:• Are busy and full of life• Interested in other cultures• Have a supervised home where allthe kids like to hang out• Are flexible, adaptive• Are curious about the world andother cultures• Like to travel (or bring the worldhome!)• Are interested in diversity andpromoting peaceAnd remember the following considerations:• Not necessary to have two parents orkids in the home• Host parents can be any age (over25)• Don’t need to know anotherlanguage• Don't need a spare bedroom, just abed (and lots of love!)We now have the opportunity to submit“wish list” requests for families who havebegun the application process. If you knowof a family who really wants a Frenchspeaker, or a volleyball player or amusician, let us know and we can request astudent to be reviewed.Host Family Applications can be found inAFS Online or by contacting Sally AnnWells, or your local chapter coordinator.

www.afsonline.org

(password required)Please, send us your nominations, so wecan secure homes for this year’s incomingstudents. See the sample of mini-bios,already available. We are getting newstudents every week and have severalfamilies already in the selection process.If you have questions or suggestions abouthost family recruiting, contact either SallyAnn Wells:

sawells@teleport.com

or yourlocal AFS contact.

Sally Ann, Interim Hosting Coordinator

COLUMBIA

PACIFIC

AREA

TEAM

NEWS

THE

CHAIR

REPORT

– Bonnie

Richardson

‐

Kott

We need host families! This is the time of year that we need to ask our friends, family members, co-workers andneighbors if they would like to host an exchange student for the school year 2008-2009. Our students start arriving inJuly but we need to establish our families well in advance of that date. Portland Public Schools allows us only 10students for the entire district. The slots that fill up the fastest tend to be Lincoln High School, Wilson High School andGrant High School. For these schools, we need to establish our host families before April 30, 2008. Please help usget the word out about hosting!We need volunteers! As we start the “host family finding season”, it stands to reason that we also need volunteers tohelp us with the process. Please contact us if you are interested in volunteering for our team. We have jobs of allsizes and for all types of skills, from writing bios for our prospective students to interviewing families to contacting schools.

Bonnie Richardson, Columbia Pacific Area Team Chair

COLUMBIA

PACIFIC

WEBMASTER

NEWS

JOIN OUR ONLINE FORUM/SOCIAL NETWORK

We’ve recently set up an online social network for Columbia-Pacific returnees as well as host families and other volunteers. It’s a password-protectedsite where you can set up a personal page, communicate with others, and share ideas in the forum. You can also upload pictures to your personalpage. It’s a great way for hosted students to keep in touch with their host families and fellow AFS’ers when they return to their home countries. Pleasevisit

www.afscp.com

today and join the network! You’ll be glad you did. If you need any help at all, feel free to get with our webmaster, James Spears,at

james@spearsintl.com

PLEASE NOTE:

Current exchange students and teachers are specifically prohibited from using this social network. Uponyour return home, you can request membership. During your exchange, AFS encourages you to immerse yourself in thelocal culture!

James Spears, Columbia Pacific Area Team Webmaster

AFS/USA

NEWS

Regional

Council

Report

Our new AFS President has taken the helm and has handled the Egypt PR event with decorum and professionalism. Please watch AFS Online forupdates regarding media events and how to handle difficult questions. We have available a comprehensive “Talking Points” communication for any ofyou who may be dealing with worried participants or natural parents.Organizational study is moving forward with the details now being worked on. A committee headed by Sharon Held from Michigan is working out all thedetails for presentation to the National Council at their May meeting in St. Paul. Sharon’s team is working on details from the Area Team level down. TheNC will focus on the governance piece at their St. Paul meeting. Continue to ask for patience from your volunteers with details. More information willcome out as soon as it is available. We will see some changes in the way AFS is functioning at the National and Regional levels. We’ll keep youupdated about the major structure changes that will be affecting the way we work together.Of significance is action taken by AFS National Council and the Board of Directors in regulating how decisions are arrived at in the upper echelons of ourorganization. There are safeguards to ensure that decisions affecting AFS volunteers are made cooperatively with input from staff and volunteers."Decision Making" for the National Council was identified as one of the critical issues in AFS through the surveys taken prior to the first LeadershipConference in Chicago in October, 2006. A workgroup was formed to address this issue with Lynn Whetstone as its chair. Click here to log on and viewthe workgroup recommendations:

http://www.afsonline.org/IntranetNewsletter.nsf/e745d25194bc57b085256826004f02f0/2bbfff68f526b346852573d90075244d/$FILE/Decision%20MakingX.doc

Regionally the Northwest is on target for our hosting and sending benchmarks, with an emphasis on increasing our sending numbers to assist inbalancing the budget.Of critical importance is all of us working together to improve the support reporting statistics. We are preparing a document that we hope will assistliaisons and local coordinators to this end. We know our students are well supported, but we have to document the contact, if we want to pass CSIETreview!

COLUMBIA

PACIFIC

HOSTING/STUDENT

NEWS

ISNEEN

‐

THAILAND

Hello, Everyone.

First of All would like to introduce myself to every who knows and who don’t know me. My name is Isneen and I’m exchangestudent from Thailand (A small country around south of China) to USA in 2007-2008. I grew up two different provinces, my fatherhad to moved cause by his job- So, I moved with my family and my big adventure start by then. I went to many difference schoolsalso my older sister and my youngest sister .One day, my older sister came back home and said “I got the AFS scholarship to goto US.”.She went to spend her year in Wisconsin, USA. And that’s what brings me to AFS program.A year later, I got the AFS scholarship to come to US as what I dream. I got to stayed with my first host family. My host mom isPhilippine—married dad who is American. They have to two cute little boys (my little brothers).One day, my host mom said she isn’t going to be home until its dark tomorrow so she gave me the key of the house to get in. I went to school in the nextday. Unfortunately; I forgot the key when I went back from school. I just realized that I totally forgot it. I found the paper that come out from under thedoor, wrote by my host mom said “we’ll be home late”. I tried to find the number of my liaison (as I’m exchange student. Liaison is the person who helpme contact with AFS) but the thing was I don’t have a cell phone, the only way to contact her is walk to my neighbor’s house that live 1 km. away (who Iknew her before. She is a nice old lady that stay by herself cause her husband died a few years ago) .I determined that I have no way else to do. I can’t just waiting from them out side because it was so cold. When I get to her house, I told her the story that forgot the key and asked her to use thetelephone. I called my liaison but she didn’t answer her cell phone on that time I just though that maybe she can help me or I can go hang out at herhouse until my host family come back. Next minute, I found out in my schedule said liaison gone to Canada all week. Then, I have no idea what I’mgoing to do. I sat at her house for 2 hrs. Her son and her two grand children came to visit her and I got to talk to them .They’re very nice people .Theyasked me a lot of question like where are you come from? Where is Thailand? Why you are here? What do you do there that we don’t do it here? I got toknow a lot of things from them about America that I don’t know. Then, They asked me “Why you are here?”. I told them and he said may be you can getin to the house if some of the door don’t lock .Bingo, I feel like I have a flash on my head. I said Thank you to them and I walked back to my house. Itried to open the door but I can’t, I walked around the house so many times then I got so tired. I sat down andlooked up into the sky and said “What I’m going to do”. About 5 minute late, my eyes saw something that canopen, stick to the house’s wall called WINDOW. I don’t know what I was thinking but my leg was walkedstraight up to the window and started claimed up there. I’m not a tall person so it took me a long time to claimedit but fortunately, I got in to the house .I walked straight to open the door .I found the key under the paper thatmy host mom left it. I laugh at myself but it was fun adventure. Isn’t it?From a little who lived in the small town, small country that got to know, got to learn, got so many experiencesand met many people from all over the world. I’m very thankful to AFS that gave me a chance to be there,United State of America.Alhamdulillah-Thank you Allah

Isneen, Thailand

WANG

‐

CHINA

I am so grateful…

Being an AFS teacher is one of the most wonderful and significant experience in my life. I feel so proud of being an AFS teacher,but life is not always as we expected, you never know what will happen in the future.Last month I got the worst news from my family that my mother was ill so seriously that she couldn’t live even a week longer. It’ssuch a big shock for me that I couldn’t believe my ears. You could understand how regretful I would be that if I couldn’t see herwhen she passed away. My tears came down out of control. At that time my host family saw me and asked me what happened.When they knew everything about that, they said they would like to do everything they could to help me. What a great host family!How grateful I am! Because they knew I didn’t have enough money for my trip home at that time. I really appreciated that theywould lend me some money for my air tickets.I really want to say AFS is a very thoughtful organization. At that time I got a telephone from Barbara Rogers, my liaison, who said that AFS would payfor my family emergency trip. You can tell how grateful I was at that time.AFS not only offers us a wonderful experience, but also is a thoughtful organization. I want to say it again” I’m proud of being an AFS teacher”.

Wang, Teacher from China

Visit

the

Courthouse

and

Station

Suad

‐

Ghana

TV station and courthouse report

I really had fun at the TV station and it was somehow different but not very different from my countryalthough I’ve never being on TV in my country before. The first thing I said when it started was that none ofmy friends would see me on TV because there are a lot of TV stations here and one can watch whateverchannel he/she wanted. But if this was in Ghana everybody would have seen me on TV because we onlyhave three TV stations and so everybody watches one of those three and so I would definitely be seen onTV.I realized those hosting the show were trying to make the show funny and interesting and so at the end itwas really fun and interesting. I really enjoyed it and had fun and I am really happy because I can tell myfriends I’ve ever being an audience on a TV show in the United States and I have also learnt a lot from it.I’ve never being to a courthouse in Ghana before but I have seen it on TV and I think it is pretty much the same way as it is here. I was really excited toreally see it and it was very interesting. But then this was real and wasn’t like the ones I have been watching on TV and this can really affect the life ofthe person. I also liked how they had interpreters for people who did not understand English. I think it would be better if the judges themselves couldspeak these other languages like Spanish because the interpreter can make a mistake and this can cost someone his/her life.I also realized one thing which was I listened to four trials and some pleas and all these prisoners were minorities and none was white but I don’t reallyknow why.I really had fun and it was very interesting.

Suad, Ghana

Olga

‐

Ukraine

Youssra

‐

Egypt

KATU live TV Audience experience, Multnomah CountyCourt House, Oregon State Judicial Bldg…

Trip to the TV station was a very good experience. We were exposedto the off screen of American TV. I was amazed by technical abilitiesof the studio, especially automatically moving cameras. Knowing theshow from inside you begin to see it differently on television. And seeyour self on TV was kind of cool. Visit to court houses wasinteresting. I have never been to court houses before, even in mycountry. We got to be on the traffic trails. The judge explained all thesteps of the trail, as we were doing along. In the end he stayed andanswered all our questions. We tried to compeer the jurisprudencesystems in different countries. It was pretty amazing.

Olga T., Ukraine

The visiting of the TV show and the court house…

It was very cold day and we had to get up very early then we went tothe Katu 2 channel it was very good from AFS to make us take part inTV show or some thing like that to make the people think about allover the world and to think about hosting student from other countriesby this way we will make the world very small and trying make worldpeace. after that we went the court house this was awesome to see adifferent system of law than what you have in your country and we hadthe very good opportunity to ask the Judge about any thing we want toknow then we went to the federal court house and the Judge their wasvery friendly and answer all the questions we ha. It was a very goodtrip :)