Full Circle: A True Fairytale

This article was just published in my neighborhood newspaper.  It's been good to remember other seasons and adventures.

Once upon a time, a 16 year old girl named Amy was invited by her friend to host Christie, a 16 year old from Guatemala.  Amy’s parents said yes and Christie lived in their home for 12 weeks, changing their lives forever.  Amy’s family had so much fun with Christie that they invited Alitza to come and stay for a school year.  Amy eventually journeyed to Guatemala and reunited with both her friends.  She also lived with three families in Costa Rica and another in Nicaragua.  She lived with a Hispanic family and an African American family in Chicago and with a family in the Sikh community in Vancouver.  She attended Hmong festivals and a Sikh wedding, an auspicious Chinese birthday in Costa Rica and a church service in the mountains of Guatemala.  She rode packed mini vans and super speed buses on hairpin curves.  She paddled across tropical rivers to a rainforest “farm” and harvested bananas with a machete and oranges with her own hands under the eye of a bull.  She studied Islam for year, touring a mosque and receiving hospitality over tea from a Muslim family.  As she journeyed, when the people heard she was a teacher, she received offers from two communities to build her a school and a home if she would come and teach their daughters to read.  She went home and studied teaching English as a Second Language, determined to only teach people who wanted to learn.  She welcomed children and families from Russia and the Republic of Georgia and Nepal and people of no land and no country at all.  Later she taught adults from Somalia and the Sudan and Ivory Coast and Laos.  For some she had the honor of being their first teacher ever, teaching them to read and to write their names as mothers and grandmothers.  She married and moved into an exciting neighborhood in South Minneapolis where she could raise her kids among people from all over the world.  Then one spring, she heard that 15 French kids wanted to come and visit Minneapolis.  She wanted to share the richness she’d enjoyed with her kids and her community.  Coming full circle from host sister and traveler to welcoming mother, she accepted the challenge to find 15 families who want to open their homes and their hearts like her family had all those years before. 

You have the chance to join this story and become a host family for a French boy or girl age 14-17, from July 9-30, 2011.  The kids are coming for an immersion experience in English and American culture and want to join in with whatever their host family is doing this summer- chores, daily routines, church, bike riding, grilling, park trips-whatever a Minneapolis family is about.  My mom and I are planning activities for them on Tuesdays and Thursdays including Youth Farm, Lake Calhoun, Mall of America, and more.  Painter Park is our central meeting place for orientation, the Welcome Ice Cream Social, the adventures, and Goodbye Potluck. 

Write yourself into the story and contact:

Amy Reisdorf,