Here we go again!

I've been super busy and haven't posted yet on our years with Anton or Aladdin and Masni, but they are coming.  However, it is TIME!!! My goal is to blog this whole exchange year so I have to get started!  

Yana from the Ukraine is currently on her first flight!  She has some long couple days of travel (as most do).  She traveled by train to the capital of Ukraine, her first flight is Ukraine to Germany, then she will fly from Germany to Washington, then from Washington to Birmingham where we will pick her up.  

Let me catch you up on our preparations thus far!  We did our summer cleaning and de-cluttering.  Whew!  Then we decided that both of our student bedrooms needed re-doing. It took two trips to Ikea and lots of work, but both bedrooms have all new furniture and layout!  They look good!  Then we made airport welcome signs and have them ready to go.  Just tonight we finished putting the finishing touches on their snack boxes and welcome baskets.  We like doing snack boxes because for the first week their time will be a little off and they may not be comfortable yet helping themselves to the kitchen (especially at midnight when they get hungry because in their country it is lunch time) this allows them to have some snacks in their rooms.  The welcome baskets are just a few gifts to get them started here in America and each year the contents change based on students and what we find!  

We were able to skype with Yana once before she left her home.  She was super sweet and introduced us to her mom, dad, sister and pet chinchilla.  We were also able to skype Joshua and met his mom!  He also seems sweet. He was wearing a shirt that said, "Ladies Man" which cracked me and Chad up!   Both kids were so surprised to know that there are already Brookwood High students looking forward to meeting them.

Yana emailed us from the airport in Ukraine to say, "I'll see you soon, I'm coming!"

First meeting jitters will begin now...