10 months and my baby is finally coming home

My girl is FINALLY coming home!   We have had a TERRIBLE time with IYWT (It's Your World Travel) with Josie's ticket.  My advice:  do the visa application and travel arrangements yourself.  Josie left Oct 5, 2011 and is returning Aug 8, 2012.
We are also hosting an exchange student from Spain and she will be here the day after Josie.  Josie will be here Wed and our other student will be here Thurs.  So it's been quite been busy here.  I wish we had more time with Josie before the student comes but after our travel agent did not make reservations soon enough we ended up having to take a later date.  Ugh!
I'm going to start posting in regards to hosting a student.  We are so excited about hosting and I think we will really enjoy being on the other side of an exchange.

I haven't posted for a while since there isn't much to say.  Josie has now been in Spain for a little over 3 months.  She has now moved to her 2nd host family and loves it!  They are teaching her how to cook traditional Spanish foods and they helped her find a running club, so it sounds like they are keeping her busy.

Just a couple of things though I thought I should pass along.  When sending a package keep it light and keep it small.  At Christmas I sent a quite large package ( with gifts for Josie and her host family and a couple of friends) and the package cost me about $60 (I don't recall the weight, maybe 13 -15 pounds).  It got held up in customs for a month and Josie had to pay 30 Euro (I think) to get it out.  The reason:  I had put a high value on it on the customs form (since I wanted to be sure it was insured  in case it got lost or damaged).  So the moral of this story:  always value your packages low.

I just sent a package weighing 2lb 3oz  and it cost me $19.45 to ship.  So . . . keep packages small and light!

Josie just let us know that her school class is going on a senior trip to Italy.  She is very excited!  We don't know if Rotary will allow her to go and what all it will entail, but I will keep you posted.


We did get an e-mail from our travel agent about needing to set her return date on her ticket.  I have to let her know by March 1 what that date will be.  Right now we are thinking the first week of August.  At least then I'll have a date to mark on the calendar of when I'll get to hug my Josie!

Not much else to report.  I'm missing Josie something terrible.  As long as I know she is doing well though, then I am OK.  :)