[Rick Lee]

When I went to Germany at the age of 16, my host family kicked me out of the house two weeks before I was to return home. I won't go into the whole story, but suffice it to say, it was the first real crisis I had faced in my life, it was all in a foreign language (which I had not mastered by then), Mom and Dad were not there to help and......it was the best thing that ever happened to me. The next family I landed with had escaped from E. Germany and had friends from E. Germany visiting them when I got there. This was all before the Wall came down. Those friends inivited me to come stay with them on my next trip and got permission from the police to make it all possible. So the next summer I got to stay in a village in the middle of nowhere in E. Germany, which was an unforgettable experience. I still keep in touch with all those folks and saw them on my last visit in September.

Better yet, I patched things up with the first family on my next visit there a year later and we're all still great friends to this day. Again, it was the best thing I ever did. Can't recommend it highly enough.