Anybody heard from Art?

[BRPORSCHE]

He used to be an extremely common poster? Starting to get a tad worried. He hasn't posted since mid may when he was having a rough time with the foreign exchange student. I always thought Art was a good guy and hope he is doing well.

[GLASEM]

Are you referring to Art Z fom Michigan

[BRPORSCHE]

Yep. He has fallen off the face of the earth it seems.

[Willem Fick]

He has been quite active on Linkedin recently (last few days.)

[kach22i]

Facebook, quite active there.

[GLASEM]

Know he's alive
Drive pass his house almost every day on my way to work
We Email quite often
Last word..................he's doing fine

[Hugh R]

Love this place, watching out for friends, even those we sometimes disagree with.

[azasadny]

Thanks, guys! Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated, or something like that! We're fine, just extremely busy with life. I'll be back in the fall after the summer activities have quiated down. We got our daughter graduated from high school and she's signed up for college in the fall. Our sone is working and going to school and playing in two bands. Beth is teaching summer school and trying to get hired in full-time as a teacher, but that doesn't look likely. I'm at Ford, doing "anti-virus" and computer security work.

Family is fine and we've been helping my FIL after his knee replacement and we're busy helping other family members as they age none too gracefully...

[azasadny]

BTW, the exchange student didn't work out well at all, but she's back in Norway now... Our daughter's best buddy is from Austria and she's visiting us now. I wish she would have been our exchange student, but you don't get a guarantee that your student will be someone you can understand, like or want to be around...

After our daughter's boyfriend was killed and my MIL passed (they were very close!), last year was challenging for our family, but especially our daughter. She managed to graduate with honors, get "most valuable rower" for her senior year on the HS rowing team and she played cello in the school orchestra, danced and swam on the swim team, so she recovered as well as we could have hoped for... Having the "least friendly exchange student" certainly didn't help...

[Rick Lee]

Did we ever get the full story on what happened with the exchange student? I think we were waiting for the rest of that one.

Where in Austria is your daughter's friend from? I might be headed back there soon; it's my favorite place in the world.

[Jim Richards]

Nice to hear things are going better, Art.

[Chocaholic]

This really is a great community. Glad to be on board.

[herr_oberst]

Hey, Art! Glad to hear from you, sounds like your trials and travails have simmered down a bit, and you're getting a bit of an upswing in fortunes!

Is the burn good and healed?

(And thanks again for the great signage from the gift exchange. Front and center in my garage!)

[azasadny]

Thanks, guys! I didn't provide any details about our exchange student and that was intentional. Let's just say the young lady didn't like us as made that very clear in a number of ways from the time she arrived. We did the best we could but we couldn't change things one bit.

Anyway, all health issues are resolved amy I'm back to my career as a leg model! Our daughter Rebecca's friend is from Vienna and she's a very gracious, pleasant and happy person to be around and we're all glad to know her. Hannah has been back three times since her exchange trip was completed and we took the girls to see the Barenaked Ladies and Ben Folds Five a few weeks ago and they had a great time.

I've built about 125 computers in the last 9 months or so... so
I've been busy...

[vash]

so essentially she was a B?

i would have sent her right back. sorry it didnt work out.

[Evans, Marv]

Glad to hear from you and that things are looking up in general. Here's hoping it continues that way.

[azasadny]

Thanks! The young lady didn't break our rules, was polite and "technically" did everything she was supposed to, she just refused to speak to us in any way. she talked to everyone else, just not us. It was very uncomfortable and unpleasant, to say the least. Others had better or worse experiences, but ours was not positive. We are hoping that someday our student will appreciate what we tried to do for her, but that is not very likely. You live and you learn and we learned a hard lesson... I would still strongly recommend others get an exchange student as it can be a great experience! AFS.org did a great job for us and they supported us (and our student) the whole way...

[Oh Haha]

Glad to hear everything is ok in your world, Art.

[jyl]

Glad you are well.

We've had many exchange students, all from France, none for over a month. So far 1 has become a good friend and returns over and over (she's 24 y/o now and is here with us for a month in fact) and we've visited her and her family a couple times, 1 was a wonderful girl and tried really hard to stay in touch w/ us, 4 or 5 were good to great kids and we were as pleased as they were, 1 hosted my son in France the next year, and 1 was kind of an odd duck, not unpleasant as you experienced, just completely different interests from our family, though he did enjoy going to the pistol range.

Normally, on longer stays, there is some mechanism to move the kid to a different family if it just isn't working out. Sorry you had that experience.