The Bech Family

I've now moved onto a new stage in the long, drawn out AFS process. A few days ago I recieved my family! Now that I know a bit more about my family it seems more appropriate to write about them. Of course I don't have all the answers to the questions I have, the information that I do have is enough to sedate me for a while.

I will be moving to a family of five plus a dog and two cats. The family memebers are Heidi (mother), Mogens (father), Christoffer (17 year old son), Casper (14 year old son), Camilla (12 year old daughter), Molly (dog), Frida (cat), and Bertha (cat). Heidi wears the pants in the family where as Mogens is the playful father figure. From my understanding if you want something that mom will probably say no to, go to Mogens. Christoffer attends a trade school to be a carpenter. He's not extremely social and doesn't speaks english. Casper is the jokester in the family. He enjoys making people laugh and also speaks some english. Camilla is the girlly-girl. She likes to talk a lot and play around with make-up with her friends. She, to my understanding, speaks just a little english. The family appears to be a very nature-loving, outdoorsie type of family. Their summer holidays are spent canooing and kayaking in addition to cycling. Every few years they take a backpacking/camping trip to Norway and enjoy going to Legoland becuase it is fairly close to home.

The Bech family lives in the rural village of Rugsted where there are only 20 or so houses with lots of fields and farming land in between. Heidi and Mogens run a private kindergarden out of their home. In 2005 and new law was inacted in Denmark which allowed private persons and organizations to run kindergardens the same as municiple kindergardens. In their kindergarden they over see 22 children. There is a separate building for the children in addition to a nice play ground and lots of activities. They have a website for their business which can be viewed here. The site is in Danish, but if you just start clicking around your bound to find some pictures of the area, the children, and some of the adults.

The home in which I am to live in was an old farm but is now just a single family home. In some of the pictures from their business site you can see the house in the background. There is an upstairs and a downstairs. Upstairs is an area just for the children. Each of the three children have their own room and there is an extra room for me. A neat little feature that I think is nice is that there is a small living room upstairs for the children. Like a common room I would guess. Downstairs is the kitchen, two living rooms, the master bedroom, and a bathroom. The family usually spends lots of time downstairs, but when friends come over usually retreat to their rooms.

All in all, what I know of the family so far is wonderful. I found out by reading some of the descriptions of the pictures Heidi sent that they have hosted before. I have yet to ask about this. Now I struggle with the daunting task of attempting to kid myself into believing I'll be able to speak their seemingly impossible language...