"Which young girl would like to go to America and take care of a handicapped child"
is what the 3x5 note card said hanging on the wall of a grocery store in Switzerland.

I didn't usually wait for my train in the grocery store, and if it wasn't raining that day, I would have been waiting at the train station for the ride back to my tiny and ancient (1125 years old) village in the north east of Switzerland.  But that day, it rained and it was cold and I didn't feel like getting wet, so I walked through the grocery store on that fateful day 16 years ago.

(picture of me in front of THAT wall, taken during my last trip to Switzerland)


At the time I was 17 and hence a teenager, and as all teenagers are.... I was chock full o' raging hormones and terribly defiant, in addition to my stubborn and independent traits, which some say I still posses.
Basically, Switzerland was boring to me and I was looking for a way out and that 3x5 card was my ticket.

So I ripped it off that wall and called the number on it.  A sweet girl answered, which had formerly been an au-pair (nanny for you Americans) in Houston, Texas for a family with a handicapped girl.
A few days later we met for coffee and the only problem we could come up with, was my inability to speak English and my 3 month au-pair engagement in Italy, I had already committed to. 

Three and a half months later, I was 15 pounds heavier from being in Italy, and on a plane to the US of A.
Good thing I was 17 (and therefore fairly ignorant), 'cause otherwise the prospect of moving to another country where I didn't speak the language, with one suitcase and $75 would have been scary.

I was picked up at the Houston airport with a sign with my name mis-spelled "Franzeska", since my host family didn't know what I looked like and I didn't know what they looked like. 

There were lots of times when I wanted to go back... not in the beginning, as in the beginning everything was new and amazing and AMERICA!!! (insert flashing signs here)
I walked around for a year with a dictionary and a pad of paper and a pen, so I could at least draw what I couldn't say and make sense.  And yes, you'd be surprised by how quickly you learn a language when you can't say "I am hungry". Obviously I've overcome that issue by now!

I say "go back" instead of "go home" because a funny thing happens when you move to another country.... first everything in the new country is better and more amazing, then you start noticing the things that WERE better about your home country, and with time you just might stop referring to your former country as your "home". 

The most difficult part was the couple of years where Switzerland wasn't my home anymore, while American also wasn't yet my "home" and feeling like a lost citizen of nowhere, in addition to now knowing a single person on this continent (other than my host family) was difficult.  I mean I had friends, but there wasn't a single person I had known for longer than a few months and certainly nobody that understood what it was like to be from somewhere else and having a complete lack of anyone to call if there ever was an emergency, was very frightening.

Those years taught me a a lot about life and taking constant care of another person that had no control over their body and needed to be fed and walked and bathed, is a very enlightening experience.  "Angel" as I shall call her her, has Rett syndrome and was actually the first person in the US that was diagnosed with it.

Angel taught me many things, such as that you can communicate even when you can't speak with your mouth and we quickly formed a bond and a method of communication that goes beyond words.  We learned together about patience as the occasional cycle of eat-throw up, eat-throw up, would keep us at the dinner table for hours on end, until she could actually keep enough food down to sustain her.  I witnessed the incredible frustration that goes along with having a body you can't control and felt like the most helpless person on earth as she'd have endless seizures and would occasionally look up at me/us in desperation.

("Angel" and I during a Houston flood)
 

We also had tons of funny moments together, such as when Angel threw up right outside a Luby's, while rows of guests were watching her, because we were right outside the glass wall of the place.  My host Father and I thought it was funny, while my host Mother thought it was incredibly embarrassing and inappropriate, which in turn made it funnier for the rest of us and in the end even Angel was giggling in between puking.

I had a truly incredible time with my host family and we are very close even today, and I'm actually writing this in the study of their house.  I will forever be grateful for being accepted as part of their family, for being able to take care of Angel and hence learning what special gifts "special" children have.

And every once in a while I wonder where I would be today if it hadn't rained that day - 16 years ago - and I would have walked straight to the train station.....