Catalina & Mary

At the end of July for 4 weeks we hosted two exchange students, Mary from Russia and Catalina from Spain. This was our fourth year hosting students & we had a great time with the girls. They both ride & show horses so we planned a lot of horse farm tours to show them the horse industry in Marion County. They would spend the morning in class & the afternoon on a field trip. We would drop them off in the morning & pick them up in the evening. The weekends were spent on horse farms & other fun activities. The kids loved having them here & would look forward to them coming home from school every day.  It's hard to say goodbye knowing we may not see them again but we try to keep in touch by email.

Our welcome sign to greet the girls when they first arrived

Catalina with one of the horses at Live Oak Stud a big horse farm we toured

Mary with the horses

Mary celebrated her 16th birthday while she was here so we gave her a small birthday party complete with presents and apple pie

Wearing her new shirt

With her apple pie. Our neighbors stopped by & ended up joining us for pie

Mary cooking us Russian crepes

Visiting an Arabian farm, the owners are friends of Charles'

At the farm of Charles' patients. They have reining horses

Reining demonstration 

At the bike trails

On our little boat, pulling a kayak (since we all couldn't fit in the boat)

Catalina & Cameron 

Swimming in the rainbow river

Catalina riding the horse of a good friend of ours, Ryan Martin

Mary riding

Olivia on Ryan's pony

Catalina & Olivia (Olivia loved Catalina!) such a sweet photo

Touring Gypsy Vanner farm

At the graduation for the girls (Catalina is second from left)

Olivia wearing the graduation cap

Mary leading the skit for the Russian group at graduation

Mary (in the middle) with her graduation certificate

At the end of the graduation (Charles & Cameron were out of town at the race track.)