From Poland with Love

As soon as all the girls adoptions were finalized, DHS closed our license. We were happy, we had 8 beautiful children, we loved our new house. But it too became small, so that spring we decided to add a large family room  onto the house, as well as a hair room for me. That was a large undertaking, but we all survived, now we had more room to spread out (as the 3 stooges put it).
In July of 1997 we received another call from the foreign exchange student coordinator. How would we like a lovely girl from Poland to spend the upcoming school year with us. So, family vote, she won, and Gabby came in August. The poor girl, I don't think she really knew what she had gotten herself into. They told her we had 8 children, but the reality didn't set in until she saw them all together. Coming from a family of professional parents and only 1 sister, I think she had wished she had bought an open ended ticket back to Poland. Mind you all the kids were great, but they could try the patients of a saint. The adjustment period took a little longer than we or she had expected. I don't think she really liked us at first.
One morning I answered the phone to hear a sobbing girl in broken english trying to tell me something. I made out, stinky rock, Polish girl and I hate that fucker. So off to the high school I went. Poor Gabby stood crying in hall. Eventually I found out what had upset her so bad. She was in geology class and they were studying a certain  rock. The teacher had tried to make a joke. The rock had a bad odor and he said it smelled like a Polish exchange student. So being me, I had to shame that teacher. How dare he say something so nasty, he needed to apologize immediately and it better not ever happen again. I surprised her, she came around after that. I think that is the moment she knew we had her back.
This year happened to be the year Erik turned 17. With all the kids in school, I was kind of bored. So the day after his birthday, I called our licensing worker. Maybe we could do some short term foster care. Nothing permanent, just some emergency placements, or something. So they reinstated our licence.