Touching Base With Toby

Back in '92-'93 la familia was living in Deer Park, TX. We decided it would be cool to have a foreign exchange student come and live with us. Our guy? Tobias Schlenker from Reutlingen Germany. It was a wonderful year. I had never had a "son" before, and Toby fit the bill. The girls learned what it was like to have an older brother, even if only for a time, and we all were introduced to a new culture.

I still have wonderful memories of our year with Toby and have thought of him often over the years. You see, that was the year that Leo changed jobs and moved to Port Lavaca. It was way too close to the end of the school year for Toby to change schools, so instead, he finished out the last two months with another family, neighbors of ours, in Deer Park. That was also the year that things changed for us significantly in a number of ways. And the year that we lost touch with Toby.

In a period of insomnia last night, I decided once again to google "Tobias Schlenker" and look through some of the links for hints of our friend. Several pages in, I found a link to a year-old publication (in German) that mentioned just such a person. When I opened the publication and saw a very tiny photo of Tobias, I just knew it was him!

I took a moment to email the company and ask them to forward my message to him. Several hours later, I got a reply! The reply began with, "Yes, it's Me!" Yippee! We made our first contact and I am looking forward to following up on it this weekend. I can't wait to find out more about our long lost son and his adventures. I am so happy I had trouble falling sleep last night!