Catching up with Toto

Family and long time acquaintances remember Antoine, our first French exchange student. It's a long story how we made this crazy decision but the long and short of it is that one August day some years back we picked up a skinny boy from the airport who could barely communicate with us. It turned out to be an incredible year for us, for him and for GW Long where he attended school.

The last we heard from Toto was right after 9/11. His family called to make sure we were ok. It was a sweet gesture. They are good people. At some point we lost contact with him after a Christmas card was returned. It was no surprise, we couldn't expect him to live at home with his parents forever.

So I've checked online for him every once in a while. I'll spare you the details of point Point A to Point B, but as I write I just checked his GPS position a few minutes ago and watched him on youtube.

Antoine dreamed of driving. One of his great disappointments while here was that we couldn't get the needed papers to take driver's ed. It turns out in the years since he returned to Europe that his older brother became a race car driver and Antoine has joined the family racing team as Navigator for Nicholas. They've got a huge following.

At this writing Team Gibon, Nicholas et' Antoine, is participating in the TransOrientale, the longest rally race in the world. They started in St. Petersburg, Russia about six days ago and will end in Bejing, China sometime toward the end of the month.

Am I proud? Yes. The message we received right before they left from Russia left no doubt that his time here helped shape him into a fine man.

And in case anyone is interested, here's the links:
teamgibon.fr check on "Pilotes" for photo
race site lots of photos, video and interactive stuff
the brothers on youtube Antoine appears briefly while Nicholas (in white) is talking