Cooper Has Been Accepted to Thailand!

Cooper was recently notified that he has been accepted to AFS-Thailand. His departure date is not yet known, but will likely be near the end of March. Meanwhild, there is much to do to prepare.

Luckily, he already has a valid passport. This week, he will visit the Travel Clinic at Holy Spirit Hospital in Camp Hill, PA, in order to receive his necessary and/or recommended innoculationa, anti-malarial drugs, etc.

Funds are still sorely needed, so if you are a reader/supporter who wants to assist Cooper financially, donations will be accepted all year. Full payment is now due, so our family will be taking funds from sources earmarked for other expenses (his brother's skimpy college funds & funds for family medical needs) to cover the cost.

Hopefully, your financial support will still come in and we can then use it to re-imburse those other much-needed sources!

Please note, the CHIP-IN widget previously seen to the right of the blog may be gone, due to our having had to pay in full at this time, but you can still send Cooper donations in support of his trip to our home address and we will acknowledge them here.

Please send you financial well wishes to:

Cooper Bard
Tuscacheague Mountain Farm
3285 Horse Valley Road
East Waterford, PA 17021

Cooper hopes to start a Facebook page so he can keep in touch with friends and family from overseas if he has access to a computer and the Internet, there. We'll be sure to let you know when he is up and running with that.

Meanwhile, thank you for your friendship and support. Cooper celebrated his 17th birthday recently, on January 21st, but will likely celebrate his eighteenth birthday in Thailand.

The Short Wait for a Long Trip

Cooper has now submitted the completed application, which consisted of many parts, and is waiting to hear back from AFS Thailand regarding his candidacy as an AFS participant.

The deadline for applicants to Thailand this Spring term is January 11th. He was informed it will be 2 to 4 weeks till he hears back regarding his acceptance. Meanwhile, he rec'd a Thai-English dictionary and phrase book for Christmas that he can begin studying (just as soon as he finishes studying for his upcoming SAT on January 23rd).

We would like to thank several contributors who are helping to make this adventure a reality through their support in December. Thank yous this month go to: Bill Whiskeyman, one of Cooper's uncles; Anne Marie Zelner, a college friend of Cooper's mom (Seton Hill Univ., Greensburg, PA); and especially to D.W. Gregory, one of Cooper's aunts. You can read more about playwright D.W. at her website, http://www.dwgregory.com .

In the meantime, if you have thought about contributing to Cooper's global learning experience and haven't done so yet, it isn't too late!

Click into the CHIPIN widget on this blog to offer your support and watch that happy little meter grow till it stretches all the way to Thailand.

Remember the three-fold principal. What you give to others returns to you three times greater in worth.

And don't forget to sign up to follow this blog so you can stay updated on Cooper's journey as it unfolds. You can also comment on posts. This is an interactive site!

Until next update, may health, good cheer and great friends surround you!

A Little Background Music, Please, Maestro

For those of you who may not know Cooper as well as others, let's take a few moments to explore some of the details of our adventurer's life.

The fifth of six children (he has three brothers and two sisters), Cooper lives with his mom and dad, his younger sister, Kaeli, and his older brother, Sullivan, on a 27 acre farm in the wee western tip of Perry County, PA, on Tuscarora Mountain.

Sequestered in the quiet Horse Valley, Tuscacheague Mountain Farm is not only host to five two-legged animals but also to an array of four-legged ones, including three horses, a goat, a rabbit, nine cats and a white German Shepherd named Sadie-Mae.

Cooper was a Boy Scout for many of his boyhood years. Living in the same home in which his mother was raised -- a home which had been in the (Whiskeyman) family since 1962 -- he attended the Warwick School District (Lititz, PA: Lancaster County) prior to moving with his family to the Fannett-Metal School District on Halloween day, 2007. Cooper was homeschooled five years, from third through seventh grades.

Overcoming early (mis-)diagnoses including profound deafness and severe autism, Cooper has come to excell academically. He did not speak until age four, at which time he began to speak in full sentences. Yes, it was quite a shocker for his family, especially since, through the Schreiber Pediatric Center in Rohrerstown, PA (formerly Easter Seals), he had begun to learn sign language!

Cooper, in fact, had rather severe lead poisoning, it was soon discovered.

Today Coop is a healthy seventeen year old Star Trek fan who enjoys playing chess and participating in drama club. He is artistically inclined, having achieved recognition in the Scholastic Art competition; he placed in the Franklin County Science Fair (winning $250.00); and won an essay contest (cash prize and a medal) on patriotism.

Last Spring, Cooper enjoyed playing the part of the Preacher in his high school production of Thar's A Feudin' Over Yonder.

Cooper has four nephews. His dad works for Bosch Security Systems, his mom fancies herself a future novelist (sci-fantasy genre) and poet, and his brother Sullivan attends as a freshman at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, PA.

A large, extended family surrounds Cooper; his mom was the youngest of nine siblings and his dad one of five children. His family tree carries many names both in its roots and along its variant branches: Bard, Whiskeyman, Ellmaker, Collins, Sissler, Funk, Finch, Saunders, King, Gregory, Callahan, Rhodes, Houck.

Cooper is named for a character in the book, Walk Across America, by Peter Jenkins, which his mom read and enjoyed when she herself was a college student at Seton Hill University.

But that is all he is likely to volunteer about the character for which he was so fondly named.