In the small coastal city of Falkenberg, in Sweden’s Halland county, Anne-Marie and Karl-Gustav Ohlson raised three daughters. But over the course of a decade, from the late 1970s through the early 1990s , they quietly opened their home to eight more. Not children by blood, but by something that has proved to be just as enduring.
A childhood shaped by the world
Hanna, the youngest Ohlson sister, remembers all of her international brothers and sisters. In an interview with AFS she shared, “As the youngest sibling in the Ohlson family, I was only three and half years old in the summer of 1978 when Marissa came to us from Kansas. The same for Kelly in 1979. Through pictures and stories being told I do think I remember things we did together!”
“Carlos was the first to stay an entire year in Falkenberg. He was the big brother we never had. He played the guitar and taught me to sing La cucaracha! Coming from Bolivia, he didn’t believe my mother, Anne-Marie, when she told him the bus to town arrived at 3:27pm exactly. But it did, and he was very surprised at the strict time schedule of public transportation!”
The ripple effect of being an AFS host family
Before ever being hosted by the Ohlson family, Sonia Chardonnel first heard about AFS as a middle schooler in France, from a teacher who was involved in the program. She spoke to her parents, who decided the family would first host an exchange student themselves before sending Sonia abroad.
That student was Kevin, a French-speaking Canadian from New Brunswick who spent a year with the Chardonnel family in 1983–84. “We are still in contact,” Sonia says today. “My two sons have been to Canada to visit Kevin twice. He became a teacher in Halifax and ran an international summer camp at his school — and my sons went to that camp!” Nearly four decades later, Kevin still visits Sonia’s parents in France.
That first experience, hosting Kevin before studying abroad, shaped everything that followed. When Sonia finished high school, she applied to AFS as an exchange student herself. She was placed with the Ohlson family in Falkenberg, Sweden. She was their seventh AFS student.
“The idea of a united, culturally rich Europe felt like a powerful ideal for my generation to embrace. I realized how little I knew about so many countries on the European map. Sweden, in particular, stood out as a mystery to me— that decision of choosing Sweden as host country turned out to be life-changing.”
More than just placement: Finding a family
Anne-Marie and Karl-Gustav Ohlson were not a family who hosted out of obligation or novelty. According to Sonia, they were people of deep intercultural values, genuinely curious about the world and the people in it — qualities that, she felt, aligned naturally with the spirit of AFS. “They had a lot of values, intercultural and peace-building values — that represent AFS’s mission,” she recalls. “The same for my parents in France.”
What Sonia found in Falkenberg was not just a host placement. She found three sisters. Malin, Karin, and Hanna became, in her words, people she has “in her heart.” “I had many surprising experiences, but above all, I discovered countless small and big pleasures in embracing a new daily life: different rhythms (like meal times), new activities (tied to farm life), and a completely different school system.”
“One of the most unexpected joys was learning Swedish—a language I knew absolutely nothing about before arriving.”
Sonia not only grew as an individual, but the Ohlson family members became her teachers. In addition to customs, traditions and language, one of her sisters, inadvertently, learned innovative ways to teach Sonia the Swedish language.
“Karin, my host sister, had even devised an incredibly effective teaching method: she stuck post-it notes on every object and room in the house, writing the word. Eventually, the entire house was decorated with dozens of little notes, sparking the curiosity of visitors!”
Another unexpected experience was not only tasting the culture’s typical meals, but learning how to cook them. “There was Anne-Marie’s homemade elderflower syrup in the spring and Karl-Gustav’s marinated herring. I’ve since incorporated all these dishes into my own family cooking, and now my children and friends delight in my Swedish specialties.”
Sonia’s year in Falkenberg also pointed the direction of her professional life — she later returned to Sweden on an Erasmus exchange at Lund University, wrote her master’s thesis on Swedish Time Geography, earned a joint PhD scholarship, and became a CNRS geography researcher.
On a personal note, Sonia expresses AFS and her years in Sweden blessed her with a family, a keen interest in culture, connections to life-long friends and work colleagues who are now an essential part of her life.
An AFS family that endures
In June 2026, four of the eight Ohlson AFS students gathered in Falkenberg for the first time: Kelly (USA), Nathalie (France), Aleksandrs (Latvia), and Sonia (France). The occasion is the high school graduation party of Hanna’s son — a new generation, surrounded by the extended family that AFS built.
For Sonia, it will be a first meeting with Kelly, whom she has only known through WhatsApp and the gentle coordination of their Swedish sisters. “Our sisters are the ones making the connections between us,” she says. “Even now.”
The reunion carries another layer of meaning. Anne-Marie Ohlson passed away in 2015 after a brief illness. Karl-Gustav followed five years later. The gathering in June was, in part, a way to honor their memory — the couple who made all of it possible.
“We are all very happy people,” Sonia says with a laugh. “We have a big sense of humor. Even when we talk about the parents who are not here anymore, we are always making jokes. That’s something we all share.”
And on a Friday evening in June, in Falkenberg, four people from four different countries sat around a table in a house they all, in their own way, grew up in.
“We all feel very privileged to have participated in the AFS program — and to have entered a fantastic family that has opened their house so many times, for our entire lives,” concludes Sonia Chardonnel.