Just as Nancy Hartman celebrated her 80th birthday, she got the biggest gift of all: a visit from two of her favorite people.

Both were exchange students at Northwestern Lehigh more than a decade ago and both lived with Hartman and her late husband Bill.

“I feel like a mom when her babies come home,” she said as the three clustered around her kitchen table. That’s where they shared memories and caught up.

Olya Chebykina Huntley was a Russian exchange student at Northwestern living with the Hartman’s.

“No matter how old you are you feel at home here,” she said. “You and Bill made us feel like part of the family and New Tripoli has a very special feeling.”

Pablo Garcia from Monterrey, Mexico, visits Hartman every three years and couldn’t agree more.

“I’m closer to Nancy than to most of my family members,” he said, calling Hartman his confidant. “She has advice about everything, politics, law, history.”

“When you come back, it’s like going back to your youth,” he continued, “and I like the culture a lot and the food.”

Garcia lives just south of Laredo.

“I could drive to Texas for lunch,” he said. “Monterrey is about two hours away.”

Chebykina Huntley now lives in Florida with her husband and two small children.

She has many happy memories of her year at Northwestern.

“I went to every football game where I got to hang out with my friends on Friday night,” she said. “It was definitely something to do.”

Garcia was an exchange student just after 9/11.

“I was lucky to be one of five exchange students at Northwestern that year,” he said. “We shared the same table at lunch. One of the girls drew all of our nations flags and put them on our lockers.”

The two also valued what they learned in the classroom and the teachers they had.

“Your curriculum is so great,” Garcia said. “In Mexico, they don’t prepare you for life. School is mostly about book learning.”

“I like the hands-on [learning],” Chebykina Huntley agreed. “You don’t just answer from a book, and you can say what you want in class.”

“I had a business class where we sold iced coffee to students and teachers,” she said. “We had an ad department, finance department, supply department etc. When I actually started a business, I knew how to go about it.”

These days, both Chebykina Huntley and Garcia are doing what they love.

“After my year here, I went back to Russia and met my husband,” Chebykina Huntley said. “He was teaching English when we started dating.”

“Together we started a school where we taught English,” she said. “We had it eight years before COVID.”

“Some said no one will learn English online,” she continued, “but today, we have more than 150 countries and upward of 1,000 students.”

Garcia’s story is equally happy.

“I went to law school in Mexico City and became a lawyer,” he said. “Then, two years ago, my cousin who is a director at Monterrey Technical University asked if I would be interested in teaching general law.”

While visiting Hartman, Garcia still held class.

“I teach for two hours on Monday and Tuesday. Most of my students are in their 20s.”

As if he’s not busy enough, Garcia still finds ways to indulge his interests.

“I’m the vice president of the historical society in my state Monterrey Nuevo Leon,” he said.

The three reminisced and shared stories about the past.

“Over the years, we had ten students from ten different countries including Mexico, Russia, Republic of Georgia, Germany, China and Ukraine,” Hartman said.

“It feels very heartwarming to know you made an impact on young people’s life,” Hartman said. “They came here from a strange country, with a strange language, strange everything but everybody basically has the same wants. Just the geography is different.”