Yes, our family is American. We were very interested in the opportunity as they portrayed it on their web site. The web site is of course gone, but I kept all my copies of how they described their mission. My son, 16, had just gone to a great wilderness program called Monarch in Colorado. It was excellent and we were able to really connect as a family. We thought that by him attending this great outdoor school in New Zealand, that it would be the perfect bridge before coming back home. We all travelled with him to drop him off for the planned 7 month stay. When we got there they told us that we would not be able to stay on the campus as promised beforehand- a huge estate and 1200 acres of farm land, organic farm, grapes, etc/ It sounded beautiful -and it was -but the people that ran it were strange. Very cold people. Gudrun Stuart was one of them. We were able to spend one night -a very short stay having to leave very early the next day. We had a tour and never saw any students. It was all very strange. We should have left then and there, but we kept thinking maybe it was us. As for Gudrun, I later learned that she had worked at CEDU in California. The entire experience for my son (one month) was a complete let down. He felt that he was in a detention center -the treatment was nothing as they described -and what we had described to him- except they had a great cook. We feel terrible about the whole experience. Eventually, the stress got to the boys and one of the boys- a relative of the owner attacked one of the workers and they all had to leave. They could not control the boys at all. It must have been too much of a dictatorship and the boys felt trapped. I think that the program had a great concept, but the advice from the ex employees of CEDU was terrible and this type of treatment towards people does not work. Anyway, the school needed students so they paid our airline tickets there and now, almost a year later they want the money back. We felt that we should have gotten our tuition back for the month he was there and so we made the decision that this was a fair exchange.