Visit to Aurora rekindles 30-year international friendship

Local couple hosts Bulgarian 
exchange student

Foreign exchange student Asya Shendag, right, poses for a picture back home in Bulgaria with her grandmother Manuela Russeva, who is a longtime friend of Aurora resident Thomas Goetz.
Foreign exchange student Asya Shendag, right, poses for a picture back home in Bulgaria with her grandmother Manuela Russeva, who is a longtime friend of Aurora resident Thomas Goetz.

An international friendship between an American businessman and a citizen of Bulgaria that began nearly 30 years ago after the fall of the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe was extended to a third generation recently, and it happened right here in Hamilton County.  In late May, Thomas and Fawn Goetz of Aurora hosted a visit by the granddaughter of a woman who had been like a mother to Thomas whe…