The two boys who went missing in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and were found two weeks later at a shelter in Louisiana will be returning to college in January.

Jashun and Jamel Thomas have spent the last four months working at Butterfield and Vallis and taking classes at night in preparation for their return to the US.

Their mother, Jean Lamontagne, said yesterday that not a day went by when she wasn't stopped by someone on the street wanting to know how the boys were doing.

Jamel, 19, and Jashun, 17, were visiting their father in New Orleans when Katrina struck on August 29.

While their American grandparents evacuated the city, the boys stayed behind with their father, James Thomas, and disappeared in the chaos after the hurricane, which killed almost 900 and left hundreds of thousands homeless and scattered all over the US.

Ms Lamontagne spent two agonising weeks visiting shelters in Texas and Louisiana and eventually found her sons at the Lamar-Dixon Centre in Gonzalez, Louisiana with only the clothes on their backs.

A niece of the boys and her baby also went missing and were later found at a shelter in Mississippi, but their grandfather died.

Ms Lamontagne said she was just thankful for all the people who supported her and the family over the last four months, especially her mother and sister Carol Minors.