June 27, 2006
Hosting an exchange student
"It's a way to travel without going anywhere," said Ellen Eichamer, a community representative with Academic Year in the U.S.A., or AYUSA.
AYUSA doesn't help host families with expenses, so even though you might not go anywhere, you'll still have more household expenses. However I understand that some host families do receive a stipend and some even try to turn this into a little business.
One of my students was telling me about her first host family in Canada. They set up a kind of alarm on the refrigerator so that whenever she opened the door, the alarm would sound. Then the host family would come stare at her. The effect of course was that she stopped eating and then asked for another host family.
Anyway, if you want to learn about another culture without actually traveling to the foreign country, you might consider inviting an exchange student to live with you for a while. Is it really traveling without going anywhere? I'm not sure, but I bet it can be a rewarding experience (I don't know though; I've never done it).
Posted by James Trotta at June 27, 2006 12:20 AM
Our family has hosted for full three years with AFS. We have also hosted summer exchange students with the Lions club. We had a wonderful, challenging experience each time. It was wonderful because, in spite of normal teenage child/parent learning curves, we found ourselves falling in love with our student. The challenging part was the different background and culture. We had to work hard at incorporating the student into the routine of our everyday lives, especially since foreign teenagers are accustomed to more freedoms (such as bus lines, rail lines and discos) and are therefore more independent than USA teenagers are.
A benchmark occurs the first few times the host parents scold their exchange child just like they scold their natural children. That seems odd, but it makes the exchange child realize that they are not a guest; they are a real child of the host family. It settles them in an odd but secure way.
We now have exchange children from Ireland, Wales, Italy, Germany (2), and Spain. We have recently sent our natural children for exchange years in Argentina and Italy. So we now understand how hard it is on the student, the sending family and the hosting family. It is tough love at its most exhilarating, frustrating, scary best.
Posted by: Ronda at June 27, 2006 11:40 AMWow, so you have 6 exchange studets at one time?
Posted by: James Trotta at June 28, 2006 2:00 AM