Hosting Foreign Exchange Students

[DSTRen13]

When my siblings and I were in high school, my family did the foreign exchange student thing. THE AGENCY IS CRUCIAL, even moreso than the student herself/himself. The first time was with a French student, and the agency didn't really organize things very well so both my family and the girl were really left hanging. It wasn't a bad experience, but things were awkward, and some financial issues were not attended to. Definitely didn't get as much out of it as we could have, unfortunately. The second time was with a German student, different agency. Much better, even though the boy was crazy. There were organized activities for all the German exchange students in the area to do together with the American students, and everything was well communicated with the families. My brother then went to stay with the German boy and his family the following year as a part of the same program and loved it. (One thing to note, however - my sister was uncomfortable with the crazy German boy, who was only a year apart from her in age, staying in the house. This probably wouldn't have been an issue had he not been psychotic, but it's still something to consider if you have children of certain ages/genders.)

[carnation]

We're thinking YFU...what it was, I got a forward from the Japanese consulate here asking if anyone would be willing to host these YFU Japanese students. Several are really into sports and/or music and it does seem that an involved student would be happier.

This rep said, "Maybe your high schoolers would like to help you choose their favorites!" *No way!* Can you hear it now? The 2 boys: "Hey Mom, we want these 2 girls, they look hot." The 2 girls: "Nooooo! We want these 2 hottie Uruguayan soccer guys!"

Phoenix, we have hosted international students from the colleges where I've taught for quite awhile. It's been great but we have all this room in our house from 6 daughters going off to college in 6 years so that's why we started thinking about hosting.

[PhoenixAzul]

Originally Posted by carnation

Phoenix, we have hosted international students from the colleges where I've taught for quite awhile. It's been great but we have all this room in our house from 6 daughters going off to college in 6 years so that's why we started thinking about hosting.

Ahh gotcha .

In that case, from an international student standpoint: Thank you for being a brave soul and opening your home. It can be really lonely in another country!

[texas*princess]

I've never hosted a foreign exchange student, but I remember my sophomore yr in high school a family in my small town hosted a guy from Scotland. He was so sweet, smart & funny. And I'm not going to lie, he was pretty cute too!!!

And out of all the girls, he asked ME to prom! hehehe

We still keep in touch... but that's about all I have to contribute to this topic... lol

[NUBlue&Blue]

We've only done it for a month in the summer--twice. Once a few years ago we had a 17 year old French girl and she was great. We got her when I saw an ad in the paper that host families were needed for French students. I think the organization was LEC.

Two years ago we had two French brothers whose uncle had stayed in our neighborhood when he was a teenager. The families kept in touch for 25 years and we got them in a roundabout way. They were the same ages as our two boys and they got along okay. I'd say they were definitely harder.

We have four kids and both times we got kids who were from bigger families (the girl was the youngest of 4 and the boys were the oldest two of four). I'd say just make sure you don't get an only child with your "busy" household or it may be a little too much! I know we looked for someone from a larger family and a little older (better English skills)--there were a lot of 15 year old only children and I think they wouldn't have liked the craziness of our house.

This summer the middle two French boys are coming to visit for 2-3 weeks.

The only thing that I don't like about it is that I feel like I can't let loose and be a biotch in front of them. But I have a couple friends who've told me that when they had exchange students when they were in HS, their moms got over that after a couple of months.

[deadbear80]

My high school had an exchange program with a high school in Japan. Since there were always more Japanese students who wanted to come to the US than kids at my high school who took Japanese (and had the ability to house someone) they opened up the 'hosting' to anyone my senior year. We had this ADORABLE girl (Sayoko) come stay with us for 2 weeks. She was really a lot of fun (despite the fact that she thought her English wasn't great she really tried hard to communicate and learn--and her English was better than she thought it was). My friend Lisa hosted another girl too and we got to go sight-seeing with them while they were here. I kept in touch with a few of the exchange students for about 2-3 years after they came to stay, but we've all sadly lost touch now (it was 10 years ago now that they came to stay!)

I think it always depends on the student themselves. We had family friends who hosted a boy from Spain for a year and he was also very interested in learning 'American' life and trying to learn lots from his experience here.

I say go for it--just find out as much as you can about the possible student you'd be hosting. If it sounds like they're really involved students who have a willingness to learn here it should be cool. If it seems like they're in it to 'party', stay away.

[carnation]

We signed up! We'll be having 2 girls--1 Japanese and 1 Korean! Both love volleyball and music so we hope they'll hit it off. Maybe they'll want to be on the volleyball team or in the school band. Both have been at boarding school so being an exchange student might not be too hard for them!

I foresee that this year, we won't have half the football team at our house 24/7. We'll have all of them.