Exchange student?

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-21-2005
Exchange student?
8
Mon, 02-27-2006 - 11:26am

Hello,
We are going to have a German exchange student with us from the end of March through the end of April. They do this every year - 10 or so girls from an all-girl's Catholic school in Germany come to experience northeast Ohio for a bit. Dd is wildly excited - dh is a little apprehensive and I'm somewhere in between. Has anyone on the board done something like this? I know there will be some planned activiites with all the students and their host families, but otherwise it will be up to us to show her around. We're very close to a large Amish community and, of course, we'll head up to Cleveland for theRock and Roll Hall of Fame & a few other sites. We'd love to get down to Marco Island (so she doesn't think the US looks like Akron), but I'm not sure we can pull it off.

Any suggestions?

jt

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-14-2000
Mon, 02-27-2006 - 11:44am

We're doing the exact same thing!

Pam
iVillage Member
Registered: 12-22-2003
Mon, 02-27-2006 - 11:53am

jt,

I posted this same question here last summer!

We had an exchange student from Japan last summer for about three weeks. It was a bit challenging. She seemed miserably unhappy for the first week or so and I ended up calling the program coordinator to see if someone from the program could speak to her in Japanese to see what was wrong, if she was just homesick or if we were doing something that offended her.

Her English skills were only marginally better than our Japanese skills -- which are non-existant. Communicating with her was difficult. She was a very picky eater, as well. After a couple days of trying to figure out what she wanted to eat and would eat, I took her to our local grocery store and had her pick out food herself. Kinda sorta worked. One night we took her to a local restaurant for sushi (which me and kids do not eat) and after eating, she pulled out her little pocket translater, typed in something and showed it to me. It said "tasteless and unappetizing". I was floored! I felt just awful thinking that she'd just choked down all that food she didn't like.

In spite of all that, it was an interesting experience and we are considering hosting a student for a whole semester next school year. The director of the exchange program indicated that students that want to attend US schools for that length of time are required to speak English at a much higher level than the students that come for the shorter-term program.

Good luck! It is a fun experience.

Julie

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-21-2005
Mon, 02-27-2006 - 4:22pm

Wow - it's a samll world, isn't it? I'm not even sure they offer German at dd's school, so I'm a bit mystified as to how this exchange got started. Dd isn't going to be travelling to Germany this summer as part of the program. I'd consider allowing it next year - we'll see.

We'll have to chat again when we have our respective guests!

jt
ps - your advice about just "hanging out" is great - here I am thinking I should be taking her all over the place, singing "Be Our Guest, Be Our Guest!" all the while..

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-21-2005
Mon, 02-27-2006 - 4:26pm

Julie,
Your experience last summer was right before I started posting here. I DEFINATELY would have remembered hearing about your situation. What a nightmare - especially about the sushi thing! Geez. Maybe she didn't want to do it to begin with??

Fortunately our student's English is quite good - at least judging by her application. For this I am grateful, as the only German that I can recite (courtesy of High School German I) is "Where is your house permit?" and "The window is dusty." Or it might be "the blackboard is dusty." Not sure.

I'm sure I'll have much to post when the time rolls around....
jt

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-05-2003
Wed, 03-15-2006 - 1:39pm

Hi,

I am not the parent of a teen ( yet!), but we are looking at hosting an exchange student for a full school year. There is very little information out there. What there is a lot of is agencies looking for host families. Since they all have an agenda, i.e. wanting you to be a host, it is hard to figure out if it is a good thing for my family. I found one webpage with great info, but it hadn't been updated since 1999. There are some pages for students by students, which is helpful to a small degree, but I want to hear from other host families!

Has anyone found any good info out there on this? Would you think it would be interesting to start a whole message board? How would I do that??
Any help is appreciated!
I will probably be back with lots of teen questions after August if this all goes through!)

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-21-2005
Wed, 03-15-2006 - 3:33pm
You might try contacting a Rotary club if you have one nearby. They have an exchange program, but I'm not sure if it is for the full school year. Other than that, I don't know what to tell you - this sort of fell into our laps!
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-05-2003
Fri, 03-17-2006 - 3:43pm

I just reread my message, and I was not very clear- sorry! I am working with YFU and we have already started the process of getting a student I picked out. So, it is not an agency I am looking for. I am trying to find out what it is really like to be the host parents.

Thank you for your suggestion of Rotary. I did look at them, but you have to go through your local Rotary group and I don't have one nearby. I also thought it might be better to go with a group whose sole purpose is exchanges, so it was a toss up between AFS and YFU. I found a charity watch page that gave YFU and A+ for how it used the money it received, so I ended up going with them.

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-21-2005
Fri, 03-17-2006 - 6:56pm

Or I could have been reading it completely in a fog...

Did you read the posts from Julie and Pam? They have both had experience and Pam is getting ready for another student. You might consider starting a new thread to get the attention of any posters who have already done this.

Our student arrives in 1 1/2 weeks. She has been exchanging e-mails with our dd and her dad and I have exchanged a few e-mails. I am VERy excited.
jt
You said you don't currently have teens? Do you have younger/older kids?