I think it's all good. We're on the other side of the coin. 2 of my cousins from the Philippines were hosted by great families in Michigan and Missouri and I somehow think that made a big difference in their outlook. Kudos to you for doing such wonderful service.

Thank you! We have been blessed and this is a way to pass the blessings along to someone else. We are looking forward to this and will do our best to provide our student with an experience she'll always remember (hopefully for the best)!

My wife and myself raised 3 children and over the yrs have hosted countless exchange students from 2-3 weeks to a entire school yr.

Compatability is likes and dislikes makes life easy but the number one key for us was is the student a only child or has other siblings. Only children are a tad bite more demanding to the point were we had to let some go to other families early where a student from at least one other brother or sister made family life easy.

We are still in contact with a Australian who now has 3 children and in the future will probably host the family and if we get to Australia, we will be at his house and help him milk 300 moobossies.

Our student is the youngest of two daughters. She lives with her parents and her grandparents live in an apt below the main house. Her sister lives in an apt, not far away. They seem to be a close family and we thought there were a lot of similarities between our two families. Besides, they have a Toling Retriever and we have a Golden Retriever!

Wil,
I should have said "salamat po"!!

Our student arrived today...
 

Our student arrived today...
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1344640160.jpg
Dina arrived today (she's on the far left of the picture) and we picked her up, stopped at a local family-owned Italian restaurant for veggie pizza and now Beth is dropping Rebecca (our daughter) and Dina (our exchange student) off at a local teen club. Our son's band is playing a concert there tonight and the girls wanted to go. Dina said that she isn't tired but I'm sure she'll sleep late tomorrow AM. Her English is excellent and she seems to be a very nice, charming girl. We will talk with her tomorrow and explain how our household runs and the family rules (she'll go by the same rules our daughter does as they are the same age). She seems like a good fit for us and I hope we provide her with the experience she came here for...

I talked my parents into hosting a foreign exachange student my senior year. He came from Mexico. I wouldn't necessarily call the experience bad, but it wasn't all that great either. The bio of the student was a bit off. Some of the interests and activities listed may have been true like when he was 5, but as a 17 year old...he had long lost interest...but put it on his bio anyway. This really wasn't a problem...but we were trying to link up interests so the student would have a better experience and easy transition into our home for the year.

Secondly, our student came from a very wealthy family. To say the least...middle class society was not what he had in mind. On top of that, my family attended church every Sunday, so we wanted to make sure that the student we hosted didn't mind attending where we did (which was also mentioned in the bio). This wasn't because we wanted to convert people to our religion...but because we weren't going to have the student stay alone at our house...not on Sunday, not on any day. This became a point of contention after a while. Some people didn't see what the problem was, but before we hosted the student we determined that we weren't going to leave him alone at the house.

I'm not sure if it were all the rules he wasn't used to or the fact that he just got home sick. But after about a month, he was done being a foreign exchange student. My school had two at the time and both wanted to leave after a month. The other family's student went home after a month. Our student wanted to leave, but we convinced him to stay. However, he would only stay if he moved in with another family. It was kind of odd...saw him at school every day but he wouldn't talk to me. He may have been ashamed that he left the home that we opened up to him so he could be an exchange student. Later came to find out that the family he was staying with let him do whatever he wanted...spoiled him really. But I guess he was used to it being from a wealthy family and all.

Bottom line? I'd do it again. It's fantastic meeting people from other countries and sharing cultures. But just be aware that what's being told about your guest may not actually line up with who they are...and the stay may be cut short for one reason or another.

Kaliv, I was your exchange student minus coming from a wealthy family. The first family didn't make me go to church and I was home alone once in a while. But they saw it as a sacred mission to indoctinate me such that whatever they did was how all Germans lived and if I didn't love it, then I must hate Germans. When I was finally kicked out of their house, the second family let me do whatever I wanted. I didn't do anything out of the ordinary, just felt more relaxed with no pressure. I'm still close to both families to this day.

From Bankok ? You sure it was a "girl "?? :p

I can understand how some complications could occur in the process. The organization we went through (AFS.org) provided us with a very thorough and seemingly accurate profile of our student and provided our student and her family with a detailed profile of us. During dinner yesterday, Dina asked me how I learned to speak Arabic and I told her, she would have had to carefully read our profile to see that tidbit. I was impressed that she remember it. The girls had a good time at the concert last night and Rebecca introduced Dina to her friends and our son's band and their friends. They are a good group of teens and we know them quite well as they spend a lot of time at our house. Dina is used to taking a bus and train to school every day for her 45 min commute to school and the school she will be attending with our daughter is 5 blocks away from our house and is an easy walk, even in the winter.

We'll discuss the house rules with Dina today. We sent an email to her parents yesterday afternoon, telling them that she arrived and is safe and sound in our home. They replied and were very appreciative. Dina texted them when her plane landed in O'Hare, so they knew she arrived to the US safely.

So far, so good... Dina is settling in and seems comfortable here. She and our daughter share a room and they get along. Dina likes Beth's cooking and she is fun to talk to. She asks good questions and her English is excellent!

Fantastic!

I've thought about this for years and your post makes me think again. I've got the room and the time, but like you finances are tight. I'll look into this again at our HS and see what it takes. Thanks.

It's been a difficult, unpleasant experience so far but we're almost done (6 weeks to go). I'll post details later but let's just say we'll never do this (exchange student) thing again... I'm glad so many here have had positive experiences, ours has not been positive... In a few ways it has been good (our student is in the top 10% at school) but in many other ways it's been downright unpleasant.

Thats sad to hear.

Would like to understand more when the time is right. looks like you wil have her for about 10 months - thats a long exchange.

Tim

Wow that's quite a change between the two posts, please let us know how things turned.

Wow, such a change from what sounded like a very positive beginning. That's unfortunate.

If you want to host, pick the exchange organization first, the student second. Some organizations are based on a few week cultural vacation. Some on an exchange being a one year residency in the US so a student can apply to US schools as a resident to get a better chance of getting in. The first attracts more outgoing, adventurous and fun kids for a possible reverse exchange of your own kids to that town in future and the second very serious students, often very wealthy and not always the most outgoing well rounded kids. And there are many in-between.
Also if you want a student, start early. Toward the end they have the hard to fit students (children of missionaries who must go to x church, "slight" history of seizures and accomplished dragon-boat person-competitor or something). I'm not making any of the above BIO up by the way. It's harder when your choices are an ill fit or nothing.

I can't wait to hear how it all went south. Sounds juicy but I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it.

An update after 9 months and things are upside down. We appreciate that the tone and enthusiasm have evaporated. Must have been difficult. Feel free to hijack your own thread into any appropriate story line you like. Could be entertaining.

Update???? Art what happened to you!?!

x2.

Sorry for the lack of details, but let's just say our student didn't like us very much. She stopped talking to me and our daughter and would only talk to our son and my wife. We had several "sit-downs" and she said everything was OK and she was just shy but that wasn't the case.

We really had to force her to be involved with school activities (tennis, choir) and she volunteered at a local animal shelter (my wife arranged this) and she had the right classes and right teachers (my wife arranged this also), we took her on short trips to see more of Michigan, took her with us as we went out to eat, took her and our daughter to a Muse concert, etc... and she just did not like us...

The AFS advisor and local people tried to help, but it became clear that our student just didn't want to be here and she REALLY did not want to be with us, but by the time all of that was apparent, it was May. Another family who had previously hosted took Dina for the last 6 weeks and they did not have a pleasant time of it, either. We met Dina's parents when they came to visit and it was clear that their daughter ran the household. We wanted her parents to meet us and see that we aren't "monsters" and I think it served that purpose, but overall it was an unpleasant experience that had my wife and daughter in tears many times.

While our student was with us, our daughter's boyfriend was tragically killed (auto accident) and my mother-in-law passed after a long illness, so we had more than our share of family trauma, which didn't help...

I would strongly recommend that people get involved in exchange programs and AFS was a very supportive organization and their people were the best!

On a more positive note, our daughter is spending a month in Vienna, Austria in July, visiting her friend Hannah and her family. Hannah was an exchange student that we met and Hannah and our daughter became very good friends, so it's a nice outcome from this experience. Hannah is a joy to host and most of the kids are like her, not like the student we had.

I don't want our experience to discourage anyone else, I would just recommend that if any situations develop, that they be addressed as early as possible to spare everyone a lot of heartache.

That's too bad, but not surprising. I can go both ways. As I mentioned, I didn't like my host family when I was an exchange student in 1988, they even kicked me out of the house and we're all great friends today and see each other about once a year. In fact, just this morning I called my dearest elderly friend in eastern Germany I only met through the second host family after the first one kicked me out. Soooo happy that happened. That was almost 26 yrs. ago.

One of the kids at my prep school who went to be an exchange student in Germany at the same time I did also didn't fare well. I knew his host family well and they said he was trouble, immediately fell in with the wrong crowd, etc.

We hosted a German girl for a few weeks before the semester started and she was pretty hard to get through to, would spend most of the day in her room with her headphones on. Even my speaking German with her and knowing her neck of the woods very well didn't get much rapport going.

But man, I really have no regrets about any of it. The friends I made through all that are still close friends to this day. I've been to visit a friend in Austria at least 20x and I met her when I was 13 and she was 16 on a student exchange in my town in NJ.

I think we had 12 Au Pairs or so, three which didn't work out. It happens.

In the Au Pair world, they are very careful to assign any blame for failed match-ups. The young women that don't work out and want to stay and work for another family are called "Floaters" (we snagged 3 over the years) and any family that gets a rep is out of the program.

They are all screened, as we were, after issues.

My wife and kids are friends with the majority of young women that were here, flew over for weddings, visited when they travel, all but one has been back to see us, etc. My Daughters Facebook looks like a U.N. web page.

But it can and does go south. I'm just glad you made it through, Art.

I did a 6 month exchange program in Cambridge. Most of my fellow students landed nice homes (working heat, clean, laundry facilities) with friendly families. Me not so much. I spent most of my time out of the house. It happens. Kudos to you for trying!

Thanks, guys! It could have been worse, at least our student was polite, clean and helped in the kitchen and didn't stay out late at night, smoke, etc...

Our daughter is staying with an Austrian family for a month in Vienna this coming summer and that would not have happened without this experience, so that's something very positive. The AFS liaison family and others helped as much as they could but all agreed that there wasn't anything that we could do to make this young woman happy, she is just not wired for happiness and contentment.

My wife thinks that one day she may turn around and get in touch with us after she realizes what we tried to do for her, but that is overly optimistic and will take a long time!

We had two German foreign exchange students one for a year and then another one the following year. I just kept them juiced on Kentucky Bourbon and Mescal till their parents came to pick them up. It was a blast! Sorry to hear your experience isn't going as well Art.

When I saw the initial posts on this I thought to myself that this could go really bad or really good. But I withheld comment. I am very risk adverse and never would have done this...even though I have worked with young people, coached little league, etc. It is just too much responsibility and you are getting a "pig in a poke". Many of you are much better people than I am to do this. I know that I have two children...and when they were 17, one was impossible and the other was an angel. Both were raised exactly the same. People have free will and often either fall in with a bad crowd (or are the bad crowd). We never think it is our kid (or exchange student)...but it is someone's. We often just fool ourself. Glad it was not worse.