foreign exchange students

[mrswadders]

Hi,
any grapes out there had experience of 'puttting up' foreign exchange students? We're looking into housing a chinese student over the summer, we've got a spare room and I work at school so am off for the holidays. I've already got my CRB check so I know that's no problem. I've got a 17 year old so I thought it might be good for him too.

[HeyWayne]

We've had two experiences, both very different.

On both occasions they came to us through my place of work - via our international network of companies. Our first was a young Dutch lady (of whom I've posted on here I'm sure) and she was fantastic -she became part of the family and we remained in touch for years after until she was tragically killed. Anyone who ever met her had nothing but good things to say about her - genuinely.

Our second occupant could not have been further from the first. She was slightly older, had real personal hygiene issues (never washed her bedding in the 10 weeks she stayed) and we were not sorry to see her go.

Looking back, both were experiences for us - and had Bean been older it may have proved useful for him to experience different cultures and people outside of our natural network.

Give it a go - it's all experience.

[Florence Fennel]

How does your 17-year old feel about it?

[jackie j]

I had a summer or two of having students back in the early 80's, The first one's were fine. Swedish boy overlapped with a spanish girl who over lapped with an Italian girl all very polite and wonderful. The following year we had an absolute gorgeous Italian 17 year old boy, I had to keep the younger mum's away lol he got up to mischeif but nothing serious and he was polite, then we had an absolute nightmare of a time with a 12 year old black girl from the ivory coast who thought I was her slave as she had slaves at home, ( her words .) I never asked my students to do anything but they all offered to wash up etc, not this one oh no, we asked her to help after sunday lunch so we could all go out over the moors, she refused so we didnt take her out. When she had gone home after three weeks with us I found mouldy sandwiches, chewing gum stuck to my furniture, dirty underwear ( really bad ), she didnt wash while she was with us and the smell ugh makes me feel ill just thinking about it, she brought friends round without asking. Never again did I open up my house in that way, I did have an exchange student who was paired with my son, needles to say she didnt get on with us, spent most of her time in her room even though we tried to invovle her, but that was the schools fault for putting a girl with a family of four boys. Poor girl.

[mrswadders]

How does your 17-year old feel about it?

He's actually quite 'up' for it, he does a lot of voluteering for local youth groups - he's part of the local youth council. He's very easy going and loves meeting new people - just hope if we go for it whoever we get is ok!

How did those of you who've had experience get on with the language barrier - I have to admit my husband and I aren't very good with foreign languages, although we've managed quite admirably when on holiday!

[janeyo]

Hi
We had foreign students when I was growing up - probably in total about 20. They stayed from 3 weeks to 2 years! Ages ranged from 14- 45. Some were on crash courses for business and some for school.
We only had issues with one, who was actually trying to get out of doing his national service at the time! And he did some damage to his room. he was called metin - but we called him mental LOL
All of the others were great - they mixed well with me and my brother and we would help them with homework etc.
In fact we even went for a holiday to one of them's italian summer house and stayed with their family.

It is a great exerience and I am quite convinced the main reason I decided to become a language teacher!

ps we never had any isses with language barriers, we have dictionaries and sign language - they were here to learn English! We picked up loads of words from them too as we used to sit round the dinner table and and learn from them too

[Two_Sheds]

I have lived with many, many different people: very rarely do you get those with good hygiene standards and manners. Usually you get those people who can't find anyone else who'd put up with them (and I count myself amongst those last)

[rustylady]

At least you only have them for a limited time, and if they are really nice you can always keep in touch afterwards.

[jackie j]

We only had problems with the exchange student as she wouldnt speak english, she could understand every word we said but chose not to speak to us. She was very unhappy with us, good job it was only a short visit.
The others could all speak english better than me lol.

[Germinater]

We have students at the moment ..I have found that thia and Chinese students are really nice and very well behaved .the thia boys we had could be a little noisey but boys from anynation are noisy rant they .my son loved having them and they would sit in his room playing playstation and watching film laughing and it was great .but. Russian student of witch we have had a few are generally pains .they have very little respect .we ask all our students that if they plan to eat out to let us know so we do not waiste food all are fine with this except the Russians they will turn up at 8:30 in the evening with out telling you they have eaton and when we complained to them about this they would just turn up for dinner eat a few mouth fulls and then be out the door within minutes and then next day we would find empty mc Donaldson bags in there room this would annoy me as I don't like to waste food but by the end of there stay they would eat like horse when there spending money had almost run out but again straight out the door within minutes of eating no thank yous nothing .most spoke good English although are last lot spoke pretty much no English at all. Why send children here that can speak no English and one was only ten years old it must have been very difficult for her.are first Russian complained out our house on the second day saying our house was cold (remember he's from Russia??)also his room was not big enuff are toilet was broken they did move him but then we found out that he wanted to stay in flats the school had for older students as a friend of his was there .fine but why lie??we found out that a week latter he had been sent back to Russia after being caught drunk at the flats and assaulting one of the others students there ..so we were very glad he had been moved as we did not want that kind of thin around our children.we have stopt taking in Russians now and will only take in one more lot of Chinese girls in a weeks time for a fortnight before we stop for good as we will need our spare room as we are looking after one of my patners nieces witch we are very much looking forward to as she is a lovely little girl..