Homestays
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| Mary Montgomery observes her host mother's traditional way of grinding coffee while on the School for International Training's (SIT) Madagascar Ecology and Conservation program. Lauren Col |
Study abroad organizations often offer homestays as an alternative to living on campus or in apartments. A host family is an invaluable source of information and stability in a new place. In the best case, your new family will treat you like one of their own—sharing their traditions, explaining their social norms, and helping you develop your language skills.
However, the process of adjustment can require sacrifice on both sides. Students must overcome initial differences of language, culture, and opinion. Host families give up their time and space. Potential problems may be averted if students communicate their needs in advance.
There is no better way to immerse yourself in a new culture than to live among locals. As your host family forces you into familiarity with their language and culture, you will come to understand your host country and find a place to belong. In the midst of an exhilarating and bewildering journey, they offer us one thing we can recognize—a home. —Anika Gupta and Nicole Price Fasig
By Jessica Brown, Transitions Abroad
A homestay experience is the living arrangement that allows students to most fully experience the native culture. If the host family does not speak English, the living situation demands total immersion in the language, which greatly improves the speed of language acquisition. Likewise, the experience facilitates total immersion in the culture. Daily interactions with the host family (and their friends and relatives) let students learn countless cultural nuances that could otherwise be learned only through a textbook or, perhaps, would be overlooked altogether.
Many host families virtually adopt their foreign students, making them a part of the family. When students are sick (or perhaps simply homesick), a loving host family is often there, ready to prescribe local remedies, provide advice, and offer moral support for the student who would otherwise be alone in a foreign country. Many students develop close relationships and correspond with their host families for years or even decades after their study abroad experiences.
Despite these benefits, a homestay experience can be extremely frustrating for individuals who have already lived on their own for several years and strongly value their independence. When living in someone else’s home, students are expected to follow the family’s rules (which may include a curfew) and may be asked to help with household chores. Also, many students who select a homestay complain about the lack of privacy.
Unfortunately, homestay experiences are occasionally dangerous as students are sometimes victims of robbery or physical or sexual assaults. Before opting for a homestay arrangement, be sure to ask the coordinator whether and how the host families are screened and selected for participation in the program.
By Molly Beer
In Spain it is impolite to put your left hand in your lap while you eat. In India, however, you must put your left hand in your lap while you eat. In Tibet it is your feet you have to worry about; you must not point the soles of your feet at anyone or anyone’s shrine, as feet are the lowest part of the body and placing anything but the dirt below those feet is blasphemous in a culture that values humility.
In short, everything from eye contact to posture speaks to people of all cultures, but the meanings change. Within those varied meanings lie a thousand potential conflicts or miscommunications. Language itself comes after body language and behavior in intercultural communication.
Living in another country is challenging, but living in another culture is exponentially more so. And yes, it is possible to be in a country without being in the culture. If cultural immersion appeals to you, living with a host family is a crash course.
Living with host families is infinitely less romantic than the alternatives. I still daydream about my apartment in Florence, Italy, decorated with candles and Chianti bottles stuffed with roses, or the funky fourth floor flat in Pontevedra, Spain that I shared, along with a passion for homemade music and food, with classmates from New Zealand, Australia, and Japan. And then there was my little house draped with bougainvillea in the imported teachers’ compound in El Salvador, where my boyfriend and I grew orchids in our lime tree.
These experiences all brought me joy, but I regretted not being more immersed in the culture of those countries. I had plenty of friends each time, but they were foreigners like me, or, if they were from the country in question, they were familiar with or interested in my culture—we spoke English, we sang American songs, we went out dancing until all hours of the night, and made a spectacle of ourselves in ways we did not even realize.
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Living with another family is a different experience from what I’d expected. My room at school in the U.S. is a mess. Dishes accumulate in corners and piles of clothes reside on most of the furniture. Before coming to Australia, I knew living with another family would be a three-month exercise in diligence and self-discipline. Luckily, my new home is truly a bachelor pad—no hand-blown glass trinkets to break, and the furniture and matching carpet, both a comfortable brownish color, are able to disguise the worst spill.
Jim Andrews, my host dad, originally came from a Maori village on the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand. A carpenter by trade, he immigrated to Australia in the ’70s to find a job, as many Kiwis do. Thirty years later, and despite his best efforts, he has permanently relocated to “the biggest island.”
The Andrews family grows with my weekly discoveries of a new son or daughter. And on every trip to the market or milkbar, it seems a new cousin is introduced. They are old and young but all wave to Jim, usually before he recognizes them.
I have nightly conversations with Jim. After dinner, we usually settle into the kitchen with a cup of coffee or tea, the first of several. The topics are diverse but are initiated by Jim taking a sip of tea, setting his hands on the table and making a customary opening statement: “Look, the (plural noun) are bloody wonderful (type of plural noun),” and we proceed from there.
He tells me about his childhood in rural New Zealand. I hear about his family, the ones still in the village and the ones who now live in Australia. We cover Maori culture, politics, the construction industry, food, education, art, occasionally religion, and always Australian footy and rugby—the dominant psyche at Jim’s house. These ruminations fill the better part of the evening, evolving on an indefinite timeline unless a big match is on TV or I have plans.
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Tips and Insight
Gift Giving by Julia Steinberger
How do you choose a gift for a group of people you’ve never met? Gifts that spark conversation about where you’re from or the things you enjoy are good choices, and they can make great icebreakers.
Continue reading to find out about some good novelty items that work across the board.
We asked some of our authors about their homestays, and this is what they said:
- What did you find the most surprising?
I knew family was big in Mexico, but I didn’t know it was huge. I was shocked that they accepted me so readily into their culture and were even offended if I didn’t participate fully in events. —Haley Trover
What were you glad you packed?
A photo album that included pictures I brought from home and those I took abroad. I left it with my host family at the end of my stay. —Shalene Jha
What was the most unusual dish you tried with your host family?
I would have to say that eating horse was a little unusual for me. I rode horses back home, so it was strange to eat something I considered my pet. —Kajsa Berlin
What was the most rewarding aspect of your stay?
I loved getting to know my family and becoming a part of their everyday lives. The family barbeques were especially great in this respect. —Scott Vignos
- What was your favorite experience?
Spending time in the kitchen with my Ecuadorian hosts. It was a female-only sanctuary that never failed to be raucous and edgy; we talked about men, machismo, and what is wrong with the world, and we made fun of one another. —Molly Beer
What will you miss?
The constant sound of the Italian language throughout the apartment. —Kristen Kehoe
What advice/tips would you share with future homestayers?
Dive in and be a part of the family. Ask questions, chat, and use the family as both a support network and a classroom. —James Scott
More Stories
Finding Common Ground by Shalene Jha
The soft clinking of dishware and stirring of coffee were among the sounds filling the backroom of El Maple hostel in Quito, Ecuador. The sun was streaming through the windows as we sat clutching our program’s cultural immersion folders. Though the moment may have seemed tranquil, a whirlwind of anxiety and expectation was twisting inside each of us. That night would be our first away from the group, away from speaking English, and away from all things American.
Still Life by Kristen Kehoe
…Everything in her kitchen soothed me—things that never would at home. Her table amassed layers of pasta bowls, crumbs, wine corks, rum cake, and dirty dishes from previous days. These things tiptoed their way around me, and each day I would find a new element of the architecture of her character in that room. It is not the paintings that I remember now, nor the colors of the walls, nor the size of the room. Rather, the sense of place was in the smallest details, the things unseen by those merely passing through, the details that became a mosaic of my three-month life in Rome.
