We have hosted students for the last two years. All the arrangements were completed by May. The students needed time to get visa, tickets etc. You may want to still contact the teacher. Sometimes, the kids stay with more than one family and will be switching host families.

As a whole, our experiences were good. It really depends on the student and your families ability to be open and interested in other cultures.

Please email me if you have specific questions.

Lynda

As a PTA leader, I helped to relocate one exchange student in a bad situation who was assigned to our high school. The exchange organization put a high school boy from France with a family that had no high school kids. The mother was single/divorced and working with a 10-12 year old son. The student had shoulder length hair and an earring, the mother complained, and she said that he ate too much, so she wasn't buying food and he was doing without. School had just started and he had been there for part of the summer.

My friend questioned him, and he did not want to leave the high school, but he wanted out of that family. I was asked to find another home for him in our high school feeder neighborhood. Our area is coastal southern California, and he wanted to stay here. The organization had only an inland alternate home for him and so could not help.

I called all the people I knew who had teen students from our high school: various service organization boards I serve on, youth sport teams, etc. A fellow member of our YMCA board who had a high school son my DD knew and who is a lawyer said that they had been wondering about an exchange student now that his older son was out of the house. So it worked out. The boy was a great fit, and the two families met for ski vacations and European jaunts. His parents are French physicians.

This was a potentially sad case because of a mismatch of the sposoring organization in selecting a family for this exchange teenager. He ended up with a lovely, warm family.

As for a student eating too much ... when I was a teen, part of the time with lots of farm chores to do during six years of World War II when farm workers had gone to war, Dad used to say that he thought that I had a hollow leg!

For families and student who can muster a measure of flexibility, most of the time such blendings work out well ... and the folks involved get a different outlook on life. Plus often forge friendships that last for years - even generations?

I hope that you can find such an opportunity, even as a backup in case, as one responder suggested, a match may not work out as planned.

ole joyful

Might not be too late ... I know there have been students here who didn't have places to go the first couple weeks of classes. The school should have a phone number for a coordinator who can help.

I actually loved 'the experience' of having a foreign exchange student. It was just our student didn't talk to us hardly at all, never once called us by our names (or anything else), never thanked us for anything until the day she left. Now we get letters and emails addressed to Mom and Dad (us!!), she sends gifts and photos... quite a change from 3 years ago when she lived with us.

Now some friends of ours took an exchange student the year after we did it and their student was bubbly, friendly, talkative and a hugger. She drove them crazy too. So maybe it doesn't matter if you get a quiet or a talkative one? lol

I would consider doing it again one day. Here it doesn't matter if you have HS aged kids or not, although I'm sure that would be more fun for the student. Many older couples without kids at home hosted students in my area.

Good luck if you decide to do it, if not this year... get ahold of the local coordinator this coming summer and you can look through the kid's applications and get a feel for which would work best with your family.

Some students don't come for a full school year too...might be able to get in on that...

Some of my greatest friends in highschool were exchange students..I wish we hadn't lost touch!

DD and SIL had a student from Ukraine last year and it was a disaster. After a couple of months they found her another place to live. It was such a relief to have her gone.

Linda

Yes, Kath, I think it could be to late.

"all the "good ones" are already picked". :)

But overall, it is a GREAT experience for your kids, and yourself.

I had three, but only two of them for the whole school year.

Moni

The thing that concerns me about your post is that deciding to take on the responsibility for someone else's child, a child who probably speaks English as a second language, etc, really shouldn't be a spur of the moment decision. It should be something you've given a great deal of thought to, and probably some months of planning--to make sure you have the appropriate space, you know about the program that they're involved with, you have touched base with their teachers to make sure everything goes smoothely for them, possibly your family would be taking some 'crash' language classes to help communicate with them. I just don't see getting involved last minute as being the way to go for the best experience for either your family or the visiting child. Make sure you've got all your bases covered and are truly ready to take in a person from another culture, who may have VERY different customs than your family does.

If it is too late for this school year, why not consider getting involved with one of the programs where students come for a month or so during the summer. Dsis just had a little 14 year old Spanish girl (from Castille) for a month this past summer. If you plan on doing this next summer, you'll have time to get things in order, plan for some activities and trips, maybe learn something about your student's country and language in the meantime. I will say this, though.. Dsis told me that she really lucked out. Her student was lovely and well-behaved. But she got the best of the bunch, that most of the other families had major probles with the kids they took in (one got the surprise of a several thousand $$$ phone bill! among other things)

Azzalea, it wasn't a "spur of the moment decision", actually have been thinking of doing this for a couple years now. I've just had a busy summer.

When I was in high school, I became very friendly with an exchange student from Argentina who lived down the street from me. She was very unhappy in her "home" and said the host family used her as a servant, making her do an excessive amount of housework. I encouraged her to complain to the sponsor organization, and she left early. My parents were willing to let her live with us, but she returned to Argentina and I never heard from her again.