All In The Family Families Do Their Best To Make Exhange Students Feel More At Home

Phyllis Hoffman knows how to make kids feel at home.

She’d better. She has hosted 32 international students over the past five years.

Hoffman and her husband Stan, like dozens of other families in the Inland Northwest, have become masters at the art of hospitality.

But the work of host families goes beyond simple hospitality. It involves becoming emotionally attached to someone not related; becoming “family” to a young stranger.

Del Guenther is area coordinator of the American Intercultural Student Exchange in Spokane. He said there is an adjustment period when a teen moves into the home.

“You’ve got to be ready for misunderstandings and culture shock,” he said.

When exchange students come to American homes, Guenther said, they don’t want to be treated like guests.

Valley resident Diane Hein, along with her husband and two teenagers, began hosting an exchange student, Carlos, from Colombia last year.

“Our whole family met him at the airport, took him home and showed him his room,” she said. “We gave him time to unpack and settle. The next day I showed him a written schedule of our activities. I showed him where the food was and frequently reminded him, ‘You are not a guest.’

“When he’d come to me and ask for a can of pop, I’d say, ‘Do you have to ask?’ until he believed he was one of us.”

Hoffman, who regularly hosts Japanese students from Mukogawa Fort Wright Institute, gives her students a video tape of her home, showing the inside and outside, with narration in English and Japanese.

When Hoffman and her husband bring their students home for the first time, they do so in daylight, so that the house will be easily recognized.

They also invite the students to sign a family quilt. It has signatures of all the host daughters they’ve had since 1992.

The quilt seems to cement the bond. The students call the Hoffmans “Grandma’ and “Grandpa.”

Before placing a student in a home, exchange programs try to match the interests of a foreign teenager to American family members, said Susan Owens, a host mother and area counselor for American Field Service, an exchange organization. The closer the match, the easier the adjustment.

This is especially true when the host family has children or teens at home.

Ginger Simpson, area administrator of Cultural Homestay International in Coeur d’Alene, stresses the importance of all family members agreeing before hosting an exchange student.

“It’s got to be a family decision,” Simpson said. “Kids must be comfortable with another child moving into their home.

“If there are reservations, I doubt we’d place a student in that home.” Owens remembers her own children’s experience last year when a Swiss student joined the household. Her daughters, then 10 and 13, developed their own relationship with the student.

“I learned they have to do that themselves. It’s best for me not to be a part of it,” she said.

In the home, the student should be treated like his or her American counterparts. If the other kids have chores, the student should also have chores. The same is true with a curfew and other house rules.

Marija Radonijic, an exchange student living with Kim and Forrest Reynolds in Deer Park, said the curfew was her biggest adjustment.

“In Yugoslavia, we normally go out at 10:30 p.m., then stay out practically all night,” she said. “You don’t do that here.”

She’s still amazed at the early-to-bed hours of her host family. For Elin Astrom of Sweden, small things required the biggest adjustments.

When she moved into Janet and Robert Short’s home in Spangle six months ago, she said, “It felt funny to suddenly be a family member. I didn’t know if I could get something to eat when I wanted to. I didn’t know what was OK with them.”

But she quickly added that she now feels at home now, “really a part of them here.”

The length of time required to develop a true feeling of kinship between student and host family differs with each situation.

Hein recalled: “I let myself love Carlos as my own son within a couple of months. Feelings grew, like in an adoption.

“When he was sick, I was caring for him. When his girlfriend broke up with him, he cried on my shoulder.”

How long do those feelings remain?

Owens said she is still in touch with a girl she hosted from Colombia.

“It’s a lifetime relationship and commitment for us,” Owens said. “No matter how many years go by, she’ll always be our daughter.”