Relationships
At Home...Abroad
By Sarayu Adeni
When she arrived in the southern Spanish city of Cádiz in the summer of 2008, Elizabeth Barajas only expected one thing from her stay with a host family: a chance to strengthen her language skills.
“I heard from people how good of an experience it is,” she said. “You are totally immersed.”
Barajas, a business and Plan II junior, joined the UT faculty-led program in Spain for the summer and stayed with host families in two different cities. But she soon discovered that homestays are more than just a place to live and practice speaking Spanish – they are a real family, supporting their foreign students in an often bewildering new environment.
In addition to another UT student, Barajas’ family in Cádiz consisted of a 72-year-old woman named Antonía, who had two grown sons and had hosted students in her home for 14 years. Barajas fondly described homestay life with her señora as living with a grandmother.
“It was cold the first night and she lent me her shawl,” Barajas said. “She woke us up every morning…she was totally involved.”
An article in Interspectives Journal described homestays – the experience of living with a host family – as an effective tool in “experiential learning.” Simply, living with a local family in a foreign country, instead of in a dorm or hostel, accelerates language skill as well as intercultural competence.
Barajas said her interactions with Antonía and with her second family in Santander – a mother with two grown daughters – helped build her confidence in the Spanish language and her knowledge of culture.
“Within the first week, we’d had so many conversations about policy in the U.S.,” she said. “We would watch TV and she’d iron.”
Barajas would also go out in the afternoons with her Santander sisters and meet their friends and boyfriends. She got help on her Spanish essays while observing the country’s family dynamics.
“It’s completely normal for 30-year-old men to live with their grandmothers,” she said.
“It’s all about community,” said Tori Klem, a broadcast journalism senior. “Family is very, very central to them.”
Klem, who studied in San Joaquín, Costa Rica, with Academic Programs International last spring, was excited to have three siblings in her host family. It turned out they were just as excited to meet her.
“They never had a student that would talk to them,” Klem said. “I got to be the first that was integrated in their life.”
Klem’s family included a mother, a grandmother, an aunt and three brothers. Two of them were still in school, young enough for her to relate to. They would take Klem for strolls through town or to the movies with friends. The family threw her a surprise birthday party and even accompanied her on one of her program excursions to the coast, riding along behind in two cars.
Klem keeps in touch with her host family through phone and email. “I’m going back to visit this January,” she said, “and I’m staying in the same house.”
It often depends on the study abroad program, but most host families are chosen through a screening process. The AFS Intercultural Program, for example, selects host families through home interviews and community recommendations. Families that live close to academic program sites with ample living space and a safe, clean environment are selected.
Homestay families can be anything from families with or without children to single parents and older couples, and will typically provide a room, two meals a day and possibly laundry service. Some academic programs, such as the School for International Training, offer rural homestays to expose the student to life in a village.
So how do you decide whether a homestay is a good idea? First ask: do I want to learn the language head-on, surrounded by only native speakers? Do I want to make international friends? Do I want to experience customs and tradition firsthand? Can I adjust to living in a new family? If the answer is yes, then a homestay could be for you.
The next step is to find a host family in the country of your choice. Although some students choose to make arrangements independently through online homestay bureaus, Peterson’s College Planner Online warns that not all study abroad programs offer the option, so living with a host family should be part of your search criteria when finding an academic program.
During the application process for the program, there is also an accommodations section. In an article for Transitions Abroad magazine, writer Kathy Christiansen recommended that students consider the following: do I prefer smoking or non-smoking? Children in the house or none? Do I have food allergies or restrictions, such as vegetarianism? How close is it to school? How easy is it to change homes if I need to?
When matching an applicant to a host family, most programs try hard to honor the requests made by the student and the host family. However, some don’t provide the student with the family’s name or address until they are in-country. And the family dynamic may differ – some homestay relationships have as much social interaction as a landlord and tenant would.
It is up to the student to be proactive in finding a good experience. Most programs have orientation sessions to provide a brief overview of cultural norms, safety and how-to’s that will assist in establishing a good relationship with homestay families.
Barajas said that most families are lenient, as long as students make a sincere effort to live by the family rules. “I was free to do what I wanted,” she said.
As Tori Klem suggests, monitoring how much water and electricity you use is considerate to your homestay family. Watch for small details like dinner table procedures and keeping shoes on or off in the house.
“You just have to be really mindful,” Klem said. “It is a different culture.”
College students run into the occasional communication problem with roommates in the U.S. During a homestay where the student is not fluent in the native language, communication is already an issue. “I’ve been humbled,” Elizabeth Barajas said. “When you live with another family, you learn that there are so many barriers other than language.”
A 2005 study assessing the impact of year-long homestay programs showed that students had a more thorough knowledge of the host culture and language, more intercultural friendships and more time spent with people from other cultures upon their return home. Barajas and Klem achieved their primary goal of improving their Spanish language skills.
“At first it was hard to be funny or sarcastic – to just be me in the language,” Klem said. “But just talk and ask questions.”
“I would constantly think in Spanish, talk in Spanish,” Barajas said. “If I had lived in a dorm with other American students, I would not have learned as much.”
Upon her return from living with her Costa Rican brothers, Klem rekindled her relationship with her real brother, and even had her parents visit her homestay family.
“My Costa Rican family didn’t speak English and my American family didn’t speak Spanish,” she said. “But my mom cried when she met my host mom, ‘Thank you for taking care of my baby.’”
In addition to providing room and board, homestays fill an important gap for study abroad students. They are safe harbor for adventurous young people adrift in a new country. A host family creates a supportive environment, welcoming students into a new culture and ultimately offering a chance to reflect on their own cultures and families back home.