High school friends at the football game (including foreign exchange students Saara, from Finland and Pietro, from Italy)
Ten years ago, I started high school. Along with the first homecoming dance and first AP class came my first experience with foreign exchange students. I had never met anyone from Japan, or Colombia, or Finland before — yet, here they were, playing alongside me on the school soccer team.
These students came to my school through a program called the American Field Service — AFS for short. During their time in the United States, students live with a host family, usually for a 10-month period from August until the end of June.
As the high school years passed, my exposure to the handful of foreign exchange students only increased, as they were more likely to take upper-level classes. I remember one year we had all five of them in my American Literature and Composition class — from Germany, Brazil, and Russia. I got to know them and was amazed that, at the age of 16-17, they were brave enough to leave their home countries for a year to live in the United States.
Moritz was one of the German guys in my class, and after we went to prom together, we ended up in a long-term relationship that lasted more than four years. I have to think that if it were not for him — and it were not for me flying to Germany every 6 months or so — I would not have become the world traveler I am today. If it were not for him and the other foreign exchange students I’d met, I don’t know that I would have so eagerly signed up to study abroad for a semester during college.
For the time we were together, Moritz was part of my family, and my parents and sisters grew to love him. My parents, who had never traveled internationally before, began to see the world as a lot smaller. And we began to talk about someday when our family would host a foreign exchange student.
Someday is finally this year. Back in January, my family began the AFS host family application process. The process is very formal and includes in-home visits, interviews, and background checks. Once we were accepted, we chose a student from a group of short biographies we received from AFS.
We are so excited to welcome Gaia, from Sardinia, Italy, to our family in just a few short weeks! We’ve found each other on Facebook and Instagram, and I even sent her a postcard from Alaska. I wasn’t sure if she’d get it, but she sent me the sweetest message thanking me for it and telling me she was going to hang it in her room. For months, all my family has been able to talk about is “When Gaia gets here, we’ll have to take her to…” “When Gaia gets here, I wonder what she’ll think about…”
The connections that host families make with their students are for life, and many host families enjoy it so much that they host again and again. I’ve seen host families visit their students in their home countries years later, and the students come back to visit often as well.
Our girl is arriving in early August, so the countdown is on! Although I feel like I know a lot about AFS through my experiences with my ex-boyfriend and my friends who have hosted, I am excited to finally get the first-person experience of being a host sister. (And AFS has already asked me to blog for them once she arrives.)
I think we have a fun year ahead.
Would you ever host a foreign exchange student? What questions do you have? Check out the links below to learn more about hosting or about AFS.
-Cathy
Learn more about becoming an AFS Host Family.
Originally Published on July 26, 2017.
Awesome article!