Bon Jour! 10 Tips on Hosting a Foreign Student in the Family Diggs

New York City, Lake George, and Washington D.C are a few of the destinations we crammed into less than three weeks as we toured the East Coast hot spots with our “adopted” French teenager. We were fortunate to have worked out a private arrangement, through family connections, and enjoyed our own mini international summit. It was our first experience of the sort. Next week, we’ll put our little darling on a flight (or flights) to France where she will spend a few weeks in Toulouse.

If you are thinking of an international exchange of some kind, we learned a few things in our experience that might help you:

1. Work an arrangement through close family ties. My brother-in-law travels on business in Europe and knows this French family well.  They approached him about the possibility of an American family who might want to swap kids for a few weeks. In this set up, it means you’ve got someone leading the charge who knows both parties (what you tolerate and what you won’t) and understands your family vibe. It helped prevent any major surprises of the kind we heard nightmares about, but fortunately did not experience ourselves.

2. You need a parent to man the fort. If there is a stay-at-home- parent in the picture, that works. If not, forget working and just enjoy the time to learn and help another young adult expand their horizons. Don’t plan any major projects during this time, something has to give.

3. It would be nice to know something of the language. We were grossly language ignorant and didn’t speak any French. Our daughter has a few years of French under her belt, however, as parents, we could have made it even more fun if we would have taken the time to listen to tapes or something. (Our guest did speak some English.) Worst case, even if we botched the language, we could have given her a few laughs at our feeble attempts. This isn’t a requirement, simply a “nice to have.”

4. Plan downtime. Although we took several excursions, we did schedule a week of low key time at home between all the traveling. This was a good thing, because after two trips, we were all dragging. The scenery was great, cities were fun, food yummy, but at some point you need a place to call your own and (as adults) time to work off the cookies, crepes, wine, cupcakes…so you can then go on trip #3 and start all over. This is in addition to the fact that our feet and knees could only take so much. By the time we hit the Air and Space Museum one late afternoon in Washington D.C., we only made it an hour. Fair warning, be careful how much you pack into the first day of a multi-day city tour.

5. Include some culture. While the girls wanted to shop endlessly, we did manage to successfully work in parks, museums and monuments. It was a nice break in the action and the girls ran out of spending money anyway. (How many t-shirts can they buy?)

7. A few weeks is a good starting point. If it’s your first time at this, and you are dual income parents, a couple of weeks of this positive chaos is probably good. You are “on call” the entire time and one can’t help but feel a sense of responsibility to safety, fun, and a quality experience. The host kid is in charge of entertainment 24/7, which is a tall order. In this case, the two got along beautifully, however, all of her attention was focused on making sure our guest was adequately tended to. No doubt, it will be the same when she is in France.

8. Be flexible. Combining cultures is a great learning experience, and not without little surprises. Our guest was a vegetarian…who knew? Not us. We managed and so did she. We discovered crepes are a beautiful thing because you can stuff them with anything!

9. Save the smallest room for last. We held off on the giant sleepover until our final journey.  During the initial trips, the girls roomed together and parents were down the hall.  Room fees being what they are in NYC, it made the most sense to “think small,” like one room. By then we had gotten used to walking around in our PJ’s and such, so it wasn’t so scary for her to see strange adults in their jammies across the room. We could have done it in the beginning, but it would have been a bit awkward.

10. Have faith in the youngsters to make it work. It was only a matter of days until the two girls were connected – literally – by an iTunes headset cord. Each teenager had a plug in their ear as they shared favorite songs on the subway, in bed, in the car, walking, on the bus. One of my favorite photos is this life moment posted above.

Wheels up in a few days… Merci!