May 2, 2002
Homestay helps hosts as well as students
Say you’re a student, thousands of miles from home in a foreign culture, where a language other than your own is spoken. How much would it mean to you if someone picked you up at the airport and whisked you to their home for a few days until you could get your bearings?
The answer seems obvious, and that’s why the Foundation for International Understanding Through Students (FIUTS) has arranged just that through its Welcome Week homestay program. In it, volunteers who offer their homes are matched with international students who apply for the program from more than 100 different countries. Volunteers are expected to give the students temporary housing for up to a week until they can move into the dorm or an apartment. It’s a program that has many enthusiastic participants among the faculty and staff — people who seem to think they get as much out of it as the students do.
Take Susanna Cunningham, for example. A professor of biobehavioral nursing and health systems, she’s been hosting students since 1992.
“I’m a foreigner myself,” Cunningham says in explanation. “I’m from Canada. Now, Canada is not very foreign, but it’s a little foreign, so I think I understand a little how the students must feel.”
Cunningham has hosted students from Scotland, Mexico, Spain, China and Thailand, among others. One of those students even became so much a part of the family that he stayed in their lives through the entire three years he was here and helped Cunningham host another student the year after his arrival.
“That was Roberto, who was from Puebla, Mexico,” Cunningham says fondly. “Everything was a first experience for him — first time out of Mexico, first time on a plane, first time to see the ocean, first time to be on a boat — and he loved every single experience.”
Cunningham isn’t the only one who’s maintained an association with a student over a longer time period. Greg Daigle, a secretary senior in educational psychology, got a homestay of his own when his student returned to Japan and Daigle visited him there. And he has plans to visit another former homestay student in the Netherlands.
“The students kept telling me how warm and friendly they found Americans,” Daigle said. “They seemed amazed that we would open our homes to strangers; their own cultures are a bit more reserved.”
Daigle said he became a homestay host after a co-worker told him about it and he thought it would give him an opportunity to meet people from other countries.
Muriel Dance was eager to meet people too, particularly young people. “My children are off to college, and the house is too quiet,” she says. The senior director of academic programs in Educational Outreach, Dance has hosted two students, both from France.
“My husband speaks French, and he loved having a chance to converse with them,” Dance says, adding that she has requested French, Spanish or Hebrew speakers because those are the three languages spoken in the house.
Language isn’t a barrier for homestay participants, however. Students who come here all speak English, though some do it better than others. Daigle reported that conversing with his Japanese student was difficult, even though the student had studied English for eight years.
“Japanese is just more different from English than European languages,” he says. “Sometimes I found myself trying to explain concepts and cliches that I just didn’t know how to convey.”
On the whole, however, Daigle found he was able to bridge the gap, and very much enjoyed meeting the student’s family when he visited Japan.
When homestay hosts sign up, they agree only to host students when they first arrive. However, some hosts choose to do more. Dance, for example, has invited her students for dinner on a regular basis. And when the couple she hosted earlier this year found themselves in a bad housing situation, she hosted them again for a few weeks until they could find something more suitable.
“It really is fun to get to know people whose ways and customs may be a little different from ours,” Cunningham says of the program. “It gives you a chance to find out how others see us.”
FIUTS is not the only campus group to run a homestay program. English Language Programs runs a summer weekend program for Japanese students. To learn about the FIUTS program, see http://www.fiuts.washington.edu under the community member section or e-mail homestay@fiuts.washington.edu. For the English language program, see http://depts.washington.edu/uwsp/homestay.
