Welcoming an international exchange student into your home is a life-changing experience for both the student and the entire host family. Christy from small-town Kansas knows this firsthand. Over the past five years, her family has opened their hearts and home to exchange students from around the world and they’ve discovered just how small — and meaningful — the world can feel.
Christy shares her family’s journey as a host family, the lessons they’ve learned along the way, and why this experience has made their little corner of Kansas feel a whole lot bigger.
Please introduce yourself.
“Hi, my name is Christy M. and I’m from Rossville, Kansas in the United States and we have been a host family for five years.”
How many exchange students have you hosted?
“We’ve had five students from Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Moldova, and Brazil, and it’s been so wonderful.”
What have you learned by hosting an exchange student?
“I think the most important thing that we’ve learned is no matter where they come from, the kids become our kids, and we love them. Sure, at first, it’s kind of awkward — like, do they like us, do we like them? — but when we all get together, they just become your family. That’s the most important thing.
We learn from them different music, different food, and the metric system — so that’s always fun. And I think we’ve shown them that Americans are fun. We’re families just like their families at home. Americans are busy — we are busy, busy people — and I think that’s sometimes really surprising to them: how much we get up, and we go to school, and we go to work, and we go to sporting events, and we belong to clubs. So I think that’s something that they’ve been surprised to learn from our family at least.
When they first come to Kansas we’re like, ‘What do you know about Kansas?’ ‘Um, in Kansas they have cows.’ Well, at our house, we have no cows. So I think that’s something — some of their misconceptions about rural America. We learn from them, too.”
What are your favorite memories while hosting an exchange student?
“I think sharing holidays is probably — I think that’s probably the most special time, because the exchange students really miss their family during the holidays, and so you want to give them that experience of family, and to share our traditions of Christmas, and Thanksgiving, Easter, New Year’s — all those celebrations — and even learning from them. Whether you have a Muslim student or a Buddhist student or somebody who has no religion at all, to share those experiences is just so important. The holidays are probably the very most special family time.”
Do you keep in contact with your former exchange students?
“We have kept in contact. We have gone to see them, which has been really fun — to meet their family and their mom and dad face-to-face. We flew to Scotland and they flew over [from their home countries] and met us in Edinburgh, and it’s just amazing. The world is so small and so connected now. So when they leave, they’re really not gone forever.
What’s so awesome about WhatsApp and Facebook and all those things is you can just ring them, or they can ring us, and we get to talk to them. We find out what they’re doing in university, if they have a boyfriend, if they have a girlfriend. We get to talk to their parents, and we find out about their little siblings.
They’ll call my husband, and they’re like, ‘Dad, I think you’re going to like my boyfriend.’ And I’m like, ‘Hey, if you get married, you got to give us some heads up so we can plan to go to your wedding!'”
How have exchange students impacted your community?
“Having students from around the world come to our little small dot on the map, it makes our dot a little bigger. And when you see things that are happening around the world — whether they’re good or they’re bad, or destructive or positive — you have a connection to it… You know someone that’s lived there. You wonder how they’re doing. We pray for them, the ones that we’ve had that are in a dangerous place now, and you love them.
We know their country. We know something about their country. It’s more personal. It’s real. Like I said, if it’s positive, if it’s negative — we’re watching the Olympics right now, and you see, you’re like, ‘Oh, go, go, go Germany! I know somebody from there.’ You know, it’s important. Like I said, it’s made our dot a little bit bigger and a little bit more aware.
So every community should embrace that opportunity — to learn and to grow and to just find out more about what’s going on — because the world’s a really big place and a really small place.”
What advice do you have for future host families?
“Some of my advice is to realize how tired [the exchange students] are. When you hear a foreign language all the time, at first your brain has to keep translating and working and trying to figure out, like, what do they mean? And it’s really tiring the first few days. So give them that patience to just relax, because it’s hard.
Little things, like when you sit down at the table to eat together as a family — when do you start eating? So give them that grace to learn and to share and to encourage them to ask you questions. But at the same time, don’t do everything for them. Don’t always give them a ride to school. Don’t pick them up after practice. Don’t take them to practice. Encourage them to ask for a ride, because that’s how they’re going to make friends.
You want them to reach out to the other students in the school. We kind of made that mistake the first time — we gave our student too many rides, so she didn’t make those connections right away. And so we kind of learned from that with the next four that we had. Like, ‘Oh, we have early volleyball practice.’ Well, who’s on the team that lives around here? Let’s see if we can figure that out, and you can get a ride…
Stay connected with their teachers. Sometimes you just forget. Astronomy is a fairly easy class at our high school, and so I was like, ‘Hey, do astronomy — piece of cake, no problem.’ Except for one problem: [our student] grew up in Brazil, so it was the Southern Hemisphere. She knew nothing about the North Star!
So things that you kind of just forget. She knew about the Southern Cross. So those kinds of things are going to come up, and it’s okay. You’re going to make mistakes. They’re going to make mistakes. Just give each other grace and kindness and patience and just communicate openly and just be honest. That’s probably the most important thing: just be honest.”
Host an exchange student with AYA
Academic Year in America (AYA) is a non-profit organization that connects enthusiastic international high school students with host parents who are ready to welcome them into their homes. In addition to matching host parents and exchange students, we offer valuable 24/7 support from professionals at our national office and our on-the-ground Local Coordinators, who are ready to assist you throughout your entire hosting experience.
If you want to be like Christy in Kansas and host an international exchange student, AYA is here to help!
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