Learning Through Others: Another Reason to Host
Why should you host an exchange student? Because sharing your life will teach someone else about who you are and brings us all closer together, a little at a time. Because few experiences can teach you – and your children — the small but critical differences between cultures as living with someone from another country. […]
Exchange Student Stories: Born in Austria, But Lost My Heart in Ireland
We coordinators are always promoting the exchange experience, of course . . . but shouldn’t we sometimes hear from our students and families? So for today, we thought we would share a few examples of what students themselves say about their exchange in another country. “Born in Austria, But I Lost My Heart in Ireland […]
Coming to America: Finding Your Niche as an Exchange Student
Just wanted to share this nice story about one of our current exchange students living here in Oregon that recently appeared in his U.S. school’s newspaper. Pretty good reporting — the student reporter has a future! We weren’t the ones who came up with the idea of highlighting our student in an article, but we’re […]
Send Us Your Exchange Stories
Dear friends, We would like to include on this website from time to time people’s own stories about cultural exchange, both from students’ and families’ point of view. We’re not just looking for families and students to tell us this was the best experience they have ever had. We know you can get that elsewhere, […]
What We’ve Been Up To Lately
In our other lives, the Exchange Mom and Exchange Dad are an environmental lawyer and a consultant working on climate change issues. In the past couple of months, we’ve been busy creating new websites for our business . . . as a staff of two with no outside employees, we’re the definition of “small company,” […]
Life Lessons You’ll Learn From Hosting Exchange Students
By Guest Author Sophia Jones Now may be a great time to consider becoming a host family for an exchange student. An Institute of International Education report stated that the number of international students in U.S. high schools tripled from 2004 to 2016, and more are set to arrive. Many of these students hope to continue their […]
Why Host an Exchange Student (or is Technology Enough?)
This time of year, high school exchange student programs in the U.S. are seeking host families for the coming academic year. You may have seen posts on Facebook, read flyers in your local coffee shop, or visited an exchange organization’s booth at a local community event. Your thoughts might be “what a cool idea!,” or perhaps […]
Thought for Today: Sharing is How You Make it Work
Tip of the day for host families and students… Sharing about what’s going on in your life is a great way to begin to get to know each other. What can you share with each other about your day? It doesn’t have to be an earth-shattering or jaw-dropping story … just the little things. Did […]