Why I Said YES to Hosting an Exchange Participant

I said YES to hosting an exchange participant!!! Yes, I did.
I'm sure you already gathered that much from the title, so let's keep moving...

While on my trip, I spent two weeks with two separate families. Having a host family was not a foreign concept to me, last year, 2012, I spent 3 months in Australia and I stayed with a host family there as well.

Before I meet my host family(ies), there is always so much I hope for and expect, about the kind of people I want them to be, the composition of their family, perhaps that they have similar interests with me...that kind of thing. Well, none of what I ever expect happens, ironic, but I have never been disappointed. Not in all my 3 times of being hosted by a family.

I always find that even though I imagined and hoped for something different, what I get is normally exactly what I would pick if I had the chance to do it all over again.

I imagine it is very difficult to open up your home to strangers and invite them to be part of your family. It must be, right?
But others have done it for me, and I was not out to cheat or steal or anything of that sort, but they did not know that and they still did it. How is that for trusting in the goodness of mankind?!

Well, with my first ever host family...I went with a friend of mine, Mwende.
We had a wonderful time with them...they literally made us part of the family. We got a sister and 5 brothers, since then a new little brother has been born...yay!!
They cleared out their garage and had it beautifully furnished and converted into a self-contained guest unit. A few weeks down the line, they told us how they had expected to host 2 German girls but instead 2 Kenyan girls showed up at their doorstep...we had a good laugh about that.

At my second family, I was once again seamlessly integrated into the family despite the fact that I could not communicate with 50 percent of the house hold due to lack of a common language...
The parents spoke Russian and Polish, one of the kids Polish and English, the other Polish and French. That was an interesting week...imagine the conversation at the dinner table...in a minimum of three languages!!
My host sister gave up her room for the week so I could have it. My host mum would wake up and prepare breakfast earlier than she usually would because I had to leave for work really early, then everyone would come and have breakfast with me before I left, after which they would return to bed, and then wake up at their normal hour.

At my third host family, I was just as warmly received. My host mum would not go to bed before I got home, (they lived a bit far from where I worked), and on one occasion, she came to get me when I was stranded at midnight!

At each house they would do little things like take note of my favourite foods then buy or prepare more of that, they tried to give me my own space and also made sure I had company.  They taught me about their culture by giving me that insight that you can only get by living among a people and experiencing their day to day life. They helped in every conceivable manner they could while still not making me feel suffocated.
 
At the end of the day, I was most thankful for the fact that I could say that I belonged somewhere despite being so far away from home.
Then someone asked if I would like to host an intern and if my mum would be okay with it...and of course I jumped at the opportunity of enriching someone else's experience in return and sweet-talked my mum into agreeing.

I figured, it is not as hard as we imagine. Pretty basic actually, a bed where she can lay her head at the end of the day and a community that she can feel a part of, everything else will fall into place.

It has been done for me, now I shall pass it forward.

Excited!!