Chinese 'Son'
Another photo for my Captured Moments album.
When the children were young we still had a spare bedroom so Jackie and I decided to become a host family for foreign students attending an English Language college here in Folkestone. The idea is that the students would become part of the host family whilst they were here and would join in mealtimes and so on and in so doing it would help their English language skills.
We provide a suitable bedroom, three meals a day and do their laundry for them. In return we received remuneration from the college but that was not my main objective which was to expose my children to kids from other countries so that they were more open minded of other people and their cultures than were my parents [You know how it goes, 'the only good German is a bad German'].
The students would stay with us for varying lengths of time, and they could be anything from 12 to 24 years in age. For most of these youngsters it was their first time away from their parents, and a few were very homesick at first. Feeding them with food they liked could be a challenge if you had a real mix of students. We usually had two at a time sharing a room [boys or girls, not one of each!] and it was the College's policy to mix the races to encourage talking English, but occasionally we had three students and in that case our two oldest children had to share a room whilst the youngest slept in our room and the third student could have their own room. This didn't happen very often but we were a 'prime' host family, that's to say we had a very good reputation for looking after our wards and treating them as members of the family, so if a student needed to be moved we were top of the list.
We already had a French boy and a Spanish boy when we were asked as a special favour if we could also accommodate this Chinese lad. He had 'lost face' with his host mother over a trivial thing and I had some trepidation in taking him on due to the fact that I didn't know what his problem was. Anyway, it turned out fine and he and my son got on famously. We had students from Japan, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Taiwan, Russia, and of course this Chinese lad. Eventually my children got older and wanted rooms to themselves so we stopped being hosts, but I'm sure my children all benefitted from the experience and I'm pleased to say they are all neither xenophobic or homophobic
Chinese 'Son'
Another photo for my Captured Moments album.
When the children were young we still had a spare bedroom so Jackie and I decided to become a host family for foreign students attending an English Language college here in Folkestone. The idea is that the students would become part of the host family whilst they were here and would join in mealtimes and so on and in so doing it would help their English language skills.
We provide a suitable bedroom, three meals a day and do their laundry for them. In return we received remuneration from the college but that was not my main objective which was to expose my children to kids from other countries so that they were more open minded of other people and their cultures than were my parents [You know how it goes, 'the only good German is a bad German'].
The students would stay with us for varying lengths of time, and they could be anything from 12 to 24 years in age. For most of these youngsters it was their first time away from their parents, and a few were very homesick at first. Feeding them with food they liked could be a challenge if you had a real mix of students. We usually had two at a time sharing a room [boys or girls, not one of each!] and it was the College's policy to mix the races to encourage talking English, but occasionally we had three students and in that case our two oldest children had to share a room whilst the youngest slept in our room and the third student could have their own room. This didn't happen very often but we were a 'prime' host family, that's to say we had a very good reputation for looking after our wards and treating them as members of the family, so if a student needed to be moved we were top of the list.
We already had a French boy and a Spanish boy when we were asked as a special favour if we could also accommodate this Chinese lad. He had 'lost face' with his host mother over a trivial thing and I had some trepidation in taking him on due to the fact that I didn't know what his problem was. Anyway, it turned out fine and he and my son got on famously. We had students from Japan, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Taiwan, Russia, and of course this Chinese lad. Eventually my children got older and wanted rooms to themselves so we stopped being hosts, but I'm sure my children all benefitted from the experience and I'm pleased to say they are all neither xenophobic or homophobic