2/15/2006 - Armchair travelers; AFS students bring a foreign flair to your home
Maurice Arthur wishes he could have been an AFS student. “I was a senior in high school when I learned that such things existed,” he says. “And I decided that if I was ever blessed enough to have enough room and the means, I would participate.” Arthur, his wife and two children (ages 14 and 17) have twice hosted students. “It’s really an interesting process,” he explains. “You are presented with a dossier six or seven pages long on each available student, you read through them, and select the student that you think will best fit your family.” Arthur’s first student was Tatiana, a 16-year-old girl from Russia who stayed with the Arthur family in Oak Park for a full school year. “All the students are very accomplished, but there were things about her that I thought would relate well to my own family—she played the piano, she was an avid reader, and,” Arthur chuckles, “she was one of the few who exhibited a sense of humor in her paperwork.” Arthur later found out through research that Russia is one of the few countries that requires a U.S. and Russian government subsidy for the students to be able to afford the experience, a quality that makes him appreciate Russian AFS students all the more.
See your world through new eyes
Arthur and his family are currently hosting Bow (pronounced bo)—a female high school student from Thailand for half the school year. She is going to spend the other half of the year with another family in River Forest. “When Bow smiles, it is genuine,” Arthur says. “She is so gracious all the time—something that we in the U.S. are not. Her culture is so filled with grace.” Arthur appreciates the different perspective that a visiting student brings. “Bow has never lived anywhere where the temperature was not tropical,” he says. “She has made me see the beauty in even bare trees, because in Thailand the trees have foliage year-round.”
The recently retired AT&T professional is showcasing his AFS host family experience in a book about parenting he is writing. “Being a parent to a visiting student from another country is so enlightening,” he says.
Arthur encourages families to consider being a host family and offers this advice. “Make sure your family is prepared, that you are all mentally in agreement, and have the right make-up,” he says. “Make sure there is no hostility and the family works together so that it is a worthwhile experience.” Arthur’s own son and daughter, as well as his wife, were in favor of opening up their family to the experience. And they have had unexpected positive benefits. “I am blessed that my children are good students,” Arthur says. “But AFS students really study a lot and value academics, so the amount of studying and the importance of studying increased.”
Largest volunteer organization
AFS (American Field Service) has a 90-year history and is the world’s largest community-based volunteer organization in the world. More than 11,000 students, volunteers and teachers in 50 countries participate each year. In Italy, AFS students participated recently in the Olympic Games torch-carrying ceremony. Costs for an American student range from $6,000 to $8,000 depending on the country they are visiting and there are scholarships and stipends available to make the programs open to all students. This fee includes roundtrip airfare, school tuition, family placement, access to volunteers and the like. Host families do not receive financial compensation—the compensation, the organization says, “is that you are gaining a new son or daughter.” All that is required of a family is that they provide the student a bed and incorporate them into all facets of family life—from chores to vacation. Families who are interested in participating must pass scrutiny from the organization to ensure a positive experience for everyone.
Arthur says his own children probably will not participate in AFS as exchange students. “My son is a senior in high school and my daughter a freshman,” he says. “Their going abroad was not the purpose of our participation.”
The Smith family of River Forest, which will host “Bow” for the remainder of the school year, has experience with AFS as both a host family and as the parents of an AFS student. “We have one daughter away in college and one daughter at home who hates being ‘an only child,’” says Jill Smith. “She is thrilled to get a sister. And I would encourage families to look at it that way—like they are getting another family member.”
The Smiths have previously hosted two students on different occasions from Latin America—Venezuela and Chile—and their daughter spent a semester in Costa Rica. “Our daughter studied Spanish in high school and our family has a deep appreciation of the Latin culture,” says Smith, noting that Latin Americans value relationships more and the people there spend a lot of “hanging out” time just conversing. And they have no generational boundaries to their friendships. “My daughter saw that—at parties, all ages come and mingle,” she says, “unlike America where kids like to stick with people their own age.”
Icelandic irony
“I knew the student was fully integrated into my family when I found myself yelling at him as much as my own kids,” laughs Diane Heer of Oak Park. Her visiting AFS student was from Iceland and, ironically, looked just like her own kids. “He told me people in Iceland are mostly Norwegian and Irish,” she says. One thing Heer learned right away was her student’s fierce competitive spirit, apparently a common characteristic of Icelandic young people. “A family from Iceland swapped with an OPRF teacher and, ironically, lived across the street. The two boys from Iceland would get together with my kids to play Monopoly, and they would knock my kids out of the game and then go head to head,” she recalled. “They were fiercely proud of being Vikings and were not into compromise.” During the year the student lived with them, the Heer family moved a few blocks to a larger house.
“He did not want his own bedroom,” Diane says. “He preferred to share a room with my son again even after the move to the larger house.” The student also insisted he would never move again. “He lived in the house his grandfather had built in Reykjavik (Iceland’s capital) and that, for him, was it,” she says.
Be a host
Smith encourages other families to host students and debunks specific stereotypes. “The students who participate in the program are carefully screened by representatives in their own as well as their host country for appropriateness,” she says. The AFS has a two-day “orientation” program for visiting students and each student is assigned an “uncle” or “aunt” who will check in on them periodically and make sure both family and student are adjusting. All host families agree that there are many public misperceptions about hosting, and they have had various responses from friends and neighbors. The key for successful hosting is to immediately treat the student as a member of the family.
“They are not guests,” Heer cautions. “They are coming to learn about America and the idiosyncracies of American life as much as they are perfecting their English.” All of the host families said they immediately “adopted” the students as their own children and treated them as such. Many have retained relations with their former students, even attending their weddings in their native countries.
For more information on becoming a host family, contact 1-800/AFS-INFO.
In the Photo: Trenton, Morgan, and Maurice Arthur welcomed Nanticha “Bow” Ruangchainicom into their Oak Park home for a semester as part of the AFS student exchange program. She will spend the second semester with the Smith family in River Forest. Photo by Frank Pinc
Story by S. Cardoso, reprinted with permission from the Wednesday Journal for Oak park and River Forest, Oak Park, Illinois, USA, February 7, 2006.
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