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My daughter - the AFS student

Cornell

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That seems wrong. If anything was not right in the setup of the program, you would never know. At least these days there is instant communication around the world. I read years ago of a teen living as an exchange student (can't remember if in U.S. or Europe). His host family was cruel and would barely feed him. He snuck into the kitchen at night to eat tuna. He was literally starving to death and didn't know the resources to get help.
Oh, and I guess your post about "cruel" host parents starving their student to death got to me.
 

Patri

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Oh, and I guess your post about "cruel" host parents starving their student to death got to me.
He survived, but it was a bizarre case. I'm sure these days communication between the agency and the students is also very smooth and easy.
 

clifffaith

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I've mentioned before that our Italian friends host Chinese high school students all year round, often including summer school. She is a marvelous Italian cook. The boys don't like what she cooks, so every meal she makes Chinese food for the boys and Italian for herself and her husband. We rolled our eyes and said how are these kids getting any away from home experience when they eat Chinese food and associate with Chinese kids (all the Chinese kids hang together at school and away). Answer was if her daughter was living with a non-American family she would hope they were making sure she had food she liked.
 

Cornell

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My daughter has been in Switzerland for about 3 weeks now and is doing really well. She really likes her host family (phew). They have a daughter a year younger than her and they've had a lot of fun together. They go to different schools which is a good thing as my daughter has the chance to make friends through school and through her host-sister. She is living in a very small town (less than 2000 people ) and travels by public bus 45 mins to school each day to a wonderful school. School is in a bigger city (80000 people) so she enjoys being a big city to run errands, get Starbucks, etc after school. She has much more autonomy in school than she does in the US. She had a crash course all all last week in German and she said she can now introduce herself completely in German and is even now able to read some signs, etc. It is such a relief to hear her happiness. This is a picture she sent me with her host parents. They were at "Grandma and Grandpa's" farm raking hay. Cows and chickens there. Quite the change for my suburban girl, but that's the whole point.
 

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Snazzylass

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What a wonderful experience! Love the photo! It reminds me of a farm breakfast we had through a T/S in Bavaria. We were there b/c I had let Son1 go to Australia at age 12 with a group. Son2 wanted a trip and he picked Germany. We all went including my parents.
Kids pick up languages so easily! I studied German before the trip but my boys just took to it.

The same thing happened a few years later when I was traveling in China with Son2 and a group of students. I had studied Mandarin but they picked it right up! Like lyrics to a pop song :)

My older son did the last 2 years of high school on campus at a state-sponsored academy. It's hard to describe what a leg up it gave him. Please keep us posted :)
 

bbodb1

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.... She has much more autonomy in school than she does in the US. She had a crash course all all last week in German and she said she can now introduce herself completely in German and is even now able to read some signs, etc. It is such a relief to hear her happiness. This is a picture she sent me with her host parents. They were at "Grandma and Grandpa's" farm raking hay. Cows and chickens there. Quite the change for my suburban girl, but that's the whole point.

This sounds like a possible movie plot...... :D
 

bbodb1

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How long before the Arizona State shirt is traded for a Bundesliga team kit?
 

rapmarks

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My friend hosted students years ago. Last year her husband died. Two former students invited her to visit this summer, one in France and one in Switzerland. She had wonderful adventures with them.
 

Paumavista

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My daughter was also 16 when she left for Costa Rica for a year.....that was 16 years ago....so it was lots of letter writing and an occasional phone call when she could get into town. She had taken Spanish in school but realized she knew nothing, LOL when she showed up in school. She was the first exchange student in her town. She was VERY excited about the adventure, did all the research and wanted to go. After a few weeks it was obvious that her first family would not work out (they had a teenager girl the same age as my daughter and they just didn't hit it off) ; when the family across the street found out they immediately requested to host and it became a life long relationship. She speaks fluent Spanish now (which has come in handy as an RN). It was a wonderful experience. I missed her terribly (we are very close) but I'm so glad she did this. It is such a fabulous opportunity to experience so many new things. Life is about experiences and it's great when you can start collecting those experiences young. She returned to finish her senior year in high school and graduate with her class......her classes from Costa Rica were accepted at her high school.
 

PamMo

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Hey, Cornell! I'm glad I ran across this thread tonight. Sorry I was out of the loop for awhile, and didn't see your earlier posts.

I'm so happy to hear that your daughter is doing well! That first month is a crazy whirlwind of activity and adjusting to all the changes. Her brain is working at hyper speed to understand her new language, nuanced non-verbal cues, completely different family/school/social structures, getting used to a new diet, daily routine, etc. At 16, all this being thrown at you at once is both exhilarating and exhausting. I used to organize a "re-orientation" camp at the 6-8 week mark into the year for AFSers in the Pacific Northwest, and we were always amazed to see how much the kids had matured and blossomed in those first two months. And some went from barely understanding English to speaking it non-stop for the whole weekend! Not fluently, but we could finally understand what they were trying to say without so many hand gestures! Which was a huge relief to them.

Your daughter looks like she's doing brilliantly - many kudos to your curious about the world, adventurous daughter!
 
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Glynda

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Brewster Green (two weeks).
This is an experience of a lifetime for her! You must be so relieved that it's going smoothly! Great photo!
 

Beachclubmum

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It’s great to “share” in this adventure with you and your dd. Glad she’s doing well and hope you’ll continue to post updates about her year abroad!
 

PamMo

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As to some of the comments about AFS restricting visits and contact, it is for the student's sake. The whole goal of the program is for cultural exchange and understanding. Students are immersed in a new culture to learn about it, and to share some of their own culture with their host community. Students are screened for their ability to adapt, interpersonal skills, their sense of empathy, educational level, intellectual curiosity, and a lot more. These kids are ambassadors for the USA at a very local level. Host families are chosen for their willingness and ability to bring a total stranger, a child (the kids are 16-18), into their homes and to treat them like their own. The bonds that we make are strong and beautiful. It doesn't mean every child's year will go smoothly. Any parent with teenagers can attest to that! But, we've hosted several AFS students in our home, and everyone of them became our "own" kids! I'm so grateful for the AFS families that hosted my son (Brazil) and daughter (Italy) - and me (Australia) - for our years abroad as teenagers.

If a parent in the US keeps in constant contact with their AFS student while abroad, it can make it harder for the student to adjust. I personally had to deal with parents who called, texted, and/or video chatted every single day for the first several weeks their daughter was overseas. The father kept telling her how much he missed her, and said she should come home with every doubt/funny story his daughter told about her new family/school. If she didn't like some food she tried, he said come home, he'd fix her favorite meals. He would call and tell her how much he missed her. Her mother wanted to know every detail of her day. She got more and more homesick as the contact continued, until she asked her in-country AFS counselor what to do? She didn't want to hurt her parents by asking them to stop calling, but she was having a hard time adjusting. I talked with the family, but they said they didn't realize how much they'd miss her, and insisted they keep the contact up. She was back home within a month. It was so sad.
 

Cornell

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As to some of the comments about AFS restricting visits and contact, it is for the student's sake. The whole goal of the program is for cultural exchange and understanding. Students are immersed in a new culture to learn about it, and to share some of their own culture with their host community. Students are screened for their ability to adapt, interpersonal skills, their sense of empathy, educational level, intellectual curiosity, and a lot more. These kids are ambassadors for the USA at a very local level. Host families are chosen for their willingness and ability to bring a total stranger, a child (the kids are 16-18), into their homes and to treat them like their own. The bonds that we make are strong and beautiful. It doesn't mean every child's year will go smoothly. Any parent with teenagers can attest to that! But, we've hosted several AFS students in our home, and everyone of them became our "own" kids! I'm so grateful for the AFS families that hosted my son (Brazil) and daughter (Italy) - and me (Australia) - for our years abroad as teenagers.

If a parent in the US keeps in constant contact with their AFS student while abroad, it can make it harder for the student to adjust. I personally had to deal with parents who called, texted, and/or video chatted every single day for the first several weeks their daughter was overseas. The father kept telling her how much he missed her, and said she should come home with every doubt/funny story his daughter told about her new family/school. If she didn't like some food she tried, he said come home, he'd fix her favorite meals. He would call and tell her how much he missed her. Her mother wanted to know every detail of her day. She got more and more homesick as the contact continued, until she asked her in-country AFS counselor what to do? She didn't want to hurt her parents by asking them to stop calling, but she was having a hard time adjusting. I talked with the family, but they said they didn't realize how much they'd miss her, and insisted they keep the contact up. She was back home within a month. It was so sad.
This is so "not me". My daughter & I text a bit each day and then have had a FaceTime call each weekend. She is experiencing, too, what you are describing -- her brain working on hyperdrive trying to figure out everything. She said she has days where she feels very isolated but we both know those days are part of the process and they will become fewer as more time goes on. She is also often exhausted, but she was well-prepared for that too. I thank you for your support....a lot of people don't really understand this whole thing. My niece was an AFSer in high school (Italy) and having her to bounce things off of is a tremendous help. So far so good. I think my daughter hit the jackpot with her placement. She really enjoys her host family.
 

PamMo

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From our past conversations, I knew YOU would be a supportive mom! It is really exhausting not speaking the language. My kids knew about that, but were still surprised by how tired they got, and how they "zoned out" during the day. They both felt like their heads would explode with frustration over not understanding everything going on around them. They wanted to fit right in. Having a good sense of humor helped a LOT! Both said that after about month, they were surprised to realize they were thinking and even dreaming in Portuguese and Italian, and they would survive their year!!!

For me, a little thing that I remember being a big issue at the time, was the different dynamics in my host family at the beginning. My American family is very liberal, and I was pretty free range as a high schooler. No curfew. I could go where I wanted, when I wanted. I was a good kid, though, and very involved in school activities. I was incensed and wanted to ask for a new host family when my very conservative Australian father told me I had to be in bed by 9PM on school nights! How dare anyone tell me when I had to go to bed! There would be no discussion, he had the final say in the matter. How could I live with this???? I laugh about how this gruff Australian host dad and I fought over curfews and bedtimes, and we became best buddies over the year. I cried and cried inconsolably when he died a few years later.
 
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