Getting homestay students
How do you go about hosting students? I’d love to hear more about this or get a website. Not only would our kids learn a lot but we would too.
God Bless,
Katie
Earlier this week, I mentioned that we said farewell to our two Taiwanese homestay students, and are preparing to welcome two new Korean girls into our home this coming week.
For us, taking short term students like this is an opportunity to make some extra money in a limited amount of time, while allowing me to remain focused on serving the needs of my family and enjoying getting to know students from a different culture. Through taking students, we have been able to do things like put money onto debt (though we are now debt free), buy a new computer, put money towards vacations (my favorite) or new instruments (my husband’s favorite), that normally wouldn’t be able to take out of our regular budget.
Seeing as I’ve already written quite a lengthy post on this, I thought I would direct you to that. It was my very first blog post ever (and no, it wasn’t because it was the most interesting thing I could think of- but I wanted to link it up to a carnival, as I couldn’t bear the thought of no one reading the first thing I put into the blogosphere!).
Since writing this post, we’ve taken a few more students and have begun to work with another school. The school we are currently doing homestays with is a private Christian school that brings in short term students for summer classes. The length of homestay ranges between 2-4 weeks, and the pay is $30 per night (from which we take food costs, gas expenses, etc.), and I am responsible for driving them to and from school, providing 3 meals a day (including a bagged lunch), laundry, and just including them in our family activities.
That’s my Frugal Friday tip for this week- using this fun and relatively easy to make some extra money!
We had ESL students when we lived in Okinawa but have never considered it now that we are back in America. We have found our new church has lots of Japanese ladies and I’ve considered having my kids take lessons from them to renew their Japanese!!
God bless,
Sallie
Sallie, we also lived in Japan! We were in Yamaguchi (southern Honshu), near Iwakuni base. Our relationships there were part of what motivated us to try taking in ESL students, and we still really love to have Japanese students because of the time that we spent there.
It would be so neat if you could have your kids practicing their Japanese! We are trying to teach our daughter, but we have forgotten so much in the 3 1/2 years since we returned that it’s difficult.
What an interesting idea. I’d love to look into this more. What an incredible opportunity for your children to be exposed to different cultures. Thanks so much for sharing this.
Thanks for encouraging us with your positive attitude, as far as trying something new! I have three boys and this might be a great way to have some girls in my life.
What company did you go through to get started?
Melissa, we’ve just worked with local schools in the Vancouver, BC area. If you live near us, please email and I will fill you in on the contact info.
If you’re looking to find schools, the best ways are to google “ESL schools” and your city, or to look up ESL programs in your local yellow pages. Start asking around in the ESL community about contacts for homestays and you may find that there are more opportunity than you think!