At Education Bridge, we have been introducing homestays since 2013. The reason why we started? Because we heard the same opinion from many international students: they were not satisfied with their homestay.
Personally, I find the fact that they found their homestay to be boring and unenjoyable to be quite unfortunate. Being unable to return home with no fun or happy memories is definitely something that no one would want.
Choosing a Homestay with a Special Character
The Number 1 Reason for Homestay Dissatisfaction
The most common reason students felt unsatisfied with their homestay was their personality and character not matching their host family. Of course, student and host family not being a suitable match is a factor, but we also have to keep in mind that everyone has different expectations for their homestay, so some amount of dissatisfaction is bound to occur when these expectations are not met.
Upon listening to what these disappointing and dissatisfied students have to say, it becomes clear that the main reason these students found their homestay to be unsuitable is that they were not able to choose their own homestay. The most common situation was their school choosing for them, not giving the student any choice in the matter.
Don’t you find it a bit strange that while you are given complete freedom in choosing what language school you’ll study at but have zero freedom when it comes to choosing your homestay? Imagine how excited these were to be able to engage and speak with their host families, only to arrive and have zero connection with them. That must feel horrible!
What happens if you want to relax and enjoy a bit of a longer shower but actually there’s a time limit on how long you can spend there? Or what if you’re the type of person who really watches their health and what they eat, only to find that your host family serves you nothing but high calorie, unhealthy foods? I believe these are some of the reasons some students disliked going back to their homestay.
And surely if these things happen, they are not matters that you just laugh away and leave as water under the bridge.
Rather, every person is different, and everyone has a wide variety of needs, so if you can convey how you want to resolve these issues on your own, this will lead to a better and stronger connection with your host family. But even saying this, one cannot simply express the wide variety of human character with words.
You Can Choose Your Own Homestay!
So, in order to better convey the atmosphere and spirit of different homestay families, we have made a video!
Feel free to check it out here!
here
https://www.los-info.com/post-1742
Next, we have compiled a list of reason regarding why students felt unsatisfied with their homestays:
- Communication with their host family.
- Distance from their school.
- Meals.
- Living together with other international students in the homestay.
- Living with children in the homestay.
Going by past dissatisfied students, the reasons most of them were unsatisfied were that they couldn’t communicate with their host, their school was far from their place of stay, the food was not good, there were too many other international students living together with them at their homestay even though they did not want to live with other international students, and their assigned host family not having any small children to play with even though they had expressed interest in staying with a family that has children.
While it is regrettable, it is true that number of language schools who do things like make sure you don’t have any allergies or listen to your specific wants is actually quite low.
This is all because listening to what every single international student wants and then selecting a homestay for them takes A LOT of time and ends up being a huge annoyance for the school. The schools mostly focus on their classes and the contents of those classes, but in turn do not nearly focus as much on what host family they will assign their students to.
Dangerous Homestays Do Exist, But They Are Avoidable!
Once, we had a consultation with a woman in her twenties. She had found a homestay on her own without any help, but she wanted to find a new one. Her host mother and father were good people, but the problem was her host brother: he had started to approach her with inappropriate remarks and comments.
This was a host family that the woman had found and communicated with in English while in Japan. Fortunately, she was able to find a new host family and settle the issue with no major problems occurs in the end, but still, this was a scary experience for her.
While this isn’t always a problem that can be easily avoided, an effective way to do so is, as a rule, only consider homestays that are close to a park or school. The reason for this is that in California, sexual offenders are not allowed to live within 610 meters of a school or park.
Regularly Meeting and Speaking With Host Families to Confirm Safety: We Do This!
We meet regularly with over 200 host families in the Los Angeles area to directly speak with and confirm their character and safety of their home. Furthermore, we also perform background checks on all host families we engage with.
Since 1936, America has utilized an identification system in which everyone is assigned a special code known as a social security number (comparable to the “My Number” system in Japan.) Everyone who works in America has a social security number.
Using someone’s social security number, you can look up a wide variety of information about that person, such as their criminal history, loan history, address, phone number, workplace, and other personal information. Through this number, we are able to perform criminal background checks on each and everyone of our host families.
Homestays in Unsafe Areas Are Not Offered
Although Los Angeles is overall considered to be a safe place, there parts of it that are dangerous and have high crime rates. This is information that someone new to Los Angeles would not know, so we are sure to only introduce homestays that are located in safe areas of the city.
If you can convey what you want in a homestay, you’ll be able to stay with a host family who closely meets your expectations. By expressing what it is you’re looking for and then choosing a homestay from our recommendations, you will surely have an enjoyable, memorable, and satisfying homestay experience in Los Angeles.
5/15/19
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