Hosting a French Exchange Student
By: Joanna Yu
Tags: Culture Differences, Exchange Student, Host Family, France, Taiwan

“The beauty of the world lies in the diversity of its people.” Photo by Windows on Unsplash

When I was a sophomore in senior high school, I got the opportunity to host a French student for one week. Before she came, I only got a few information about her through introduction paper. My pen pal is a vegetarian, which is the biggest problem for me cause I can barely survive with no-meat-meal, and that was my first time hosting a foreign, so I’m really nervous and I try to get everything planned ahead so that nothing can went wrong (but things don’t always go as you have expected). She learned Chinese in her school so that’s why she can come to exchange. Despite that, she still barely speaks Chinese because she only learned for a short time.

They had some tours before coming to our school. There were about twenty students coming. We welcomed her at school and took her to lots of local places to experience. We went on to geographic park, watch the dolphin show, night market and popular shopping square. I want her to experience something different than France because Asia is so different than Europe, and the whole point of exchange is to learn about other culture.

They also need to come in to some of the classes, but since they didn’t understand Chinese so well, they just come in one class a day and the school will take all the French students to have some cultural experiences. They wrote calligraphy, played traditional sports and went to several historical sites.

“Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs” by Thomas Wolfe Photo by Niketh Vellanki on Unsplash

My friend’s pen pal is very smart, he can speak and understand Chinese really well despite that Chinese is his fourth language. My friend had been bonded with him from the beginning, and he like to practice Chinese with everyone. My pen pal, on the other hand, is very quiet, but she is nice.

One of my friend wanted to host so bad but she didn’t go for the audition. Her birthday was near to my pen pal’s, which is during the exchange week, so she invited us and another pen pal that’s hosted by my classmate and several people over to her house to celebrate. We celebrated in a tradition way, her mom prepared some pork foot noodle. It is to wish the birthday person live long, so when you take it, you need to pull it and don’t break it. They never seen it before, so they were amazed by it.

It was a unique experience, but I’m not gonna lie about the difficulties in hosting.It was very exhausted for both me and my family, and just like any other things, it had its pros and cons. We need to prepare a bed for her and planed for different activities and places to visit, and there were cultural differences problems. In the week she was here, sometime I feel so tired and even got frustrated, but since it was my choice to do this, I still did whatever I need to do. Sometimes you will try your best to find the most interesting activities you think, but maybe they won’t think it’s fun at all. Also, it’s a lot of responsibility, you need to take care of the food, transportation, bed and activities.

Despite all these difficulties, I learned a lot during this week. I know that there were differences between cultures, but I never expect it to be that much different. From lifestyles to how we think, it’s so different! So, we should always be open-minded about different people. Every culture is different, every person is different. We can’t have a stereotype, and it’s wrong to discriminate others just because of the differences. Also, be patience to others if they don’t understand because they might don’t have the same background as you.

So, if you are going to host an exchange student, even just one week, you need to be fully prepared of it and try your best. After all, every exchange student deserves a good memory on their journey.