Coast Mountain College (formerly NWCC) is seeking homestays beginning November 24 for Mexican students coming to Terrace for a month.
CFNR radio’s news item got me thinking. Should I check this out? Would my lifestyle, personality and home mesh with homestay’s criteria?
I’ve never shared my home with anyone but siblings or close family for more than a few days at a time. All of our grandchildren, though, have plenty of experience being the long-term visitor as they improved their French language skills with Quebec or New Brunswick families, worked with Spanish-speaking students in Peru, or served five month stints in Australia or New Zealand toward a university degree.
Homestay hosts are to include the student in routine family activities such as barbecues and shopping trips. I’d fall short there. I don’t socialize; barbecues are off my radar. My weekly trip to town encompasses all errands from doctors’ appointments and lab tests to grocery shopping, bank and library. I imagine I could cope with an extra trip or two if I had good reason, like a cultural event or hometown concert.
What would my responsibilities as a host be? Would I be expected to share my truck or serve as a chauffeur? Curb the student’s free time activities as though I were their parent? What ages might these students be? What sex?
The student should be given a private room, bed, desk, dresser and bookshelves. I have a room with its own thermostat, bed, table, chairs and bookshelves but no dresser. But that’s easy to remedy.
Harder to remedy might be dovetailing our lifestyles. Suppose the student is gregarious and invites fellow students or new friends for meals, or drop-in visits? Plays their music loud to all hours disturbing my own and my neighbours’ sleep? Or insists on parking a buzzing cell phone on the kitchen table as we eat. I would be loath to put up with those habits and equally reluctant to lay down the law. Rules my kids lived by would apply pronto.
The notice offers a payment of $775 for the month to offset the cost of food. Yet food could be the least extra expense if the student turned out to be a water hog who takes 20 minute hot showers. Or chooses to launder and dry one garment at a time.
The transit bus stops right outside my front door and would get them back and forth to class on time unless the person is studying cooking. In the past, cooking students had to begin preparing cafeteria breakfasts well before the earliest bus comes along our street.
Having a young person share my house could be welcome security, someone to pick me up if I fell, call 911, or at the least climb a ladder to change a ceiling bulb or reset the clocks to the latest time change. I often walk into a room deducting or adding an hour because I’ve not yet adjusted the highest of my wall clocks.
I question my flexibility to alter my routine for a stranger. And what if we proved antipathetic toward each other from the first moment? Would we be stuck with each other, or might some sort of impromptu switch be arranged? So many what-ifs.
For now, I’ll weigh this notion and seek input from young adults who have lived the best and the worst of bunking in a stranger’s home for weeks. Only then will I phone 1-877-441-4443, Extension 2176 for details on homestays.
