Okay, another post because I'm on a roll and I'm writing in English just cause I can.
Today I'm going to talk about -- surprise -- what it says in the title!
To start off with an explanation for those who might not have followed from the beginning of the blog: The exchange I went on was a reciprocal exchange based on the Hessen-Alberta partnership. We were a group of about eight-ish German students all living in the same region. Each student was matched up with a Canadian and I'm so lucky I got accepted because there are roughly 60 German applicants every year and the participants are chosen based on the Canadian applicants (which were eight. German is clearly not a popular language. Sigh). So in August we flew to Canada and lived with our partners for three months, then there was a three month break, and then we hosted our partners for three months in Germany.
I can only say having Miranda stay over in Germany was great -- (nearly) just as good as getting to stay with her in Canada!
So it was definitely great both traveling and hosting, getting to see two different perspectives. Having made the experience of being alone, 8000 km away from home and not being to able to communicate has definitely made it easier for me to understand how she felt (that and maybe because I have had two exchange students before), but I also realized how she must have felt having me stay with her before.
Hosting is fun, but can also be a lot of stress: both from the actual responsibility of having a guest in your home and stress from feeling bad for them because you know they are not having the greatest time, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Like school, for example. I don't want to say my school messed up royally, but they sort of did. Because of Miranda's limited knowledge of German, they placed her in a German-as-a-foreign-language class, which in itself is not bad at all (to the contrary, I got the feeling that it helped her a lot language-wise, and also she might have felt a little less alone because there were others who spoke as little German as her.). But one of the side effects was that she didn't get to follow classes together with me -- I think it was about 5 hours per week. Don't get me wrong, it was great of the school to make arrangements for her German class, but they thought because she wasn't fluent in German yet, she shouldn't go to any other classes. So in the end they signed her up for German, two English classes, Religious Education, Gym, Band and Art. Religion wasn't really interesting for her because all we did was read complicated texts, band she dropped out of because the teacher was mean and made her play an instrument she didn't even know how to play, and after a few weeks she couldn't go to gym anymore because she twisted her ankle really badly. So this meant she only had class for about 12 hours per week in contrast to my 34. Cue a lot of sitting around alone at home and being generally frustrated.
But it wasn't only the administrative things -- she was pretty isolated socially too. I get that exchange students are supposed to be loners for the first couple weeks, but like, very very few people even made the effort to talk to her. Most people only asked her where she was from and how she liked Germany and that was it. No more conversations for two and a half months. I get that people might blame the exchange student for being shy and not initiating contact, but hey, I have been on the other side of this. I'm pretty sure you can't understand what it means to be faced with dozens of strangers who have very little interest in you and who will raise their eyebrows once they hear your foreign accent, until you have actually been in that situation. By the way, my new school regularly hosts long-term exchange students and they usually have a group of friends in five days flat. So yes, I'm kind of mad at my classmates.
Though at the same time it would be wrong to gripe and not mention any of the lovely people who did talk to her a lot. It means the world to me and my fellow exchange students that there are people who are willing to put up with your strange speech patterns and keep talking to you even when you've reverted to nodding and shaking your head. You rock. <3
Hokay... next thing about hosting would be language barriers at home, I guess. I am a defendant of the immersion method. It can be tiring in the beginning to not understand and not be understood, but in the end it will be worth it. That being said: I should really take my own advice. Because communicating in German didn't go smoothly and because I am a selfish bastard who wanted to speak English all the time, we pretty much did exactly that. I would often ask Miranda something in German, then repeat in English. For longer, more in depth conversations, we both switched to English though, which I regret because I have the feeling I could have taught her so much more. One thing we did and which was pretty useful was "German Wednesdays". On Wednesdays we would speak German only, no excuses made. Whenever Miranda didn't understand something, I'd try to speak slower, explain it in German and point to objects whenever possible.
And while we only did that once a week, host families should do it EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. I'm serious. Watch a lot of German TV with the exchange student and switch on subtitles, give them easy childrens books to read, communicate using gestures, stick post-its with vocabulary all of the house, whatever it takes to immerse them in the language. Your guest will thank you. (Even though at first they might be slightly miffed about not being able to communicate.)
Another thing I think is worth mentioning is giving the student space. When I was in Canada, my family would always ask me to come sit with them (at first they didn't ask, they thought it was strange I didn't join them on my own), but sometimes I felt pressured by that. Exchange students need a lot of time for themselves. For example, hearing and speaking a foreign language all day is incredibly tiring and they might want some time alone to rest or take a nap. Writing diaries, which I didn't do a lot but would strongly recommend doing, also takes up a lot of time and people generally like to be alone for that. Communicating (texting, skyping) with friends and family at home is also something students need a lot of time for if it gives them comfort. (If it does not, you should try to limit communications, but that's a topic for another time.)
So just know if you guest spends large amounts of time by themselves, don't take it personally, it is only normal for them to need space. That being said, please never stop offering them to spend time with you. Even if they need a lot of alone time at first, one day they might be lonely and want your company again. So yeah, nothing is permanent and it is completely normal for them to change their behaviour in that aspect.
Um... and I think that's pretty much it for today? There are so many things that I have left unsaid, but I feel like I'm not able to express them coherently right now, so I'll leave that for another time.
(Side note for those who speak both German and English: Does my writing style sound any different in the two languages? I feel like my English persona isn't even me. Or the other way round. Huh.)
If you liked this post, please feel free to comment or click one of them fancy schmancy reaction buttons! Also I'm always open to suggestions :)
See ya,
Denise
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