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When The Opportunity Arises, Become An English Language Homestay Parent
Young people from all over the world have the same hopes and ambitions regardless of country and ethnic origin.
Twenty years ago, my wife and I became empty-nesters. We had three spare bedrooms and we decided to earn some extra income by taking in English language home-stay students. Little did we know how many doors that decision would open for us. Over a period of 5 years, we home-stayed a total of 35 students from Mexico, Columbia, Japan, Korea, Switzerland, and Argentina. The gender mix was pretty even and of all the students, we only had one bad apple. More on that later.
The first step was registering with an English language school in downtown Vancouver and going through an orientation class. After they inspected our home, we were all set to welcome our first students.
Our first was a 15-year-old boy from Mexico. He was painfully shy and like a fish out of water. He was with us for a month and when we saw him off at the airport after his stay, we never heard from him again. As he rarely spoke, I don’t think the month he spent with us was very productive.
The length of student stays varied from one month to one year with the average being 3 months. Age ranged from as…
