The Home Stay Experience
2002-1-25
Home stay is a very normal and effective way to help to communicate with foreigners. Although I haven't experienced home stay, I am so willing to enter someone's home and stay with them by their style.
I have asked some of my friends in Japan , they told me something about their experience of home stay. Most of them go to Australia , America or Canada when they are at High School. One of my friends who now is studying in Tokyo University told me that when she was young she once had an experience living in an American family in New York . She was just 10 years old so she was quite influenced by that family in many ways, especially at the spoken English. So when she talked with me, I found that she can chat in English so fast and fluently. Also homestay had helped her to broaden one's mind. So she had told me that she was willing to study aboard to experience many more things and taste the exoticism.
I once watched a program on TV about a boy who is in a 13-member family, called Sato. He got a chance to have a 3-week homestay in Australia and also to study there. When he got there he found that it was quite different between Japan and Australia , from every side of life. The exoticism attracted him so much. When he got there, he found that his spoken English was so poor and he took long time to get used to it. He often got into trouble even when he written the answer for the exercises.
Maybe because he is on aboard, he becomes so sensitive when he found something made in Japan or brought from Japan . His home stay's brother had a Playstation 2 in his room. He looked so surprised that when he found it on that bed and at once call his brother to join with him. I can guess that at that time he was missing his home so much even when he saw the most common PS.
But he is very lucky because at the same time his family was planning a tour to Australia . He has a big family, indeed. I can also remember the scene that the bus of this special tour group of his family passed Sato's new school. All members stared the windows of the school, although they didn't know in which classroom he was in. That is quite an interesting scene. All members came to Australia and one of them because of the homestay and the others for a short tour.
I think they can exchange their experience about their visit to Australia when they go back home. But there must be different. Form the program I can feel that Sato had a really deep impress of this experience because when he would leave, he cannot stop crying. He stayed with this new family for 21days, just like a son of this family, having dinner with them, chatting of the TV, studying with the brothers, washing our cars, and so on. So many different things and so many different feelings. It can never be tasted except going to another nation which has another culture.
That my feeling of homestay, and I think I will have one time staying in others family some days. Just like Sato.
Thank you very much.
Last update: 01/18/2004 23:07