Hosting Our First Exchange Student {Spain}

Have you ever thought about hosting an exchange student? My husband and I had, but that was years ago. In July, the opportunity presented itself and two weeks later, we brought our first student home.  We are unable to host for an entire school year, so we were excited to hear Education First (EF) does short-term programs, We were able to choose between a student from Spain or France, boy or girl, and then were given two profiles to read. We chose Aner, a 15 year old student from Spain, because his interests most closely matched our own. We were both excited and anxious before his arrival as we didn't really know what to expect. Would we be able to communicate? How would our children handle having a teenager around? Will he eat the food we prepare?

Twenty-one days can be very short if you get along, but very long if you don't.

We arrived at the Welcome Party with handmade signs and waited for the bus to expel the young man who would spend the next three weeks with us.

We were relieved to realize he already knew English pretty well. The first few minutes did feel a bit awkward, but over dinner and the drive home, we had a chance to get to know him a little bit. He is from a town called Mundaka, along the coast of Northern Spain. We were shocked to find out they do not speak Spanish there, but Basque. In school they speak Basque, but spend fours hours per week learning English and Spanish. Now at fifteen years old, he is fluent in all three! When we asked how similar Basque is to Spanish, he replied, "not one word is the same in both languages"! He gifted us a book about surfing in northern Spain, written in all three languages, so here is an example of how different they are.

The first night, he tried describing something that was served to him on the plane. We couldn't figure it out until he showed us the photo. It was a green bean. He's never seen them before. He'd also never eaten corn. He said they have it in Spain but no one eats it. We were confused, but later we found out that corn was brought to Spain as animal feed. That explains it!

Twice a week the students have organized outings with their EF group. They catch a bus at 830am which takes them on their excursions until we pick them up around 6pm. Activities included a day at Daytona Beach, shopping in Orlando, swimming at Deleon Springs State Park, and more. The host families were invited to a couple of the outings, like this river cookout.

On days when he didn't have scheduled activities, we took him to some of our favorite places. We hiked and kayaked the Silver River.

In DeLand, we enjoyed lunch while watching skydivers land right in front of us.

We went fishing, spent time with the kittens at the Humane Society and took a tour of ITEC where the kids sat in a real flying car! ITEC trains indigenous Christ followers to take care of the physical needs of their community as a door opener for the gospel.

 We took him on a weekend trip to Sarasota so we could kayak the mangrove tunnels at Lido Key. Thankfully we made it to Siesta Key beach, before the red tide invaded the very next day causing the beaches to close. So on our last day, we opted for some pool time with our friend, Janelle, and her family.

Another day we went swimming in the cold, blue water of Rainbow Springs.

Hiking a trail at Lake Woodruff National Wildlife Refuge was not really Aner's 

idea of fun, especially when we came across a snake, but we had fun anyway.

We introduced Aner to lots of creatures that live in the woods and he enjoyed mowing the grass for us. In Spain you must be 18 to drive, so he thought this was great fun.

 Having lived in an RV for so long, we wanted to show Aner that RVs can be just like a tiny house on wheels. He had never been inside one before and was quite impressed. We watched the movie RV together and after this tour, we caught him watching RVing videos online.

Having Aner with us, was a fantastic learning experience for us as well. He explained some things about their culture, for instance, they normally eat dinner about 10pm, unless it's the weekend, then dinner is around midnight. They live in tall buildings with each family owning a level. They walk to school and most places. A typical dinner is spiral pasta with white sauce. He loves Burger King, but really missed eating Spanish food. And we found out our family really enjoys Spanish music. 

 At the farewell party, the French students sang for us and the Spanish students did a song and dance.

 Saying goodbye to Aner was harder than I had expected. I admit, it was a struggle to hold back tears. The kids mention him often and say how much they miss him. We all do.

Another benefit of hosting, was meeting other host families. One family goes to our church but we had never met. Who knows how long it would have taken for us to really connect without EF. We really connected to one particular host family and have been enjoying their friendship the last few months.