Host Family and Homestay
By: Peer Advocate Katie Brownlee
From the many stories I’d heard from study abroad alumni, I’d learned that homestays had the potential to shape a study abroad experience – for better or for worse. Despite a handful of cautionary tales, the positive stories won me over, and in the years leading up to my own semester abroad, I considered living with a host family as a “non-negotiable” part of my dream program. I imagined what my future homestay would look like, a million questions bouncing around my head: What part of the city would I live in? Would I live with a large family? Would I have younger host siblings? How much time would we spend together? Would my host family speak English? Each scenario was equally as meaningful as the next. When I reached my sophomore year of college, I had the opportunity to choose a program based in Chile called Comparative Education and Social Change which featured three homestays as essential to the learning experience. For the purpose of preventing this blog from turning into a novel, I’ll focus on my main homestay in Santiago, keeping in mind that each of the short-term homestays were also profoundly impactful. Continue reading
