20 things you ought to know about host families

While clearing out my emails this morning, I found this. I wrote it to myself back in November and promptly forgot about it!

1 Host families are generally not classed as 'normal'. They open their house to a foreigner, whats more, often to a person from another country they haven't ever heard of, let alone can pin point on a map and usually they haven't met or spoken to this 'foreign' person before they arrive on the doorstep complete with portable meals (in case they have to eat spinach every day).

2 Host families don't, (contrary to popular myth) only serve baked beans on white toast as a main meal. Some specialise in large quantities of home cooked, gorgeously presented food. Few host families serve boiled spinach every night as is the terror of many French boys.

3 Host families are not all single, poor or desperate. Many offer a beautiful home in a wonderful location. Some even offer an en-suite and posh soap.

4 Host families do not classify a single level of xxxxxxxx. Income, careers, mental stability, location and status all vary immensely. You cannot pigeon hole a host family.

5 Host families have fun. Yes they do. Occasionally at the expense of the student but usually with the student. Working out what a foreign student means when he or she cannot speak English and has a sore throat, hungry or has a 'time of the month' can be interesting, and entertaining.

6 Host families have a sense of humour. Host families need a sense of humour on occasion. Faced with a bathroom which has just entertained a student washing his hair while standing outside of the bath, (and host noticing this because water is coming from the light in the hall ceiling), a host family is well placed to be able to make use of a robust sense of humour.

7 Host families are loving and giving. No two students are the same; one month you will have a student who eats so little and is so thin you fear they might fall down dead at any moment. The following month you will be entertained with the same sized student who puts away a whole lasagne before your family gets to it, and then clears the carrots, greens and almost everything else going before declaring they are still hungry and "what is for pudding". A true host will just smile lovingly and tell the rest of the family to eat the rice he/she didn't eat.

To be continued......!

A good way to host foreign students and get paid well

To host foreign students start by viewing xilfee.eu, an online database for families, couples or single people who are interested in hosting foreign students. Its free and quick to build a profile of you and your family. To build the amount of host foreign students, you can add photographs to give potential students an idea of you, your accommodation and the surrounding areas.

A video can be added too. If you have any language skills this is the time to put them to good use. A student is much more likely to view you if they think you can offer some help in their own language, this particularly counts among very young host foreign students.

Consider your outgoings. Don't let language schools (not all language schools apply) encourage you to take students for so little money that it just is not worth your while.
I consider anything less than £15 per night paltry. £17 to £20 is more realistic and for a young adult or adults, anything less than £23/25 per night is sensible.
If you have a particularly nice house and want to host foreign students, you may be able to get substantially more although you need to be able to offer above average food and be a marvellous host family too.
This may apply more to host families who want to teach english to foreign students as well.

Of course if your foreign student only has a room and you have little or nothing to do with them, £12 to £15 per night is probably fine, as long as they don't have two deep baths each day and have the central heating on full with the windows open.

If you are expected to 'chaperone' the students, give them breakfast, packed lunch and a substantial evening meal too, you need to be paid enough to make is worth your while. There are plenty of foreign students who have parents who would love to know exactly where their children are going and who with and who are prepared to pay for it at a proper rate.

For more information on being host to foreign students see www.xilfee.eu

New front page

We have updated the front page to hopefully, make the site easier to explain what we do.

To start with we would like to attract English host families or families how want to host and teach or tutor English. As I mentioned in a previous post, there are over 600,000 students who visit the UK annually to learn English; what better place to learn or improve your English than to live with an English family?

For more information on how to find work by joining for FREE! see www.xilfee.eu

The end of homestays in sight?

Its been talked about vaguely for years, but this year the government announced it for real.

Homestays (with homefamilies) are to be somehow legislated; that is, all families have to be police checked.

It will be very interesting to see how this is possible for homestay organisers to orchestrate. What happens if a host family drops out the night before, what happens if you need an extra family last minute?
From my experience, good host families are not abundant (not in my neck of the woods anyway), or maybe its ok to be a host family if you pass your police check and there is not a lot of other criteria? We will see.


See this quite serious piece of news dated November 14th 08 in the Independe
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/aids-orphan-choir-hit-by-red-tape-1017938.htmlnt which will affect all host families although when I called the CRB back in August, they couldn't tell me anything about it at all (they hadn't even heard anything about it).

This is the closest I could find on the CRB site for information http://www.crb.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=4696#CHANGES


See this amusing piece regarding homestays in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/jun/26/schools.uk1




Visit www.xilfee.eu to see the website

Watch English online

Students who wish to watch English online, or any language for that matter, let me have your comments with regards to what you would like to see as short video clips.

We can then pass this on to our teachers and request that more English speaking video clips are put online. Please also let me know what are your favourite topics so that we can post videos which are interesting to you.

Of course this isn't just for learning English, its for French, Spanish or any language you wish to learn.
If you are a teacher, please post a video of the language you wish to teach.

Visit www.xilfee.eu if interested in hosting a foreign student