Homestay for the Holidays

Concord University offers homes for international students during holidays. International students who don’t have plans for the holidays can stay with an American family. This is a way for international students to learn and experience more of the American culture. Learning English and academics in school does not teach international students about American culture. Hanging out with American friends, eating traditionally American foods, or joining a sorority or a fraternity are also much more helpful ways for international students to learn about American culture.

    Over Spring Break, I stayed in Greenville, West Virginia with my Vietnamese friend, Yen Nguyen and my Japanese friend, Keiko Sugahara. In our homestay house, there was a grandmother, a grandfather, and a dog named Mr. Bear. Where my host family lived was so beautiful. I have only seen that kind of a scene in pictures. The size of South Korea is similar to West Virginia, meaning that South Korea is really small. The countryside in South Korea does not have wide land and many cows. I realized the size of the country can make a lot of difference.

    I also visited my host grandmother’s daughter’s house, located in Virginia. Until Spring Break, the only towns I have ever been in were Princeton and Athens. The town in Virginia was big; there were a lot of houses that looked same, but they were big and beautiful. It was impressive. Most Koreans live in tall Apartment buildings because Korea is so small, so it is hard to find these kinds of town in Korea.

    The interior of the house was different, too. All the houses had three floors. In Korea, even though I live in a fifteenth-floor apartment, each family owns only one floor. Also, people in the U.S. wear shoes in the house. I knew this before I came to U.S., but it was still kind of awkward to me because I had never imagined going into a house wearing shoes.

    The food that my host grandmother made was great, too. Before I came to the U.S., I thought Americans ate hamburgers or steak every day, but she made a variety of delicious and healthy foods for us every day. So, she broke up my bias about food in America.

    The thing that I thought the most during my Spring Break was that American people have warm hearts and are very kind. They treated us kindly and warmly even though we were strangers staying in their house for ten days. They trying to help us, who were foreigners. In South Korea, there are some people who mistreat foreigners, but almost everyone I’ve ever met in the U.S. was nice and had good manners.

    In the end, I learned a lot during my Spring Break and came to understand American culture a bit better.