The Homestay Kitchen: Cultural Connections with International Students who Study Abroad

In this episode, Erin interviews Mary. We talk about how Mary got started hosting international homestay students. Mary shares some of her experiences with hosting, her love of cooking, crafting, and how she includes her students in her home life.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Chai is patience in a cup
• Previous homestay parents scared Mary with their stories.
• Mary hosts short-term students. Average age is 21.
• Mary really enjoys cooking
• "Mix mash" is our new made up word for the ultimate recipe cookbook
• She's a crafter!
• Mary is excellent at charades
• Google translate is an excellent application for communicating with students in different languages

Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: https://translate.google.ca/

Follow Us:

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/homestaykitchen/ Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/homestaykitchen/ Web – http://homestaykitchen.com/

Quotes

"I have to just keep reminding myself that every student is a different person and I can't expect them to be a certain way, or act a certain way in front of us or our daughter. Always just going in with an open frame of mind because if I do have those expectations, then I get disappointed." - Mary (23:40)

Coming soon is The Homestay Kitchen. Join us, Mary Chan and Erin Eastman Paulson, as we serve up stories of being a homestay family - the ups and downs of making a connection with international homestay students. We'll bring a plateful of stories, ideas, interviews, and hopefully, dish up some anecdotes to share with our community.

Have you ever wanted to be a homestay host? Are you one already? Or perhaps you're an international student that wants to share your story… If you have any questions, ideas for future episodes, or want to be on our show, email us at [email protected].

For more info about our show, please visit http://www.homestaykitchen.com/.

Thanks for listening and our first episode will be released in October!