Host Student

We participate in the Host UK programme, which is a registered charity that works with universities throughout the UK and matches participating overseas students with families all over the UK for weekend/holiday visits. The overseas students typically get to see lots of tourist sites while they are here studying, but never see the inside of a typical UK home - they generally live in university halls. This programme gives them the opportunity to experience a small slice of ordinary UK life and gives the Host families a fabulous opportunity to meet and learn about people from many, many different countries. We have been Hosting for 8 years and find it a great way to meet people from all over the world, and living in a very small (white) rural village it means our children are (or have!) growing up seeing first hand that not everyone looks, acts or thinks like they do.

Anyway this weekend we have the pleasure of Hosting a young lady from Shanghai, who is studying for her Masters Degree in Marketing. Mr Messy picked her up from the train station yesterday, on his way home from work, while I was at home with Little Prince and his friend on their playdate. We try to feed the student visitors typical English food and just be a 'normal' family - which if you know us, you know is quite a stretch for us lol. After dinner we all spent the evening chatting, except Little Prince who was in bed and Drama Teen who ignored us all as she was reading a Harry Potter book. Mr Messy kept us entertained by attempting to speak Mandarin (using the Chinese for Dummies phrase book). Eventually even the student ran out out of polite things to say about his pronunciation and just told him it was rubbish. Fraulein also made us laugh with her mispronunciations of English - she now knows there is a difference between garbage and cabbage!! Could come in handy one day!!! We stayed up really late, so I'm tired this morning!! Oh well it was fun last night :-)