My Exchange Year

The First Host-Family

My first host-family consisted of my two host-parents who were both working one part time and one full time and their two daughters (2 & 5 years old). Due to dietary restrictions they cooked lactose-free which, personally, as I am lactose- intolerant, think was the reason I was put in this family. It turned out that they in fact, had not been foster parents, but rather had been live in nannies to a family with a daughter my age. They lived in the most northern part of the town all the way at the end of a dead-end road. While their area was close to a university, there was no public transport that went anywhere near their house. On the first day my host-mom took me grocery shopping and added me to their phone contract, the first few days living with people you don't really know was a little weird, especially since I was given a list of "rules" I was supposed to follow which is fine, however I, personally would have felt more welcomed had they just talked to me about it. The next day was my first day of school, I actually met my group of friends on the first day which was cool, but I also found out that the organization had not taken care of getting me on the school bus ,(tiny red flag) especially since there had been the time that it would take me from and to school on the host-family profile this was kind of weird. Thankfully it was all sorted out within the next three days, however, in my opinion the organization should have taken care of this. During my first three days I also noticed that my host parents had a lot going on with their jobs and hence didn't really have time to pick me up from or bring me places. Once I was on the school bus, I found out that it took me in fact, instead of the 30 minutes that had been on the profile to and from school 50 minutes to an hour one way. In addition to this, a large part of the ride was with little kindergarten children who were extremely loud... so I couldn't even study. Once I would get off the school bus, I would immediately be with my two host siblings. In the beginning I didn't even have a desk in my room, they expected me to do my homework and studying on the kitchen island or dining table next to the two kids who were either singing along to Baby Shark or playing and were equally as loud so as I got more and more work to do that was kind of  an issue. Unfortunately, the school had not taken care of the IB timetables correctly, which meant that I would have to stay after school one day a week in order to do IB dance. As my host parents were unable to pick me up, I asked my coordinator if there was any way I could still get to my host parents' house after. I had discussed just getting a taxi or someone to drive me to my host family's house after dance, when I told my host-dad about this, he jokingly said "If they would pay me, I would do it". Though, my school tried their best to accommodate and help me out in this situation, a month later I decided to switch to IB Business instead. Throughout the first week I'm sure I spent at least 5 hours at the office of the coordinators because of issues with subjects, timetables, and bus arrangements. On my first weekend, I took one of their bikes for a ride to a shopping area half an hour away. Not only did I almost go onto a highway and got lost a million times on the way there, but on the way back, the bike chain popped out and I was stranded on the side of the road. Luckily, some of my Austrian friends could tell me why the bike stopped working and what I had to do to fix it via video call, but had I not had them I would have been stuck especially since my host family was at a play date with another family. Eventually, I somehow got back, drenched in tears at that point, partially due to what had happened and partially due to just wanting to go back home. (I am usually not a very dramatic person, but at the time I was on hormonal birth control that made me way more depressed than I would've been had I not been on it). Over the course of the next month, I started feeling isolated more and more especially since I wanted to join after school activities but wasn't able to. I met my personal coordinator face to face, about a month into my stay in Canada, and told her about all the issues I was having. She said she understood that I did not feel comfortable living with little children and that she would see what she can do. My coordinator's English skills were decent, a lot of the times I spoke to her I felt like she did not fully understand what I was saying. She ended up referring me to the school psychologist and my organization ended up sending an email to host parents asking if there wasn't any way they could bring me to the university's library a few days a week, to which my host parents replied that they were unable to do so and that it was in walking distance (which it really wasn't). Towards the end of October, my host parents went on a trip around Europe with my host dad's parents. My host-mom's parents came to take care of the little ones and I. As my host-dad's parents lived across from my host family and had 2 cats and a dog, I offered to house sit for them and take care of their pets. There were a few things that went wrong during that time, for instance, one morning I wanted to go over to my host family's house to eat breakfast and nobody was there. They hadn't given me a key and so I was locked out. I'm pretty sure I had asked whether they were planning to do anything the next day, they had my phone number too so they could have asked if I wanted to join but they didn't, and I thought that was kind of weird. My host family was also in communication with my parents because of their Europe trip and told my parents that their children loved to play with and would love it if I could spend more time with them (it wasn't like I wasn't spending time with my host family I just had to catch up on school work and in general just had a lot to do). In this case, as in many others, I felt a bit more like a nanny than an exchange student. In the first week of November, I had a meeting with all my teachers, the school psychologist, whom in the meantime I had told about my situation and was wanting to help out as well, the deputy head of the school and my local coordinator. The meeting was initially intended to see if I was able to keep up with my courses as I had skipped a grade, but it turned into me justifying why I was under as much stress as I was and explaining my host family situation to everyone. After I was done talking, my local coordinator started talking about how no other host student before me had ever complained and that this was such a great host family who had even driven exchange students' hours away to go to concerts. And then my psychology teacher, whom I to this day love for what she was about to say went "But how does it help Liv if they used to do those things, but clearly aren't willing or able to anymore". My local coordinator then went on to say that if she were to let me switch host families just because their "children are too loud" she would have every other exchange student requesting a switch as well. Anyway, this discussion went on for a bit until she finally gave in and said she would let me switch host families. About a week later I received the information that I would be moving to an intermediate family in between as my "new host family" was not able to take me immediately as they still had another student who would leave. Me as well as my parents were sent my new host families profiles which seemed fine. The day I left I was told I had to switch phone providers, as the organization did not want the students to be in contracts with their host-families ( they decided to tell us that 2 months in). I remember being so excited to switch, but I had no clue what was about to happen next.

In hindsight:

I probably should have just stayed with this host family, the food was good, they were nice and to an extent, I was able to live a somewhat, though isolated, normal life.