Struggles of Living with a Host Family

In the short time I have been studying in Spain, I have realized just how different it is to live with a host family compared to living at home in the United States, where students either live in a dorm, an apartment or with their parents. What is accepted and unaccepted vary tremendously. While living with a host family it is expected that the host parent will do your laundry, cook your meals, clean your bedding, pack your lunches, etc. What is unaccepted is inviting friends to the house, leaving alcohol or food in your room, and not following the specific rules of what your host family expects of you. There are also things expected of the student by the host family, like letting them know when your leaving and going to arrive back, that you keep your room clean and tidy, that you are on time for the meals being prepared, and that you respect their rules. This is very different then back home where many of us are already living on our own and these tasks and expectations are based on what we decide or want, which makes living with a host family difficult since you are relying on someone else to clean your pile of dirty clothes before you run out of things to wear, or having to wait to eat until the food is prepared and ready. All of these things that are given and expected of students take time to get used to since one can’t just do it all on their own as one is used to. One experience I have had while living with my host family is the difficulty with communication and what is normal to them. It happens very often that our host mom asks us a question and we think we understand what she is asking and answer, however, later we find out we didn’t understand her question and therefore didn’t answer her correctly. An example of this was a few weeks back when our host mom asked if we had eaten dinner already. We hadn’t, but accidentally answered that we did, so that evening around the time we usually were called for dinner, we weren’t. Another instance was in communicating when we were leaving and arriving home from one of our trips. Apparently the time we said was misunderstood, so our host mom was expecting us to arrive home a day earlier than we did and was worried where we were so got up every hour to check and see if we were back. Normally in the United States these occurrences don’t happen because there isn’t a language barrier and you’re the one cooking and preparing your own meals on your own time. This is the same for the other example I gave up above, you rely on yourself to get things done and the rules are what you make them. Living with a host family at first may be a struggle, but in the end you will realize that it was a very unique opportunity that makes your experience of going abroad an amazing one.