A little over two years ago I came across a short little column in our local Newspaper talking about a rather large contingent of Arabic Foreign Exchange students at Pacific University here in town. The article mentioned that the group of nearly 18 students was actually small in comparison to a group of students attending Portland State University in the Metro area. Parts of the article mentioned how man of the students at PSU were also participating in American Homestay programs.
Both PSU and Pacific are quite active at hosting foreign exchange students, both have programs that help acclimate the students to American university life. Part of the program is in depth immersion classes in learning English: writing, reading, speaking and listening. Command of each is imperitive in being able to gain any return on the invetment of time and money once in standard classes. Many of the profs in these immersion classes fear that their students return back to their dorms and amongst same language freinds at the end of the day. So, many of them recommend homestays to all of their students. Under such and exchange they can go back "home" at the end of the day and practice what they have learned.
The surprising part of the article was a plea at the end. Apparently though many of the studenst in PSU had been matched with an American family, none had found homes to host them in the Forest Grove area.
In jest, I turned to my wife and asked her what she thought of hosting a foreign exchange student from Pacific. For those of us who know us, we have four kids, 10, 8, 7 and, 3. The oldest is also autistic. Needless to say, we have our hands full. And family is a good long distance away. To my greatest surprise, my wife non-chalantly shrugged her shoulders and said,"sure, why not?"
And thus an adventure began.
Our first student was a somewhat young and happy man from Saudi Arabia. We came to find that he was one of roughly a dozen members of one family over here in the area, all on scholarship. As a goodwill gesture to try and smooth the relations between the US and Saudia, the king of Saudi Arabia granted full ride scholarships to thousands of students that could get accepted into US schools and build a bridge over the gap that had been created from the 9/11 events. Anyhow, on our first meeting, this young man's smile against his dark skin was as bright as the moon in a dark sky. His name was Ali Al Matar. He lived with us for nearly three months, some a bit trying. Ali was a night owl. And back in Saudia he was a bit of an entrepreneur, selling jewelry and women's accessories in two if his own ships. So, his motive to do well in school were minor and, he was a very social creature. He would sleep till 6pm, rise, shower, and run off to visit with friends 'till 3 or 4 in the am, go get breakfast, attend class, come home around 9 or 10 am, go to sleep, repeat. Under this schedule we rarely saw him or spent much time with him. He did make a trip to Montana with us to meet Karen's family. Yet, after the third month we contacted the middleman agency and informed them that this student was participating in the homestay program so he could say he did it but, it was becoming apparent that his desire to actually become part of an American family was lacking and that our home may be better suited for a student that actually wanted to be there.
Off to campus went Ali and into our home came his older brother, Muhammed.
Next post. Muhammed Al Matar.
No comments:
Post a Comment