The first time I came to Japan was about 16 years ago as a college student, when I did a summer homestay with a Japanese family. The parents were very strict, with zero sense of humor. This was not a cultural-differences thing; as far as I could tell, they simply hated life, and they radiated this sourness to all around them.
I remember being surprised that the mother tried to force me to eat the raw tomatoes in my salad. I despise big, goopy chunks of raw tomato. Yet she demanded I eat them, saying my parents would be proud of me when I got back home.
Crazy, sure. But at least they didn't try to save my soul. Via Digg, Spiegel Online reports:
I remember being surprised that the mother tried to force me to eat the raw tomatoes in my salad. I despise big, goopy chunks of raw tomato. Yet she demanded I eat them, saying my parents would be proud of me when I got back home.
Crazy, sure. But at least they didn't try to save my soul. Via Digg, Spiegel Online reports:
When Polish student Michael Gromek, 19, went to America on a student exchange, he found himself trapped in a host family of Christian fundamentalists. What followed was a six-month hell of dawn church visits and sex education talks as his new family tried to banish the devil from his soul.Michael, I feel your pain. Would it really be too much trouble for whoever is running this study-abroad program to screen out would-be host families who see foreign students as nothing more than defenseless targets for their hardcore proselytizing?
..."When I got out of the plane in Greensboro in the US state of North Carolina, I would never have expected my host family to welcome me at the airport, wielding a Bible, and saying, 'Child, our Lord sent you half-way around the world to bring you to us.' At that moment I just wanted to turn round and run back to the plane.
Things began to go wrong as soon as I arrived in my new home in Winston-Salem, where I was to spend my year abroad. For example, every Monday my host family would gather around the kitchen table to talk about sex. My host parents hadn't had sex for the last 17 years because — so they told me — they were devoting their lives to God. They also wanted to know whether I drank alcohol. I admitted that I liked beer and wine. They told me I had the devil in my heart.
The problem is, how would you screen for this? When I lived in Tokyo, I was asked by my school to fill out a one-page questionnaire at the end of my homestay, basically rating my host mother and seeing if I would recommend her to host again. Since she was wonderful, I had no problem doing that. The best that can happen at this point is that this student complains about his experience, and gets this couple barred from hosting any more students. And I'd really hope that any homestay program would have the option of moving in it, so kids aren't just stuck in these unpleasant situations.
After all, some exchange students might see fundamentalism as "fun" rather than as "dame".
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