Host an Exchange Student in Maine: Belfast Area High School

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Share your home for a year, enjoy a friendship for a lifetime.

When you host a foreign exchange student, your entire family will discover a world of fun and enlightening adventure. Simply by sharing your home for as little as three months, a semester or a school year, you will be giving an exceptional young person from another country the opportunity of a lifetime-to live with your family and experience the language, customs and culture of our country. In return, your exchange student will bring to your family a bit of his or her homeland. Students come from Europe, Asia/Pacific, the Middle East, the Americas and Africa.

Each year, ASSE and its affiliates place several thousand exchange students, ages 15 to 18, in host families like yours throughout the world. ASSE International Student Exchange Programs invites you and your family to join all the families in our country and throughout the world in this memorable and valued cultural experience.

Having an ASSE exchange student in your home is much like having an adopted teenage son or daughter from overseas. ASSE students do their share of the family chores and are eager to participate in your family's leisure activities.

Your ASSE student doesn't expect red-carpet treatment; he or she wants to learn about our country by living as a "native" rather than as a guest. And as your student experiences and responds to the new surroundings and day-to-day activities of your family and community, you will find a new way of looking at those things you often considered commonplace. Your family will also receive a fascinating cultural education about everyday life in your student's home country. In fact, the rewards are far-reaching-your student's classmates, instructors and the entire community will be enriched by interacting with your ASSE Exchange Student. As the school year progresses, your family will grow close to this new family member, developing a bond that will endure thousands of miles and last a lifetime. A tearful goodbye will come all too quickly, but you and your exchange student are sure to keep in touch. Some day, your entire family may even visit your foreign friend in his or her home country.