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Homestay Workshop at EC Montreal!

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hs workshop

Last night, EC Montreal held its first homestay workshop for new hosts of 2014.  Since February, our Homestay Recruiter, Val, has been carefully recruiting new families into EC Montreal’s Accommodation Programme.

Each EC Montreal family is chosen with great care!  We want to work with families whose primary motivation is to offer our students a home away from home.

As a final step in the recruitement process, the new families are invited to attend a workshop at the school.  It is an important evening as the hosts have an opportunity to meet the team, to ask questions and to meet an EC student who can share his or her experience.  It sends a powerful message to our hosts to hear directly from an international student how they feel about the homestay experience and what they expect from a family.

group

Paula, our Accommodation Coordinator, did a wonderful job organizing the evening.  She seized the opportunity to place some of our summer students with the new families.  She carefully matched our student preferences with the family profiles.  The new families were so excited to receive information about their students.

We served lovely refreshements and encouraged the families to mingle with one another.

Elisa, EC Montreal’s Centre Director, gave the opening speech, welcoming the families to EC and encouraged them to give our students a warm and welcoming experience.  She told them to put themselves in the student’s shoes or to think how they would want their children to be treated if they were studying abroad.  She reminded them that the homestay service is one of hte most important services we offer at EC.  If a student is not happy with their home life, it will put a damper on their entire experience.

andrea

Elisa then introduced the families to Andrea from Columbia.  We were all blown away by Andrea’s speech.  She spoke in both English and French.  She explained to the families that she chose Montreal to learn French and practice her English.  The message she gave our families was that she could lead an independent life in Montreal while having the comfort and care of a family.  She said she was learning about Quebecois culture and enjoyed the food and learning about hockey.  All the families were so impressed by her level of French.

Paula and Val then lead the homestays to the classrooms and presented the homestay programme to them in greater detail.

The new group of hosts are now ready to welcome the world to their homes!  We are confident they will make terrific hosts!

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