Thinking of taking in French school kids......

Sterile

Theyre French. What bigger argument against it do you need

ANGSTDATA

Point taken about the French ! - its Monday to Thursday and not the weekends ,so wont have to spend out then ,nearly £100 tax free - just have to put up with strangers in the house for a while - not looking forward to it really, but its a case of grin and bear it - as I say try it once - and I will let you know how we get on !

RabbitintheHeadlights

I've been taking in foreign language students for the last three years. We've had French, Ukrainian, Spanish and German, boys and girls, all between the ages of eleven and sixteen. Most of them have been absolutely lovely. We had a problem last year with a couple of Ukrainians but that was more to do with their agency than them - usually agencies/the language school keep a firm grip on permitted behaviour as otherwise they'd have no one to host the children but on this occasion the agency were unhelpful. Apart from that they've been great. The things you need to bear in mind are:

You won't be able to get into the shower in the morning, especially if they're boys (and the smell of Lynx will linger for hours!).
They'll try staying out later than allowed in the first week. Nip it in the bud straight away and you'll be fine from then on.
Don't try and cook different meals at different times or you'll spend your whole evening in the kitchen. The rule in our house is breakfast 7:30 - 8:30am, dinner 7:00 - 8:00pm, if you're not here that's tough, (unless they've an organised event, obviously, I'll accommodate that). If they don't like it they know where McDonalds is (most of them spend their spare time in McDs/KFC anyway).
If they ask to bring friends over, limit the numbers. Our spanish student last year asked if it was o.k. to bring some friends over (he'd been grounded by his tutor) and the *entire* class turned up! :eek: Luckily they were all lovely kids, but I've learnt for this year!
Oh, and they don't use our phone (school rule, not ours) they all turn up with mobiles anyway and just buy a sim whilst they're over here.

Hope that helps, if you want to chat more about it then please pm me.

ANGSTDATA

thanks very much Rabbit - some very usefully points there - excellent points actually - forewarned is forearmed as they say ! - didn`t realise that so many people on the boards had had a go at this kind of thing - good to know were not alone !