This is my first time to post. When my children were in high school we always hosted high school kids for free…usually Germany or Belgium or France but now the kids are grown and gone and we have two spare rooms. We hosted two Saudi men in their 20’s for a year that was pretty easy but now we have a Saudi 18 year old boy. He won’t eat anything I make and he refuses to eat any vegetables. The other Saudi’s were not like this. I even took him to an international market and bought him $100 worth of food out of pocket to get him to eat but no matter what I make…he is picky unless it is deserts. Does anyone have any insight into feeding Saudis! Thank you! Annie in San Diego
Well, to be fair there really is a lot of sand where he comes from.
I’m curious about the hosting for free. A friend here has a daughter as a high-school exchange student in the US for a year, and he had to pay quite a large amount. Do you not get any remuneration from the program your guests are with?
Reported for forum change.
Welcome to the SDMB, Annie Dutchgirl.
We put different kinds of conversations in different forums. Since you’re looking for advice, I’ll move this to our advice forum, IMHO (from ATMB).
twickster, for the SDMB
Moved to GQ.
Maybe he just eats when he’s out. I wouldn’t worry about it, he won’t starve. You’ve tried to accommodate and that’s really all you can do. Anyway the deal with staying with a host family is that you participate in family life: that means eating what’s put on the table. It doesn’t mean the host family is meant to cook exactly what you eat at home. Just keep going, maybe when he’s more settled he’ll give it a try.
My wife and I occasionally provide homestay accommodations for people attending a local English language school (mostly Japanese and Brazilians). We get paid about $700 a month for providing room and board.
As far as food goes, that’s something I sometimes feel guilty about. My wife and I both work and neither of us are particularly ambitious cooks, so often we resort to kind of lazy cooking (e.g. frozen pizza, frozen burritos, spaghetti with sauce from a can, hamburgers, etc.). Usually our guests are fine with that, but once in a while we get a guest who doesn’t like the food we serve. One woman requested a transfer to a different home (she got sick and she blamed it on our food) and one guy would occasionally cook for himself, but I think the usual reaction is just to eat out more often.
In your case, I’d make a reasonable effort to make something the guy would like (and it sounds like you have) and if he still doesn’t like it, he’s welcome to go to McDonald’s or wherever.