Hey now, Cantonese was here first!
We dutifully purchased an assortment of tea for our first Chinese student. Being typical American coffee drinkers, we were nervous about brewing the tea incorrectly. We were surprised to discover that A) our student preferred hot water to tea (hot water has been the beverage of choice for nearly every single one of our Chinese guests), and B) our student had no clue how to make tea. “I don’t know,” she said, “the maid usually does that.”
Ends up that in order to come to school in America, you need to have lots of money, and labor for in-house service is dirt cheap in a country with over a billion people and a large underclass. Most of our students have been very well off.
This is very true, and was by far the #1 source of friction with our exchange student. She felt her only obligation was to do well in school and study, it was extremely difficult to get her to do the most basic of chores and cleaning up after herself. That sort of thing was handled for her all of her life.
I don’t know how “explicit” consent differs from normal consent, (were you thrice blind-folded?), but there’s nothing wrong with inviting him to church. At my conservative, middle class, high school, the exchange students usually enjoy it, at least occasionally. The rest of the world marvels (laughs?) at our high church attendance rates and Christian influence in politics. Many foreign kids enjoy the opportunity to see a Protestant service, something they wouldn’t, or couldn’t, do at home.
I wouldn’t drag him if he’s resistant, but I wouldn’t deny him the opportunity to go out of an abundance of caution, especially if he can go to the youth group after church and hang out with some teenagers for an hour. Just don’t be offended when his interest is far more sociological than spiritual.
Merde alors! I forgot to include:
Kobal2, I think you’re too fluent to appreciate American church the way an exchange student does. Church is a lot more fun when you don’t know what’s being said.
In my gross Shanghai accent, it’s more like ‘haah boo haa,’ where the aah noise is something you’d do if the doctor told you to say ‘aah.’ Really, it’s such a stock phrase that any rapid-fire h-b-h sound will probably register as the desired phrase.
Another good phrase is ‘keyi ma?’ It means, broadly, ‘can it be done?’ or ‘is it feasible?’ or ‘will it suffice?’ An approximate pronunciation would be ‘ke-ee mah?’ with an emphasis on the ‘ma.’ The affirmative is ‘keyi,’ the disagreement is ‘bukeyi.’
I very much second what Dorjän and steronz are saying. I’ve worked with upper-class Chinese teenagers, and their raison-d’etre is based entirely around academics. Everything, and I mean pretty much everything else, is done for them. (I’ve known many preteens and younger teenagers to have trouble even dressing themselves.) Expect them to be stymied by even simple housework, even if they’re willing to do it.
But yeah, I would say that you’ve probably got this covered if you’ve hosted a student before. In my experience, Chinese don’t have any obvious ‘sore spots’ that will offend or discomfort them out of the blue. I may suggest against talking about China, as opposed to talking about how things are in China, if that makes any sense - their education is very nationalistic and the kids might be uncomfortable talking about current events or about politics or whatnot - but I doubt it’ll come up.
I don’t know about the Chinese in particular, but East Asians in general are far more likely to be lactose intolerant than people of European (especially Northern European) descent. Actually I think just about everyone is more likely to be lactose intolerant than people of Northern European descent, but IIRC lactose intolerance is particularly prevalent in East Asia.
Also, if you feed him Chinese food, or give him anything “Chinese”, don’t ask him, “Do you think it seems authentic?” There’s no good answer he could give if it’s not (i.e., Americanized tasting food, not Chinese-tasting food.) He’ll probably just feel the need to lie politely and say “Yes” when he thinks “No.”
A touque is a hat, basically.
I can’t speak for a billion Chinese people, but our Asian house guests have been unanimously uninterested in cold cereal + milk for breakfast. They have been more into stuff like sausages, hard boiled eggs, oatmeal or toast. Not to mention stuff I wouldn’t really consider “breakfast food” like hot dogs (sans bun), cream corn and corn on the cob.
hogworth, that’s a pretty good breakfast summary. 
I’m sure you’re right; I just listed what I thought would be normal for an American teen. When I went to France at 15, I was not keen on a breakfast of dunking a baguette into a bowl of chocolate milk, but that’s what was served so I ate it. It didn’t hurt me and I got used to it.
I would have preferred Frosted Flakes, but one reason for staying with a family and not in a hotel is to experience their culture.
The host family might consider having some chop sticks around and say eating Chinese maybe once a week or so. Cross cultural exchanges are great.
American Chinese food can be very different from the Chinese food in China.
A place like Panda Express might have only a few foods that are familiar to people from China.
“Real” Chinese food typically has a lot of oil, bones, skin, and more vegetables.
In China you will never see fortune cookies or the white take-out boxes. Just a small part of the misunderstandings between America and China. The Chinese also have many misunderstandings about American culture.
North Americans are pretty much the only culture to have distinct “breakfast foods”. The rest of the world generally just has “food” and it’s eaten at any meal.
I guess I’m worldly then as I’ll eat most anything for breakfast. Cold pizza, of course. Leftover steak or veggie hash is also good. Ramen noodles with chopped up smoked fish and green onion is one of my favorites.
Finally popping back in - was out of town when I started the thread and was only able to glance at the responses. I’ll reread the whole thread now.
Our student arrives tomorrow evening - he leaves China at 7 PM his time and gets here 8 PM our time, so he’s going to be exhausted!
Um, what? 
Supplies!
So, we should hide the chairs, provide mosquito repellant, and not let on that we all know how to swim? 