Yahoo Autos People Who Lived Abroad With A Host Family Are Sharing Their Wildest Experiences, And It's Part Funny And Part Shocking
We recently asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell us the wildest stories they had about living with a host family or hosting a student from abroad. The stories they had were quite unexpected. Here are the best ones:
1."I lived overseas doing volunteer work for a year after college. One of my host sisters stole from my room constantly. She would take money, clothing, food, a camera, and even my vibrator. My host parents refused to do anything, so my organization got me a lock on the door. I came home to find her unscrewing the lock from the door to get in."
—Anonymous
2."I studied in Gijón, Spain for two months in the summer of 2022. My host mom was a 63-year-old woman who would work as a nanny for a couple of hours a week in the morning, nap all afternoon, and then go out to the bars from 5 or 6 p.m. until 1 a.m. every night. I barely saw the woman. Sometimes I’d wake up and there was a man in the house that had stayed over. She’d go on about how sorry she was a bad host, but she was so 'in love.' I also discovered I have a stomach disorder because her food, which she rarely refrigerated, constantly made me feel sick."
"The best part was when my professor asked how my host family was. I told him not the best, and when I told him the name of my host mom he was confused. 'We don’t have any host families with that name,' he said. It turned out, this lady was the mother of the lady who was supposed to host me."
—Anonymous
3."I studied abroad in Europe in a few countries. In France, my host mother told me within five minutes of us meeting that her husband had left her for his secretary and that her son had died. She was convinced the ghost of her dead son lived in the attic and anytime there was a noise in the house she would chuckle and say 'Oh, that's just Fabian.' She thought I should find that comforting."
4."I went on exchange from Canada to France in grade 12. One night, my host took me to a country party and then left me alone all night to hook up with her ex-boyfriend. I had to sleep in an unlocked car because I didn’t know anybody and there were adult men who kept trying to hit on me. I was terrified."
"I also go extremely ill when I was there. I woke up one night to go to the washroom and fainted. When I came to I was covered in my own vomit, urine, and poop. I had a seizure. It turns out she heard me pass out and never came to check on me. She told me later she watched two episodes of Gossip Girl before she heard me wake up and crawl back to my room. Her mom was great though."
—Anonymous
5."I studied in Germany back in the 1990s and one of my classmates knocked up his married host mother. She ended up pregnant and it resulted in her marriage ending. She actually came to the US and he totally ignored her."
—Anonymous
6."I was doing a two-month internship in England and the local secretary from my program helped me find a place to stay. She invited me to stay at hers in the meantime and introduced me to her boyfriend. They were both in their late 40s and I was 19. They offered me a threesome but I declined. Later that night, I heard them come into my room and I pretended to sleep so they left. I found an apartment soon after but still had to see her every day at my job."
—Anonymous
7."I studied abroad in Sevilla, Spain. My host family also was incredibly bad. First, no one ever gave me a tour of the host's sprawling apartment. I lived there for several months before one day I opened a door to find an elderly woman napping in a hospital bed. Apparently, this was the host's mother, though I was never introduced to her, nor did I even know of her existence! Second, the adult son lived below his mother (my host). I was never introduced to him, but he would come to his mother's apartment and take long daily showers so he wouldn't have to pay for his own water. The host then accused me of using up all the water! I resorted to only showering every few days and even then the woman continued to accuse me of using her water. Remember, these people are paid to host foreign students."
"I was never notified of meal times, the host was never around and never left me notes. She left crackers for my breakfast, which was fine, except the crackers were infested with mealworms. This woman then had the gall to tell me and my university's study abroad program that I needed to move out because I studied too much in the house and was therefore too expensive because I used her utilities. Again, she was paid to house me! And I had also done at least a month's worth of traveling around Europe and spent almost every day exploring the city and hanging out at the university. At first, my program sided with her until I chewed them out in what was by then perfect Spanish about all the insanity this lady had inflicted on me. They were mortified. I immediately moved to a different apartment where I was housed by an extremely wonderful elderly lady who was great. I love Sevilla so much, but I wish I had just taken the international student dormitory over a host family."
—Anonymous
