Over the past several years, my wife and I have played host for several international students and visitors, including four children from Korea, three from Belarus (including one of them four times), and one from France.

The experience of having children from foreign countries in our home has blessed us more than we ever anticipated. Not only have we established worldwide friendships, but my children have learned so much about other parts of this planet and have grown considerably in their acceptance of people from other cultures and with varied backgrounds.

One of the obvious questions that comes up when talking to people about our experiences with international students is the language issue. How do we deal with students who barely speak English and who speak a language that we don't know?

When we first started having children from Belarus, our entire family took a several week course in Russian just to learn the alphabet, how to pronounce words (so that we could say what we saw in a dictionary), and a very limited vocabulary. While we never learned Russian well enough to be able to have a deep conversation, we could relay such valuable information as:

• It's time to eat now.
• We'll be leaving in 10 minutes.
• We are going to the swimming pool.
• You need to take a shower.
• It's time to go to bed.

We discovered early that kids will play with kids, regardless of language differences. In fact, as the kids get older, language can become more of an issue as kids try to relay more complex thoughts and ideas. For example, kids playing with Legos with each other don't need to say nearly as much as kids who are playing football (and calling plays in the huddle) need to communicate.

The "food thing" has been a lot of fun for us.  We've always raised our own kids to eat whatever is put in front of them, including spicy foods, and thus we've had a great time learning about foods from other countries, especially Korean cuisine.

This is also a good opportunity for children from other countries to learn about "American food."  One thing we've found is that kids from Belarus and Korea love the wide variety of fruit that we have in the United States.  Never mind the dessert, just give them strawberries, oranges, blueberries, peaches, pears, apples, and raspberries, and they're delighted.

On the other hand, most of our foreign students had never tried peanut butter before. The initial facial expressions we've seen when trying peanut butter for the first time have been priceless.

The daily routines with international students in the house can be varied and interesting. Part of it depends on why the kids are here in the first place.

In the case of the students from Belarus, they were here on a six week program and the primary purposes were two fold: get the children out of a possibly contaminated environment (Belarus received much of the fallout from the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, and provide them with modern medical care. Though there is debate as to whether radioactivity is really an issue in Belarus, there is no question that when the children from Belarus arrived here they were not the typical rosy cheeked kids that we are so used to seeing. They were pale, gaunt, and weak. It was amazing to see the changes that transpired in only six weeks as these kids got some good food, some exercise, and some time outside.

The Korean students have been part of a program that brings them here for twelve weeks at a time, matching a Korean student with an American homeschool family. The kids are here during one of their school breaks -- they get long breaks in both summer and winter -- and the primary purpose of the program is to improve their English skills. The Korean students have to do several hours of school work each day while they are here, including writing a daily journal entry -- all in English.

Conversely, the kids from Belarus do not do school work while they are here, but they are expected to participate in family activities.

We had a particularly interesting summer last year when we had both a Korean girl and a girl from Belarus at the same time!

How do we deal with the food situation? Well, like I said earlier, we try to expose our own children to the foods from other countries; we also expose our visitors to our own foods. My family eats a lot of vegetables, and sometimes our visitors turn their noses up at what we're eating. We always ask them to at least try a little bit of a new food (unless of course there are allergy issues), and usually that works.

We found that if we include the visiting child in family chores, he or she will feel more part of the family. We have them (with our own kids) do chores after meals -- wiping the table, sweeping the floor, taking out the trash -- as well as helping in the garden, feeding the chickens, etc.

The only issue we've had was with one of our first visitors, a boy from Belarus, who refused to go out and work in the garden with the rest of us. He sat down on the ground and pouted because a) he said men in Belarus don't do "women's work" and b) he wanted to play. After he saw me (a male) working in the garden, and after he realized that nobody was going to play because we were all working, he jumped in and helped some, albeit reluctantly.

We have truly enjoyed each of the exchange students we have had; each has brought us a new experience that has been valuable for my own children's understanding of the rest of the world.

My own kids have a better sense of what other cultures are like and what people from other countries are like -- they're just like us -- and it has taken away any fears of foreign lands.

We've had so much laughter and joy, and it's been a blessing to my family.

That being said, I've got to wrap up this hub. We have a Korean student who has just arrived and I'm going to make a batch of blueberry pancakes!