Celebrating the Winter Holidays American Style

This past winter break, 8 international students currently enrolled at U.S. high schools traveled as far as 3,000 miles to celebrate the holidays and New Year with a host family as part of the KL Holiday Homestay Programs. From watching fireworks on a boat in Los Angeles to seeing the Miami ballet preform the nutcracker to touring Times Square in New York City to making ginger bread houses in Boston, students experienced the holiday season like foreign celebrities. While students were experiencing new sights, sounds and tastes, their natural parents were impressed, appreciative, and no doubt envious from afar. “Thank you so much for your help for finding such a wonderful family for Daniel,” one grateful father remarked, “he liked the host family very much and the Christmas holiday was perfect!”

Host families also enjoyed sharing their family traditions and opening up their homes during the holiday season. As Maureen, a host mother in upstate New York put it, “I am happy that at the end of his stay with our family, [the student] enjoyed Christmas and New Year’s and felt like he has a family that cared for him.” We couldn’t agree more! The program was certainly a great success and many fun memories were made by all involved.

The Holiday Homestay was the first program to launch as a part of KnowledgeLink’s newly developed Language and Cultural Exchange Programs. In addition to upcoming Holiday Homestay programs in the spring and fall, KnowledgeLink is pleased to announce an exciting new partnership with Summerfuel, a global leader in summer programs for high school students with over 30 years of experience, to offer language and cultural immersion programs in several locations across Europe. In the next few weeks, we will be releasing our short-term exchange program brochure with all the information you need to enroll in one of our upcoming short-term exchange programs.

For more information, contact [email protected]