One Day in Edinburgh

Mary and David live in the Portobello area of Edinburgh and started hosting international students for HOST UK in December 2021. Mary tells us about their experiences.

“Our three daughters all live away from home and we have retired from our teaching jobs, so we thought hosting would be an interesting and worthwhile experience. Our first guests were two Chinese girls who came up from Leeds University for the weekend. They were great, so appreciative and wrote us a lovely thank you card.

We then hosted a Dutch girl for two months in the Autumn of 2022. She was helping Greyfriars church with a voluntary project. She was quite shy to begin with, but we got to know her really well during her stay.

Earlier this year we hosted a Japanese student who travelled all the way from Canterbury, Kent. It was a very long journey for her, I think she left Canterbury at 4am on a bus and got here about 7 in the evening. She stayed with us for three nights.

We like to take our guests around Edinburgh showing them the Castle, the Royal Mile and the beaches at East Lothian and, of course, Arthur’s Seat is becoming more popular since it appeared in the Netflix adaptation of ‘One Day’.

My advice for anyone considering becoming a host for international students is ‘Just do it!’  You will get as much enjoyment out of the experience as the students and it is a very positive way of learning about other cultures.”