We Got Hooked
Liz and David in Chelmsford have reluctantly stepped back from hosting with HOST UK after welcoming an impressive 100 students. They told us about their experiences and the impact hosting has had on their lives.
Can you tell us a little bit about how you joined HOST UK and your early experiences?
Liz: We moved to Chelmsford from Aldershot in 2001 because of David’s job at the bank and we heard about the HOST UK programme through a church newsletter in 2010. I have two brothers and quite often we have Christmas with them, but this particular year, we were going to be alone and we thought perhaps it would be rather nice to share our Christmas with a student. The first guest was from Taiwan, and it was quite daunting because she was a vegetarian coming here for Christmas dinner, but we just loved it so much. And then the second student was from Saudi Arabia at New Year, and we got hooked really.
When you have the guests at Christmas, do they attend a service with you?
Liz: Not unless they want to. We don’t push it. We are practicing Christians, and we would say grace at meals and quite often religion crops up in conversations. For example, they often want to know about the different kinds of churches and faiths in the UK. So, we have taken some to church but not many.
And the other Christmas traditions?
Liz: Well, we do like a traditional English Christmas dinner, and we buy crackers for them.
We love meeting new people and enjoying their company and it was just fun taking them around Essex because it made us see the county through the eyes of our guests.
What do you think is the best part of the experience from a host’s perspective?
Liz: I was a French teacher, so I’d been to France and Germany a lot when I was working and being taken around by local people gave me so much pleasure. So, I got the same pleasure from doing that for others. We love meeting new people and enjoying their company and it was just fun taking them around Essex because it made us see the county through the eyes of our guests. And we can take them to places they could never get by public transport.
David: They’re seeing a bit of Britain that they wouldn’t normally see, because a lot of them seem to have a checklist of Britain. So they go to Bath, London, Stonehenge, Stratford Upon Avon, Manchester sometimes and perhaps Edinburgh. And, you know, basically it’s just a tick list.
And what sort of local amenities or activities are of interest in your area?
Liz: Well, you might be surprised but despite its image, Essex has some beautiful parts. There’s Maldon, with the old Thames sailing barges, which is lovely and has lots of wildlife. We like to take the students to Thaxted which is a pretty example of a traditional Essex town. We also take them to a pub !
David: We do try to choose a traditional English pub, with all the horse brasses, rather than a modern designer pub. We’ve got things like windmills you can visit and the gardens at RHS Hyde Hall are quite close. Coggeshall is a lovely village nearby, and they’ve got this timbered house that belonged to a wool merchant in the Middle Ages.
You’ve already mentioned a couple of different nationalities, but do you keep a diary or a log?
Liz: Yes, and that’s how we knew when we hosted our one hundredth student at New Year in 2022/23. We hosted a Japanese girl called Miteki for Christmas and then a Chinese student called Jieyi for New Year. I don’t know the way forward, whether we will host again or not because my husband can’t drive for a whole year, so we didn’t stop at 100 intentionally. We also have a list of the 35 nationalities that have visited us.
Congratulations! Are there any that stand out as more interesting visitors?
Liz: Sara from Portugal was studying tropical medicine under Professor Chris Whitty in London. She’s become like a family friend and is now working as a GP in London. We had a Romanian student called Roxanna who married a lecturer in the Leicester area. So, she’s also settled in the UK. There are some others that are still in London and there was one Iranian young lady who set up a business making flatbreads in London, but she has now moved to Greece.
David: For me, we had a guy called Starlon, who came from a very remote area of Kenya. He told us that for his initiation service he had to kill a lion, and he came with his hair platted with beads. That was quite startling.
Have you met any of the students away from your own home?
Liz: We went to China in 2013 and met up with a girl called Ran in Beijing and then we went to her home city of Taiyuan, which is a big coal mining area. That was quite an experience because it wasn’t geared up for tourists. I mean, even at breakfast, trying to work the coffee machine and things like that in the hotel. None of the staff spoke English and I don’t speak Chinese, so it was a bit of an adventure. And the city was very polluted. Very, very polluted because it was surrounded by mountains, but we couldn’t see them when we arrived.
David: It rained overnight and suddenly; we could see the mountains and blue sky.
Liz: Then we went to Shanghai, and we met up with two other students. We’ve also had a holiday in Athens and went to the home of Christina. She took us for a meal with her parents. And then I went with a friend and had a few days in Cairo with an Egyptian student we’d hosted. We also had a week’s holiday in the south of France, courtesy of the parents of Roxanna. They had gone to the area in search of work, and we spent two weeks on holiday with them.
It sounds like the experience of having the students in your home has opened up the world to a certain extent to you as well. Is there any advice you would offer to a new host?
Liz: I try to link up with as many as possible on Facebook before the visit to get an idea of what they look like. Then, when we arrange to meet at the train station, we always carry our HOST UK placard.
David: Of course, it doesn’t always work. One guy told us “Oh, I can easily find you. You know, give me any place in the city and I’ll meet you there.” We told him to meet on the platform at the station but when he didn’t arrive, we got in contact, and he was in Billericay instead of Chelmsford! So, my advice is to make sure the student at least gets the name of the town right to start off with.
