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News & Features

Area residents provide international students close-up view of U.S. life
archived from: 2006-06-05
by: Patricia Bartos

Kathleen Forsythe is having fun.

As host family for Ming Chun Hsu, who arrived here just five weeks ago from Taiwan to study at the University of Pittsburgh, Forsythe is providing a home and introducing her to the city and to American life.

“You see things you’ve taken for granted,” Forsythe said of showing a newcomer around the city. “It makes you realize how much you have.”

Ming, 25, will work toward a master’s degree in physical therapy, but will begin, as with all international students arriving at Pitt, with a semester in the school’s English Language Institute to help in her mastery of English.

Forsythe is local recruiting coordinator for the Overseas Educational Consulting and Services, which operates on 15 university campuses linking host families to international students.

Host families are seen as a good introduction to U.S. life for students, according to Forsythe, a resident of Pittsburgh’s Lincoln Place neighborhood and parishioner at Holy Angels in the city’s Hays section. The young people want to live in private homes to learn more about life here and to practice their English on a daily basis. The homes offer an alternative to dorms, hotels or apartments, and the program seeks host families located near the university or on a busline.

Ming has already found her own apartment near the Pitt campus. She has mastered the layout of the Pitt campus and the city bus system.

“She’s very independent and likes to be on her own,” said Forsythe. “She’s quick to catch on to things. She’s happy and very sociable.”

Ming hasn’t had time for home-sickness. She communicates via e-mail each day with her family. Her father is a junior high school principal and her mother a government office worker.

Ming has noticed the cost of living is higher here.

“Things seem expensive to me,” she said.

She has come to love coleslaw and chicken tenders and discovered with glee the famed Primanti’s sandwich.

She’s given up on trying salads, though. In Taiwan, vegetables are cooked and she can’t cope with raw foods.

In Morningside, Roy Cook is serving as a host family for 19-year-old Sultan from Saudi Arabia, who will begin computer science classes after his semester of English classes at Pitt.

“My children are all raised and gone,” Cook said. “It’s an excellent program, it allows people to step out of their own world.”

A registered nurse at the Shadyside Family Health Center of UPMC and member of St. Raphael in Pittsburgh’s Morningside neighborhood, Cook noted that this isn’t his first experience of helping newcomers. “Family practice residents from all over the world come through here,” he noted of his workplace.

The appeal of serving as a host family, he said, “is to reach out to people like this who need assistance in a new country and to offer a friendly environment that’s reliable and safe. It gives them a sense of stability.

“This is a bridge from their arrival to getting them acclimated and accustomed to life here.”

Cook took Sultan to the bank to open a checking account, showed him how to post a letter, how to use an ATM machine and how to get around the city.

Cook walked him to the bus stop and — for the first time in years — rode the bus himself to accompany Sultan.

“It’s just simple things, showing him how to use the microwave and the stove, just things we take for granted,” Cook said. “I think he’s getting over his homesickness and settling in.”

Cook notes that, “With me, it’s hard to adjust with the way I communicate. When I’m speaking at my normal speed, he doesn’t get everything. I learned to be extremely cautious with slang and colloquial terms. We’ve had some good laughs.”

Host families are paid and required to provide a private room for each student, a safe, comfortable environment and accommodate no more than two students at a time. Families should provide breakfast and dinner each day. Breakfast may be on the student’s own, but the goal is for them to share dinner with the family as often as possible.

Many of the students match up with fellow students from their home country and move on to share apartments or off-campus housing with them. The program recommends that the newcomers spend a minimum of four weeks with a host family to get acclimated before attempting life on their own.

For information, access the Web site at www.azhomestay.com or call Forsythe at 412-608-2836.

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