Full House Again

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A host family agrees to provide a bed and three meals a day for a student and to treat the visitor as a family member, meting out both chores and hugs. The students come with health insurance and spending money. Some affluent empty nesters treat their kids to travel and other goodies, but hosts don't have to spend much, says Inge Gabel. "I always cook for more than two anyway," she says, "and we live near Niagara Falls and take all our kids there."

These young people bring their stand-in parents a sharper, fresher perspective — and lots of laughs. A girl from Moldavia, for example, expected peanut butter to be butter studded with peanuts. A boy from Holland, told he would sleep in the "bunkhouse," what the family called their add-on bedroom, was visibly relieved to find that it wasn't, as in his Dutch-English dictionary, a toolshed in a field. Larilyn Carpenter, 56, a school principal in Waukesha, Wis., treasures the memory of her Brazilian "son" Luciano's tearing around outside her house late at night, rolling in his first snowfall. "I went from window to window watching him," she recalls.

In a world beset by political strife, these young ambassadors make politics personal. A French exchange student lived with Gail and Richard Marshall, 54 and 56, editors at the Fresno Bee, during the "freedom fries" period of Franco-American relations. When the girl's brother called, spewing blanket attacks on Americans, the young diplomat retorted, "I'm here. I know what Americans are thinking and saying."

"She made sure he got informed," Gail says. "That's the great civics lesson here."

More than politics or culture, though, being a host ends up being about parenting. Many kids call the adults Mom and Dad. When the school year ends, saying goodbye can be traumatic. "Our first time, we were in tears at the airport," recalls Becky Massey. "We didn't eat or talk for a day. We didn't realize how deep the attachment would be."

Mike Medina, 51, a government employee in Menifee, Calif., cried for weeks after his first yearlong "daughters" left him and his wife Theresa, also 51. For the couple's anniversary, Domitelle from France and Carola from Germany had cooked them a surprise four-course dinner and served them in waiter costume while votive candles flickered. That was early on; the relationship got only better from there.

Gail Marshall, whose grown son had turned their house into "boy central," enjoyed having two "daughters" last year, from Iceland and France: the three women loved cooking, trading intimacies and getting done up at the salon together. Another year, Richard Marshall, a singer in his church choir, finally found a musical soul mate in a German "daughter." He taught her the tune for Itsy Bitsy Spider, which they sang in the car, making up their own lyrics.

Yet for all those pleasures, no one claims that having teenagers makes for an uninterrupted idyll. Disputes can erupt over issues like curfews, drinking or smoking, and feelings may be easily hurt. Most of those graduate parents just roll with the punches, but if they do need help, the agency coordinator mediates. In the rare extreme case, the rep will find the student another home.