“You’re Not So Ugly” – My Korean Homestay Students

The city of Vancouver enjoys the largest share of the more than 100,000 international students who take language courses in Canada each year. Many of these students stay with local  families — known as homestay families or host families — for periods usually ranging from one month to as long as one year. The host family supplies a private bedroom and two or three meals a day. Homestay students are interested in improving their English and learning about Canadian culture through interaction with the family. Families generally receive around $700 per month for hosting a student.

In 1993, when I was working at a language school in downtown Vancouver, one of my students, a handsome and creatively talented Korean, whom I’ll call Jae*, asked me if he could live in my house. Jae’s family had immigrated to Canada after spending a few years in Chile, so he lived at home with his parents, whose severely dysfunctional relationship was driving him crazy. I told him he was welcome to stay with me as long as he had no problem living with a gay man.

He was the first of more than 70 homestay students I have hosted in the past 17 years.

During the 1990s I hosted several more Koreans, finding them almost invariably to be warm and affectionate, as well as blunt, engaging, fun-loving, short-tempered and competitive. Jae, however, had been affected by macho culture, and disdained affection. Once, when he and his girlfriend went away for a trip, I wanted to hug him goodbye; he grudgingly embraced me, grumbling, “Do we have to do this?” And I remember once talking with Jae about relationships and complaining about not being able to find a partner. Summoning up all the sympathy he could find in that macho heart of his, he said, “Yeah, I don’t get it either — because you’re not so ugly.”

After Jae, there were several more Koreans and a few wonderful Japanese students. But it was with the Koreans that I formed the deepest and most enduring emotional relationships. It seems we did everything together: meal preparation, weekly runs to COSTCO for supplies and hot dogs and fries, poker games, birthday parties, karaoke nights, and trips to Victoria and the Gulf Islands. And there was always plenty of beer: one summer when there were as many as eight guys staying in the house, cases of empty beer bottles were stacked by the back door in several rows to the ceiling.

Some of these students have become my life-long friends. They are all back in Korea, of course, and are married, have kids, and are working in well-paying jobs. Sometimes they call because they just had a dream about me, or because they got drunk and started reminiscing about their time in Canada and at my house, or because they’re on a business trip somewhere in the U.S. and wish they had time to stop off in Vancouver. I am touched that they maintain the connection so faithfully.

I have two favourites among these guys. Ken, who came to me in late 1995, almost immediately gave me a Korean nickname: younggum tengyi, which means something slightly more insulting than “old fart.” Not long after he moved in, Ken discovered that his university friend, nicknamed “Sleepy,” was also in town, so we invited Sleepy to stay with us as well. I asked YG to tell Sleepy that I was gay just so that there would not be problems later. Sleepy replied, “I’m fine with it — as long as he doesn’t try to attack me.” (He was not the last to voice this conditional agreement.) But after he moved in and we got to know each other, the first thing he did every morning when he got out of bed was give me a hug.

For several months in 1996, the three of us were pretty much glued together.

After they had been living with me for a while, Ken and Sleepy — 25- or 26-year-olds who had spent at least two and a half years in one of the toughest military training programs in the world — approached me separately, within 24 hours of each other, each confiding that he was jealous because I paid more attention to the other one. I was secretly delighted.

The day before he left Vancouver to return to Korea and resume his university studies, Sleepy came to me, tears streaming down his face, with gifts he had bought, and sobbing, hugged me goodbye. I will never forget that scene.

Of all the students who have stayed with me over the years, I love these two the most.

For the Koreans, the time spent in Vancouver was both critical and precious. It was critical because they had to improve their English significantly in order to compete for good jobs at home, where English-language ability was a requirement. It was precious because this would likely be their last opportunity to travel overseas and to enjoy a bit of “freedom.” Once they started working they would be looking at very long days at the office and little or no vacation for their entire working life. Having a family would, of course, bring more responsibility.

For a few reasons, mostly having to do with greed, homestay is not always a great experience for students. My “boys” were savvy enough to know that they had a good thing and genuinely appreciated the loving home that I gave them.

I now recognize that they in turn were fulfilling a significant psychological need for me.

With the onset of the “Asian flu” in late 1997, Korean students began cancelling their study-abroad trips to Canada. Only the lucky ones, whose parents had big U.S.-dollar accounts, could afford to come. The crisis eventually ended and within a couple of years Koreans started coming to study here once more. A few stayed with us over the years, but I was never again to experience the close relationships I had made in those first four years of being a homestay father.

I miss my boys.

*All students’ names have been changed to protect their privacy.

Photo Credits

“Budweiser Korean style” JonDoeForty1 @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vitorpamplona/5194324370/

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