A friend of mine found out that you get $700 / month for hosting a foreign exchange student.  She has a spare bedroom and bathroom so she signed it up.  The student is a 15 yr old daughter of a diplomat from South Korea coming to a random arse town in Wisconsin.  Kid will be there for the full year.  Trivia note:  When the family goes out to eat and the kid comes along, the kid is supposed to fund that themselves.

Anyhow, I find it interesting that despite the generally notion that the US school system is generally considered mediocre or less than the best overall in the western, developed nations, first world or whatever term is not considered too insensitive today.  Why would someone choose to send their kid to random ass Wisconsin for education?  

On a similar note I made mention in a very recent post that I had a friend study in France for her masters.  She had a Go Fund Me for it.  Is there a return on investment outside of personal experience in studying abroad?    For any trivia note, she is a literature major.  In general or not even masters related, does it change things at a job interview?

The public school system is bad, but it’s assumed the universities, particularly the great ones foreign students travel abroad for, are the best in the world. I think as opposed to the classroom learning, the value for foreign exchange students is rooted in learning the culture with an eye on future growth.

My sister had a Japanese exchange student stay with us during high school, we played Nintendo 64 together and I was pretty intrigued by how well we could communicate non verbally considering neither of us spoke the other language.

In 2000, we had a German lad come and stay in our random town (120 miles from Melbourne) for a year. He was a walking German stereotype, apart from the nationalism of course, and didn't share my love for obscure Simpsons references ( the land of chocolate.. ooooh the germans! Sure, the Germans have made a few mistakes, but that's why pencils have erasers! )

He was filthy rich, and no one knew why. Nor asked. Being 16 year sold, we were sure it was Nazi gold. We were idiots. Any way, it turns out he was part of the Braun ( shaver company ) lineage. His last name being Braun, it made sense. 

Had a Ukrainian exchange student who was funny as all hell -- and also made slightly sexist comments from time-to-time. We had English together and all the girls loved em, even though he basically would say stuff like "a woman's place is in the kitchen" or "women's basketball, not good", (the latter I totally agree with lol) but always said it with a smile and some foreign charm.

He really took a liking to American football; loved it honestly. Bought himself a Tom Brady jersey, which of course in a classroom full of Bengals and Steelers fans, he got booed for and called us "haters". He was honestly a fun guy.