Homestay

24th November 2012

When staying in Cardiff, you have the choice between staying in a Student Residence or staying together with a host family. Many people choose to live independently in a residence, because they want to be in close contact with other international students, and they don’t want to be obliged to follow the rules of a host family, but rather be able to do whatever they want and do things whenever they want. In my opinion, though, there are also a lot of reasons that argue in favor of staying in a host family. From my experience I can tell, that living in a host family is not like some people imagine it would be. You can come and go basically whenever you want, and there are not a lot of regulations you have to follow. Additionally the family provides you with nice and fresh food every day. The strongest point of living in a host family is, that you ALWAYS have somebody to talk to, it nearly never happens, that you are alone at home or that you are bored, because there is always somebody you can have a nice chat with if you want.

If you are lucky there are more international students staying with the same family, which will make your stay even better in my opinion, especially on your first few days, because it will be easier for you to make new friends fast and get to know more people, who might be able to show you some nice places in town etc. After all, I can say that it was definitely the right decision to stay in a host family. There was always a nice and casual atmosphere, which made me really feel at home in Cardiff. For the people, who are really bent on improving their English skills, while getting to know the Welsh way of living the host family is the way to go. 🙂