FIUTS Community Hosted Dinner
Host Karene Busby with her host students at Snoqualmie Falls before their Japanese steakhouse dinner! See the gallery below for more photos.
Over the years, FIUTS has celebrated the incoming of new international students and the start of the Fall quarter with a community BBQ at Gasworks Park with hundreds of students, FIUTS community members, and Seattle locals. However, due to COVID restrictions and rising cases we decided that would be unsafe for everyone involved.
However, we still wanted to provide an opportunity for incoming students to interact with each other and with members of the community. This year with the help of 30 hosts we placed over 130 students from 29 different countries for a dinner on the evening of September 24th, 2021. Although running similar to our Thanksgiving dinner program, the Community-Hosted Dinner had 25% more students placed than our recent Thanksgiving dinner in 2019 and more than 100% increase of students placed from years before that.
Longtime FIUTS host Suzanne Anderson hosted a backyard dinner with students and new friends!
We are so thankful to our hosts that made this possible and were patient through this learning process for all of us for an event never done before!
Hosting a dinner is a great way to get to interact with international students and share cultural norms, build otherwise rare relationships, and provide a warm welcome without the commitment of multi-day homestay. For the students, it is an exciting way to get connected to the Seattle-area community and learn more about other cultures.
Below are quotes from students and hosts sharing their experiences!
Host Experiences:
My spouse and I very much enjoyed hosting a "backyard" cookout for our guests. Conversation was easy and positive, and our guests were enthusiastic about the foods we served and about Seattle. We learned about their travels, their families, and their expectations for their programs at the university, and a little more about our city too, through their eyes.
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{The best part of the overall experience was] meeting the students and having great conversations with them
Student experiences:
The whole concept really helped me step out of my comfort zone (which has been my bed the whole pandemic) and interact with people of various origins, get to know them, their cultures, and most of all, make new friends.
Everyone at our dinner party talked about their countries, cultures, staple food that helped create a multicultural environment. I believe the international students like us who come from their homes far away, the most comforting and helpful thing they can get here, is inclusion and equity, which was well served at the get-together.
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I really appreciate the efforts of FIUTS and the host family in making us feel welcomed right in our first week. Our host (Ms. Amarah Khan) and her entire family, including the three young children, made us feel at home. She did not only entertained us during the dinner but also offered us help and support in the longer run. We are glad to have received an invitation to visit her family during any of the future holidays.
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It was a wonderful experience! We ended up not taking pictures, just because we were in a good time and we forgot! Sometimes when we are having a good time we might forget our cellphones for a couple of hours.
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The best part of the community dinner was the conversation we had with the host's family. I think it is really important to exchange our thoughts with people from other backgrounds. This helps us to feel the cultural importance.
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This is a great initiative. It does so much more for international students than you expect. It not only helped me form meaningful connections but also gave me a glimpse into the cultural aspects of people in Seattle.
Thank you again to both hosts and students for participating in this program. We love hearing about your great experiences and seeing all the amazing photos shared with us!
In community,
Hilary Zuniga- Camacho | FIUTS Outreach and Community Programs Coordinator