Foreign Students Receive a Warm West Orange Welcome

With July’s record-breaking heat, staying at home in West Orange for the month could have been a real drag. But hosting a foreign exchange student, our family found that sharing our culture and other great things about our town and its environs actually made the time fly by – and breaking a sweat often wasn’t so bad.

For a second year, our family – along with several others in West Orange – opened our home to a foreign student through the EF Educational Homestay Program. The summer program has two sessions:100 students from Italy, Spain and Russia came for four weeks in July, and another group of students from Spain, France, Germany, China and Hong Kong are here for three weeks in August.

Weekdays the students travel to Drew University in Madison and attend classes, activities and field trips to places such as New York City, Hoboken and Six Flags Great Adventure. Host families provide them with meals, a bed, transportation to and from the school bus stop, as well as engaging and entertaining them on evenings and weekends.

Our student, Giulia, an 18-year-old from a small town in the Como region of northern Italy, spoke fluent English and, with two younger siblings fit in quite well with my three kids – connecting especially with 17-year-old Beth.

Guilia barely had time to unpack before she became immersed in West Orange culture. After dinner her first night here, we took her to Eagle Rock Reservation’s 9/11 Memorial to watch the sun set and the Manhattan skyline light up. We chatted and threw a Frisbee with a Gregory neighborhood family we saw there, and ended the evening at a local homemade-ice cream shop.

Two days later, she celebrated Independence Day with an in-depth history lesson about West Orange’s most famous resident, Thomas Edison. Guilia, Beth and I made a late-morning visit to the Edison National Historic Site, where we encountered three other EF students who were also staying in town. To our good fortune, my friend Arthur was working as a docent. He gave us a personal tour of the main building’s ground floor, making an effort to speak slowly and clearly for our foreign guest.

Later in the day, we met up again with the other EF students for an old-fashioned Fourth of July celebration at the home of their host. Liana had graciously invited us and another West Orange host family to her annual holiday barbeque, where everyone filled up on the traditional American hamburgers, hot dogs and watermelon as well as more sophisticated fare like a decadent chocolate-fountain fondue. We then walked the half-mile to West Orange High School and stretched out our blankets among hundreds of other residents, witnessing a spectacular fireworks display that elicited “oohs” and “ahs” from all.

And that was just the first three days!

Most foreign students who choose the Drew program do so for its proximity to New York City. On the weekends, that’s where they want to be. So West Orange, less than 20 miles from mid-Manhattan with easy access to highways and mass transit, is a great “base camp” for excursions to the Big Apple.

We made three trips into New York. For the first, a brutally hot Saturday during the holiday weekend, we breezed through negligible traffic to the Upper East Side, spending the day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with a break mid-afternoon to stroll (and sweat) through adjacent Central Park. Guilia closely examined countless Greek and Roman statues and Egyptian artifacts in the vast museum, relating to us how she’d studied their history in school. She also lingered in the numerous galleries of French Impressionist and Italian art upstairs. Her shared enthusiasm for the museum prompted visits by several other EF students during their stay.

On other weekends, we toured Times Square, Chelsea, Chinatown and lower Manhattan, including the heart-wrenching 9/11 Memorial. We rode the subways and even took a round-trip on the Staten Island Ferry (something I’d never done before), and got another great look at Lady Liberty from Liberty State Park in Jersey City.

But all the fun didn’t happen away from home. There was also much to do right in town. Surprised to hear that Guilia had never been to a zoo, we took her and a fellow Italian student to the one right next door -- Turtle Back Zoo. The two girls were fascinated by the big cats, monkeys and sea lions; petted sting rays (“very slimy,” they reported); witnessed an alligator feeding; and delighted in riding in the “back seat” of the zoo train, gazing at the brand-new swan boats on the Orange Reservoir along the way.  

Another day, we toured Glenmont, Thomas Edison’s home in beautiful Llewellyn Park. And one Friday night, Guilia had her first “dine-in” movie experience at the Essex Green AMC, munching on bread sticks, pretzels and unlimited popcorn while enjoying “Despicable Me II.”

It was a joy to spend weekends as a veritable tour guide to our foreign guests, exploring and explaining anew many of the places we’ve come to take for granted over the years.

But weekday evenings also held a special appeal, as that was the time to showcase our local cuisine. Guilia told us her favorite dinners included pizza and pasta. So with the preponderance of Italian-American eateries in town, we made sure that interspersed among the home-made meals were samplings from several of our pizzerias -- and she gave them all high marks! She also enjoyed eating at an Italian restaurant right across the border in Orange that I’ve gone to since I was a kid, praising its authenticity and service. In addition, Guilia got her first taste of Peruvian food and enjoyed large, crusty bagels from other town haunts.

Just when the July heat wave abated, it was time to say goodbye. It had been another wonderful experience for all of us. Guilia expressed great appreciation for our hospitality. My three kids enjoyed the new friendship and glimpse into another culture. And my husband and I found it to be a good reminder of why we chose to make West Orange our home. We’re already looking forward to next summer.