By on April 13th, 2016

Celebrating Your International Student’s Birthday

While providing a safe place to live and plenty of interaction for learning English are two of the primary duties of a host family, one of the best ways to approach your homestay experience is to consider your new guest part of the family. Allowing them to join your traditions and bond with you personally makes their stay in America even more special. And you’ll find that what you get out of it reflects what you’ve put in.

A very special way to make your international guest feel at home comes around once a year. If their birthday happens to fall during their stay in your home, you can celebrate it with them to help them get through homesickness and make the day memorable. There are two ways to go about doing this:

International Birthday Customs

Before you plan a big party, you may wish to look up the birthday customs of your international guest’s homeland. You’d be surprised how many ways there are to celebrate growing older. Some cultures, like Mexico and Venezuela, celebrate birthdays much the same way we do. There are decorations, gifts, games, and most importantly, a cake.

Other places have very different traditions. In China, for example, instead of blowing out cake candles to make a wish for the new year, birthdays are marked by eating extra long noodles. Slurping them all as long as possible is said to represent a long happy life for the next year. While in America, birthday celebrations are limited to family and friends, in places like South Africa, whole towns gather to celebrate the birthday of one citizen. American college students might get their friends to buy them a drink on their birthday, but in Germany, the drinks are on the birthday boy or girl!

Other cultures do not acknowledge birthdays at all. In some parts of Vietnam, everyone turns a year older at the New Year, or tet. A Vietnamese student from these regions would probably not wish their birthday to be acknowledged at all, or if it is, for the celebration to be performed on tet, which usually falls in late January or early February.

American Birthday Celebration

If your international student has expressed a desire to experience a traditional American birthday celebration, this can be a great way to show off the many fun aspects of this part of our culture. After all, as a melting pot, we’ve been able to gather some of the best ideas from other cultures and create our own exciting event that highlights the diversity of our country.

In this case, you can go as big or small as you think is right for your guest. You most definitely have to have a cake with candles, and a round of the Happy Birthday song, but there are many other traditions, such as giving gifts, playing games, or going out for a special event that can make a birthday party a lot of fun.

Don’t be alarmed if your student doesn’t know their exact date of birth. In certain cultures, (again, like certain parts of Vietnam) only the year of their birth may ever have been noted. In this case, maybe your student would like to experience a traditional American birthday on the date of their getting accepted to their study program abroad.

Anyway you choose to celebrate, a birthday party for your international student is a great way to make them feel right at home during their homestay. You’ll also get the chance to learn about their traditions, and maybe find a lasting addition to your future birthday celebrations.