What type of accommodation is available?
Homestay Accommodation
Homestay is a very popular accommodation option available to overseas/interstate students in Australia, providing good quality, safe accommodation with local families. AELC can source the Homestay family on your behalf and everything will be arranged prior to your arrival in Australia.
Temporary Accommodation
Australia has many hotels, motels, and short-term accommodation options at student/budget prices. Ask your Internship Guru to assist you with prices.
Share Housing
Many students share accommodation with other students or the general public, a good option if you are used to a share situation and enjoy an individual lifestyle within a group. With careful planning and knowing “the right” questions to ask this can be a great experience. Ask your Internship Guru for advice.
What is Homestay Accommodation
Homestay Accommodation includes breakfast and dinner 7 days per week.
Our Homestay Families offer intern accommodation for a variety of reasons. Many, because they enjoy having an insight into different cultures as well as a way of supplementing the household income. An intern should always feel welcome at a Homestay.
Interns should be aware that every home is different, and that the Homestay Family may not provide all the home comforts to which you are accustomed. Host Families help interns when they first arrive by establishing an open line of communication and by having an open mind to cultural differences and practices, which may at first seem strange to both the Host Family and the Student.
Students are advised that they could experience customs and values which are different to their own and that they need to come to terms with these differences whilst not having the support of their family and friends. Many issues can be overcome providing students maintain open communication with their host family. Sometime Host families can be completely unaware of an issue because the intern has not brought it to their attention.
Our host families are there to help. Assisting interns with their day-to-day problems such as banking, transport, shopping etc. The Homestay environment should be a place where students can live, relax in comfort and security and feel accepted.
Australian Experiential Learning Centre (AELC) does not enter into a contract with either the intern or the Homestay family but simply acts as the coordinator for Homestay placement. We take all care when matching Host Families and Students but accepts no responsibility for problems arising (other than counselling) once both the Host Family and the Student have accepted a placement.
What can you expect from an Australian Homestay experience?
The majority of Australian families live in the suburbs. Family members must use transport to get to work and study each day. It is almost unheard of for any Australian to be able to walk to work or college. Having said that we make sure that our Homestay families are close to public transport.
Australia is a multicultural country. Embrace living in a multicultural society.
The majority of Australian families have children and pets. . Students who are allergic to animals, frightened of them, or who have religious objections should make that clear on the Internship Application Form – Homestay request section so they are not placed in a home with animals.
Other Boarders
Some of our Homestay families have small children, other students or elderly people who live with them. If the intern requesting Homestay would prefer not to have other boarders in the same home, or feel they would be distracted with children in the house, they are asked to make that clear on the Homestay section of the Application form. Many Host Families offer to take more than one intern/student into their homes, which may provide some level of extra support and socialising to the intern, however if this is an arrangement that would not suit you please let us know.
Security
When the AELC Homestay Coordinator looks for suitable homes for our interns, safety, home comforts and access to public transport are taken into account. We use the information to match a host family with an intern based on the information received on the Intern Application Form – Homestay section.
We also insist on receiving Police Clearances for all adults residing in the family home.
You may be given a house key and must look after it. Also lock up upon leaving the home, including closing and locking open windows in your room.
How To Apply For Homestay
If you would like to take part in the Homestay experience, please complete the Homestay request section of the Application Form remembering to mark down any issues we need to consider in sourcing a Homestay for you.
Our Internship Guru will discuss this during your telephone application interview.
