Making Themselves Right at Home : Foreign exchange student program exposes U.S. families to international attitudes while offering visitors a close-up look at America.

If 17-year-old Arturo Saunero came home from a disco at 1 a.m. in his native country, his parents would be surprised to see him home so early. So the foreign exchange student from Bolivia figured he could find the same sort of hangout here and stay out just as late without worrying anyone.

Wrong.

Arturo and some friends recently managed to get into a bar where there was dancing, but the drinking got out of hand and a fight broke out. Arturo, who is spending a year with a Laguna Hills family, hurried home and found his American Field Service dad, Roger Morgan, waiting up--with questions.

Morgan gave Arturo a lesson on the difference between Bolivian discos--where teens can safely gather long after midnight--and American bars.

“We agreed it’s not good to go to this place,” Arturo says with a sheepish smile.

Now he gets home earlier, and his AFS parents worry less.

Having Arturo around is giving Roger and Janna Morgan some parenting experience that they expect to prove useful when their own children--7, 10 and 13--are his age. He’s also giving the whole family a view of another culture that they’d never see as tourists.

But host families and foreign exchange students often feel like tourists in their own homes when they first start getting to know each other. Language barriers and cultural differences must be overcome before the student begins to feel like part of the family. At the same time, many AFS students must adjust to having less freedom because they are not allowed to drive, and they find that the reins on teen-agers are tighter here than back home.

Sometimes, no matter how hard everyone tries, the match doesn’t work. About 20% of the AFS students here and abroad end up switching from their initial host family to another, says Mary Houts, who oversees the AFS program in the South County coastal area.

“These are paper marriages, and the things students don’t put down on paper can be as important as the things they do,” she explains. “The chemistry may not be right.”

Or a problem like sibling rivalry might make a peaceful cultural exchange impossible.

“Having an exchange student is like having a new baby,” says Sally Schroeder, an AFS representative for the Newport-Mesa School District, who has had four exchange students in her home. “It changes the order of the family. The mother’s attention is on someone new. Some teens find that very refreshing, and others may be jealous because the AFS student is like a star when you have a party or family gathering. Your own kids are kind of left in the lurch.”

However, she adds, in most cases “the AFS student becomes more a part of the family as time goes on. The joy for a family is to find you really can love another person who’s totally different from you. Once you get through the differences, you can find the similarities, and they become part of your family forever.”

The Morgans are among 35 Orange County families that have welcomed an AFS high school student into their home for the current school year, and they’ve found the experience both challenging and rewarding.

“It’s been fun to watch Arturo,” says Roger Morgan. “He’s a nice kid. He’s very bright. He has an attitude that he’s going to make this a success, and it’s good for our kids to see that.”

But, Morgan admits, he’s been uncertain in some situations where he would have been decisive with his own child. Like the time Arturo showed up at 1 a.m. after the bar fight.

“I had to struggle a bit to figure out when to intervene,” Morgan explains. “This is not someone you’ve raised, yet you have responsibility for him. He may want to do something you’re not sure you’d want your own child to do, and that really creates a gray area.”

Janna Morgan adds: “Because Arturo comes from a much different background, we want to be careful not to judge something too quickly. But I tell him off just like I do the other kids.”

Arturo, a senior at Laguna Hills High School, says he has no trouble accepting the rules his AFS parents set for him--once he understands them. Nor does he mind the demands that are made on him. He does his share of microwave cooking and chores around the house, although at home he was used to having a cook and a maid do everything for him.

“When I go home, I’ll be more independent. It will be good when I live alone,” he says.

He also says he enjoys the affection that is shown in his American family more openly than in his own.

“I’m not used to expressing my feelings so much,” he explains. “The kids say, ‘Dad, I love you,’ and this is really nice. I never say that to my father so many times.”

May Oweiss, a 16-year-old student from Egypt who attends Corona del Mar High School, was so homesick in her first weeks with Jane and Bob Parker that it took her longer than Arturo to grow close to her AFS family.

“At first I was very upset because her adjustment was taking longer than normal,” admits Jane Parker, a Corona del Mar resident who has three daughters, ages 9, 16 and 20.

May was very quiet at first, and the frequent, tearful phone conversations she had with her parents were upsetting not only to her, but also to her AFS mom.

“I thought she should be discussing the things she talked to her mom about with me because I was here,” Parker says.

But she decided that expectation was counterproductive and managed to put it out of her mind. Eventually, May became so busy with her new life and friends that she asked her parents not to call as often--and began having her heart-to-heart talks with Parker.

May, who has one brother at home, says she has always wanted to have a sister, and she loves “gossiping” with 16-year-old Katy each night before they go to bed. But it took the girls a while to warm up to each other, Parker says.

“At first, they thought they were supposed to be friends, and they talked very politely to each other,” she explains. “But you can say sarcastic things to a sister that you can’t say to a friend. And sisters don’t have to spend time together like friends do. Now they tease each other and act like sisters.”

May, whose life in Cairo was so sheltered that she finds many American movies either shocking or baffling, says she was reserved at first around her new family because she wasn’t sure how to behave. “The hard part is knowing what’s right and what’s wrong,” she says.

As she figured that out through trial and error, she acquired an assertiveness that would startle the folks back home. She surprised herself recently by calling her parents and telling them she has decided to become a fashion designer and go to college abroad.

“I used to be very hesitant to make decisions and always run to mom and dad. Here, I’ve built lots of independence,” she says.

Helle Myrup, a 16-year-old student from Denmark who is a senior at Newport Harbor High School, says she has also grown a lot since she began living with Bob and Leslie Williams of Costa Mesa and their two teen-agers, who are 16 and 19.

The adjustment process has made her more sensitive to others “because you learn to see things from a different point of view,” she says.

Like May, Helle has just one brother of her own and had to adjust to having a sister.

“I didn’t really know what to say or do. I didn’t know how a sister was supposed to be,” she says. She and her 16-year-old AFS sister, Erin, are trying to talk more, to let each other know when something is bothering them, Helle says.

And, observes Bob Williams, they’ve learned to respect each other’s need for time alone.

“Erin needed solitude. She didn’t want to be entertaining Helle all the time. But they each have their own rooms, and they give each other private time,” he says.

The rewards of opening your home to an exchange student far outweigh any of the difficulties families and students may face while learning to live together, Williams stresses.

“It would be better if there were mandatory exchanges than mandatory military service,” he says. “You’re introduced to a new culture and you have the opportunity to live with them long enough to really see who they are.

“You’re creating an opportunity for young people to interact with other young people from around the world. You really feel like you’re building bridges.”