My son leaves in a few days or so for his collegiate league assignment. I am wondering if it is customary to send along a gift or anything with our son to thank his host family. My wife wants to put together a gift basket reflective of our part of the country. I am wondering if we should include supermarket gift cards or something like that to show our appreciation and help keep the boy fed.
What have others done?
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When we travel to New Zealand and Australia [24 years] our American players reside with host families. We recommend gifts for the family, photos of your family, the gift basket is a great idea.
Bob
We had a mom who sent some stuff and a list of his favorite foods, drinks, such. We tried to have it for him. Make sure you send your contact info. This was a minor league kid and we stayed in touch with his mom. It was really good because he eventually got homesick and left rookie ball. He was Texas and took money right out of HS and had never slept a night away from home. He got caught up in the system and got frustrated and left. We had to call his mom and tell her he was on his way home. He had not even called her.
When we visited son during the summer season we met his host family and took them out to dinner a couple of times. While there son told us their favorite restaurants, food, entertainment, etc and my wife put together a nice gift basket with those things.
So I just visited with my son's host family today. Other questions — they said they would feed him and apparently he already offered to do his own laundry. Any tips on how much money he might need? Does league feed him on overnights or do we need to finance that? He is going to Northwood league. Appreciate any tips on the etiquette of it all. The baseball is his problem. :-)
Iowamom23 posted:So I just visited with my son's host family today. Other questions — they said they would feed him and apparently he already offered to do his own laundry. Any tips on how much money he might need? Does league feed him on overnights or do we need to finance that? He is going to Northwood league. Appreciate any tips on the etiquette of it all. The baseball is his problem. :-)
It may vary from team to team, but I believe in the Northwoods they feed the boys mid afternoon on game days (and in the NWL, everyday is a game day, lol), and the home team puts out a spread for both teams after the game. My son's team only had a handful of overnight trips, but the team picked up all of the meals on those trips. Basically only need to cover breakfast, and if your son is like mine, all those "second" lunches and dinners!
