Pauline Dax

Review of Council Travel USA, part of CI...

Terrible program. I am a 14 year old girl from Ukr...

Terrible program. I am a 14 year old girl from Ukraine and my family was supposed to be traveling a lot especially this year, so me and parents decided to send me to USA to study. Plus I could improve my English. The idea is to live with a native English speaking family. Once I arrived to Los Angeles (where my host family is located) I pretty soon learned that my host dad and my host mom, who are native speakers would not want to socialize at all (guess I was an incoming source of money for them) the host grand mother only spoke Spanish. And in a few days I found out that there are 4 more men (who are not part of the family, they are renting a room except one of them was also one of the exchange students) once my parents found out about that they demanded CIEE to change a host family. Later they found out that CIEE was never awear of those additional household members. So it turns out that they didn t even come there to meet a host family or to see in which conditions I would live in. The room I was staying in wasn t even located in the house it reminded me more of a garage or a storage room as it was outside and didn t have a window. The toilet and shower was in the room but it was separated with a piece of material from where I actually was sleeping. Not to mention the cockroaches and other bags that are falling out of shower every day. There was more drama going on between my parents and CIEE. And for this 5 month I was already there I only saw my host dad in the mornings when he was driving me to school, I have seen my host mother only 2-3 times a week. CIEE kept calling me in the middle of a school day. My parents told me not to answer them as they wanted to speak with them directly. CIEE kept to ignore my dads calls and emails and everything they wanted to discuss they discussed it through me. I had to focus on school as it was the final week. And here CIEE are calling me 4 days before I was supposed to go back home (we bought tickets for both ways). So they called me and decided to cancel a program with me as they said of miscommunications. Now I am not able to go to school as my parents are moving from Singapore to Vienna. And international schools are packed and local once won t take me as I do not speak any German at all. One thing what I did not mention that while I was there I had problems with eating disorder(anorexia). I am 1.73cm and my normal weight was 49kg while I was there my weight became 43kg. Overall it was a bad experience and I do not recommend CIEE for you as they can cancel any time they want.