LEWISTON — Tricia McBride, local coordinator for the American Institute For Foreign Study Foundation’s Academic Year in America high school exchange program, is currently interviewing families in and around the Lewiston area to host a foreign exchange student.

The cross-cultural learning program places teenagers from Europe, Asia and South America with American families for a semester or school year.

The program gives American families the chance to learn about a foreign culture. Exchange students bring their holiday customs, their native language and the special dishes of their homelands into their American homes. They arrive as strangers and become ‘sons’ and ‘daughters’ in their American families.

Next year’s participants, chosen from hundreds of applicants, will arrive in Maine in August. They all speak English, are covered by full medical insurance and will have their own spending money. Host families will receive a travel scholarship worth up to $1,000 off the cost of an AIFS study/travel abroad program.

Families interested in choosing a foreign student to host for the 2010 – 2011 academic semester or year should contact McBride at 689-1800 or Academic Year in America at 1-800-322-4678, ext. 5070.