Hospitality: Paying It Forward...

Image by Aenneken via Flickr

One of the things that made a huge impression on me during my 3 years living in Germany and Japan was the number of strangers/"loose affiliations" of people who would open their homes for me in one way or another.

I remember thinking how great it was when I was far from home to have a place where I felt welcome.

Last weekend, there were some British students on a tour of America and they spent the Sabbath in our neighborhood, so I volunteered to host them (which basically meant that they just slept in my basement...other than that, I barely saw them.)

They were really nice chaps (we're friends on Facebook now!) and, as they were leaving, I turned into a Jewish grandmother, packing them a bag of food to take back to their dorms.

I remember the "travel diet," as inglorious as it was and I knew they weren't cooking gourmet meals for themselves the way that the NFO was for us.

They were exceeding grateful, but all I said to them was, "some day, a young, hungry student will stay with you and you can pay it forward."

I'm sure they will.