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Not my grandparents, but my great-grandfather was alive during that time, in modern day Gaziantep-Şanlıurfa area. Although different provinces today, our hometown in modern day Gaziantep, and our village in modern day Şanlıurfa were part of a single county: Birecik/Birtha.BirecikHe was a boatman, who would transport people and goods in the Euphrates. During mutual mass murder between Turks, Kurds and Armenians, he would transport rich Armenians from the Euphrates to Syria who fled atrocities. That’s what I heard from elder family members. I am not aware of anything that happened directly in our village, probably because we didn’t have any neighboring Armenian villages; as most raiding happened between neighboring settlements.Boatman in BirecikI can also add this for my cousins’s paternal family:My cousin’s paternal village is in Halfeti, Şanlıurfa. There are two theories about the village’s name (Cibin), one is that it comes from the Turkish word Çıbın (fly), or that their village used to be called Chur Puyn in Armenian, and Turkmens who couldn’t spell the name changed it to Cibin. Apparently it was inhabited by both Turkmens and Armenians. In 1915, when Armenians had to flee, they left 30 Armenian children, most of them female, for trusted Turkmen families to raise. Villagers say different things about their motives to leave their children, some say they feared their children couldn’t make it under harsh conditions, some say they would be better off in their village than as refugees. These Armenian kids were raised in the village and married Turkmens. Their photos, fathers’ and family members’ names are in their website. Some examples would be:Zagik, married to Isak HidirMaryam, married to Verdo, raised by Mado and Nano, real father is Biccan HagobThere is another story. In Turkey, “Muhacır” refers to Muslims who migrated to Anatolia after they were expelled from their homes in Balkans. However, in Nizip (also part of Birecik county at that time, now in Gaziantep) Muhacir means Muslims who migrated to Nizip after they fled murder in East Anatolia by Armenian gangs. These “muhacir”s came mostly from Van, Muş, Bayburt and Bitlis. These muhacirs have a similar story to that of fleeing Armenians; they left many children in their original villages and towns and apparently it was the right thing to do as most kids died on the way, says Muhacir Musa Karaboğa.Muhacir Gülay (Seçkin), a nurse whose family originally lived in Erciş, tells that their journey on foot and carts lasted for 6–8 months. They left their two kids at Erciş fearing they would die on the way. Their daughter Şerife was old enough to escape home and catch up with them. Muhacir Gülay, upon Şerife’s arrival, begged her husband sergeant Hüseyin to take their smallest child too, but the kid was gone when went back. When they arrived in Nizip, they thought of this as a temporary visit but they never went back and are known as muhacirs.NizipThere were Armenians in Nizip too. Some of them formed up armed forces with supply from the French army in the region. After the liberation of Antep, families of rebels fled to Levant, out of fear that Turkmens would take revenge for their uprising and they were most likely attacked by gangs and outlaws in the region. I’m sure some were murdered, but some stayed and converted to Islam because again, there were kids left to trusted Turkmen families to raise. Rich families also left gold for their children’s host families and trusted them to save it. I don’t know if all did, but such a family we knew saved that bag of gold and gave it to their hosted children (besleme) when she grew up. Strong will it takes, to save that bag of gold in a poor, rural town during times when a few grams of wheat was treasure. A woman from this Muslim Armenian stock in Nizip is actually very devout Muslim now… Now abondoned church of Fevkani is a reminder of Armenian heritage in the town:The same building after restoration, from my camera

I can only speak for the rules in the U.S. Here, you must apply to an exchange organization; in some cases the school may serve that role but most of the time an organization is involved. I recommend that potential host families research the exchange organizations active in their area -- don't just call the first one that Google shows you. Find out about their policies. Are they approved by CSIET (Council on Standards for International Educational Travel)? (If not, stay away from that organization.) What kind of ongoing support do they provide? How do you feel about the local contact/representative -- this is the person you will need to work with, so make sure you get a good feeling from him/her. What countries do they work with? How will they help you find a student who seems like a good "fit"?Once you decide who you want to work with, you will need to do the following:File a written (online most likely) application. This will include basic data about your family, ages of family members, personal interests, basic information about the home.Submit criminal background check forms for all adult members of the family (anyone over the age of 18).Provide personal references.Have an in-home interview / home visit from an exchange program representative, who will want to meet every member of the immediate family and conduct a tour of the home. He or she will also take several photos. These photos do not go to the student; rather, they are for the file to show that the home is clean and safe.Watch online or attend an in-person host family orientation which covers the US government rules and the exchange program's expectations for host families.The program rep will guide you through this process, and the program will also be there for you during the semester or academic year to offer advice and remain in contact.

"Hotels" -- not exactly.Inns, or cauponae were common, where you could rent a room and had some minimal amount of domestic service from the household staff who were almost certainly slaves. Cheap places were basically dormitories: beds (or bedrolls on the floor) in a common space and often shared with strangers. More upscale places would offer private rooms. Inns were common in cities and along trade routes where strangers were frequent. Many of them also doubled as brothels, formally or informally.Higher class accomodations were called hospitia, a word which derives from an older word for alliance connections between families. In very early times anybody of status would stay with family friends (or friends-of-friends) as a guest rather than using public accommodations: this was both a nicer, safer experience and a way of reinforcing the all-important political and social ties between powerful families; you can somewhat analogize it to the round-robin of country-house visits in the life of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves.Eventually wealthier towns and cities provided forms of public hospitia -- which could have been dedicated facilities set aside for distinguished guests but were more often a public service performed by civic minded aristocrats who took in high-status visitors as guests at home. The same word was also used as a bureaucratic euphemism for quartering: when soldiers or government officials were stationed somewhere, the local jurisdiction would foist them onto unlucky locals as "guests"*.As for restaurants: There were a lot of what amounted to 'fast food' places under several different names: a taberna was basically a shop, which might sell cold-cuts or other kinds of pre-cooked provisions; a thermopolia was a hot-food counter, like a modern lunchonette steam table; a popina was a cookshop or restaurant. Many eateries were just counters which sold cooked food and wine to the street, not unlike a New York style pizzeria; others had interiors and tables. Sometimes these were attached to cauponae. Like inns, eateries were often pretty seedy and many of these doubled as brothels or gambling dens. However plenty of them were just places for working folks to eat: in big cities, where the working classes were packed into apartment buildings (insulae) a lot of people didn't have a working kitchen -- they might have a charcoal brazier but that would be about it, both for reasons of expense and to limit the very real danger of fires.Food shops were common. They were usually in the first floors of apartment buildings although they might also be found in market areas.Wealthier people generally had cooks and staff; the best dining would not have been at dedicated restaurants but in private parties.* Much later, as the western Empire fell apart the same word came to refer to the financial and logistical arrangements which supported various barbarian military contingents. There's are complex technical arguments about whether your Vandals and Visigoths actually lived with Roman host families or simply got their 'hospitality' in the form of commuted tax payments or rents).