BIG NEWS

The big news of the week is that I (finally) switched host families! Yaaaaaaaaay! For those of you who I didn’t endlessly complain to, things were NOT going well with my old family. It all started with my room being too cold, and me wanting to change that, and it ended in shouting matches and incredibly bad blood between me and the Marfaings. My host mom just became a huge heinous bitch, out of nowhere, and was very immature, and insulted my friends, my boyfriend, and me. So I decided enough was enough, and I started the process to find a new host family! My new family couldn’t have me until today (Monday), but things got so bad with the ‘Faings that I couldn’t stay there a minute longer, so Gersende (Dickinson Center assistant) found me a “transition family” from Thursday through today. My transition family was amazing, and they really helped remind me what French family life should be like, not like the hell I had been living in for the past 3 months. We had conversations, and made jokes, and everything was great! I realized that I didn’t really ever talk at dinner with the Marfaings, and they never seemed to care about me at all, and it was totally different over the weekend! Even though I was only staying with them for a few days, transition family (they had a crazy last name that I can’t even begin to remember) showed so much interest in me and my welfare that it was completely refreshing! So I left there today with many good feelings and memories from my couple of days with them, and I headed to my new family! My new “family” is actually just an older woman named Francoise, who lives on a gorgeous “allée” (i.e. long tree lined avenue type thing) that is in the same neighborhood as the Marfaings. But I’m happy, because it’s a great neighborhood, close to everything that I need to be close to, and it’s a beautiful and huge apartment in a gorgeous old building! My room is all in pink! And I have a desk, a closet, a nightstand, and a bureau! I never thought I would take those things for granted, but after the “shed” at the ‘Faings, I am ecstatic! Francoise is so nice, she is just like a little host grandma who wants me to be at home and wants us to be in love. And it’s funny, because there are 2 British friends of hers living in the apartment too! But they are taking classes with Alliance Française (an exchange type program where Francoise works), so we only speak in French! But I like that at dinner, I am actually involved in the conversation, and I’m also not the only one that doesn’t speak French perfectly! I AM SO HAPPY!

So that’s the big news. Wish me luck with the new fam! Bisous!