Home Away from Home, No 2

Vendredi, 20 septembre.

It's crazy to think that it's already been two weeks since I moved out of Triolet! Maybe I'm just good at quickly settling into new schedules (thanks, military childhood!), but after just under two weeks with my host family, I'm starting to feel very comfortable in my home away from home.

First night.

As for my host family itself: I really like them! Unlike the other W&M students, who are all staying with couples or single women, I have an actual famille d'accueil: a mom, dad, and thirteen-year-old son. My host mom is lovely -- very pretty and always smiling, which is reassuring when I'm blundering through a conversation or making a faux pas at the dinner table! Her husband is very nice and funny, although I only ever partially understand his jokes the first time. My "frère d'accueil" (as I've started referring to him) is absolutely adorable. Although he swears he's in collège (confusingly, the name for middle school in France), he seems a lot younger than thirteen. (I think he looks more like 10 or 11! But maybe that's just because I'm old.) He's pretty quiet around me, but always friendly and smiling.

The whole family is pretty busy and since our schedules don't always line up, I don't see them all the time. It's been a little tricky to figure out how I fit into the dynamic -- I'm more than a random renter leasing a room, but it's not like I'll be asking my host mom to come tuck me into bed anytime soon! I really think that each time I spend time with my family, I get to know them a little better and make a little more progress in letting them get to know me. My homestay arrangement includes breakfasts (sometimes eaten with the family, depending on our schedules) and two free dinners a week, but I can eat additional dinners for a really modest 3€ a meal. Although Molly and I can usually eat for less than that if we go out (especially since the discovery of our new favorite bakery/sandwich shop), I've been trying to stay in and eat with "my family" pretty frequently! Dinners aren't a grand affair for us, like at some of my friends' homestays, but there are lots of vegetables and always bread, so I'm usually quite the happy camper. (Hey, it beats yogurt and cucumber slices -- the go-to dinner of my Triolet days!) Dinners are a fun, bilingual affair -- my host dad speaks pretty good English because of his work, but his wife loves to practice and encouraged her son to do so as well. We speak mostly in French (for my benefit and their comfort), but usually spend a little bit of dinner speaking in English. I didn't know how I would feel about having a family that wanted to practice English all the time, but for now I don't mind it one bit! (If only because hearing them make mistakes in English makes me feel a teensy bit better about my French.)

And now for the part you've all been waiting for ... the grand tour of my bedroom!

A Little Update

Mercredi, 11 septembre.

Phew. I can't believe it's only been a few days since I last wrote on this blog. So much has changed since Friday afternoon! It's hard to imagine that only a couple days later, I have moved out of my Triolet dorm room, moved into my homestay bedroom, and started classes at the university! I can already tell that this semester is going to absolutely FLY by. We've been trying to plan little trips and adventures and outings and already it seems like we're running out of time to do all the things we want to do! I feel like it'll only be a matter of time before "oh, we have to do that!" turns into "oh, I wish we could have done that."

So here's a basic timeline of exciting things that have happened since I last wrote ... as much for my benefit as for yours, because to be honest, I'm starting to lose track of days!

On Friday, after Molly's and my celebratory adventures around Montpellier (Jardin des Plantes and the Parc Zoologique), we made a super cool jealousy-inducing detour to visit a friend who will be spending the academic year living in an ancient apartment in the heart of centre-ville. Then we headed off to our third and final Estivales! Still no wine for Molly and me, but our food of choice this week? Little shot glasses (or verrines, if you want to get technical) full of super delicious fancy flavors of chocolate mousse.

I thought I was going to miss ending every week with a wine and music festival, but three Estivales have been more than enough for me ... if only because there's basically no food left for me to try!

A Typical Day of Pre-Session Life

Mercredi, 28 août.

I realized that I've written a lot about my adventures since being here -- planned excursions, trips downtown, even the life-saving grocery shopping trip of 2013. What I haven't really talked about, however, is what I'm doing the rest of the time. (It's not all picnics and olive tastings.) Over the past 10 days, I've adjusted pretty well to the schedule -- and I've even taken some pictures to help you get a sense of my surroundings! So here it is, a typical day in my "pre-session" life:

For starters, I wake up every morning around 7h. (Per usual, a side note: the "h" stands for "heure" and is used sort of as a replacement of the colon and/or the word "o'clock" in French.) Class starts right at 9h00, so waking up two hours early leaves plenty of time to get ready and go to breakfast first. Of course, seven in the morning isn't really tbat early, but I always set a couple of alarms just in case it's hard to get up! Sometimes, if I'm lucky, I wake up as the sun is rising just behind the building across from me. It's so pretty that it almost makes up for the fact that I live just over a glorified prison yard!

As you saw before, my room is super tiny, so it takes no time at all after my alarm sounds to get dressed and pack my bag for the day. Because Molly didn't have a cell phone until just the other day, she had a more exciting alarm -- me banging on her door in my jammies!

Home Away From Home, No 1

Samedi, 17 Août.

Welcome to my new home-away-from-home! I'm living in a student housing campus called Triolet and, well, it's just about as spartan an existence as you could imagine. My room -- yes, I do have one all to myself -- is on the second floor (which, funnily enough, is really the third floor in France) of Building C in Room 058.

And here's the view out the window! The tennis courts aren't particularly lovely and look a little too much like a prison yard for my taste, but when I'm sitting at the desk, all I can see are the tops of the trees and the pretty blue sky. So that's good.

The bathroom is ... unique. It's all one tiny room with a toilet, sink, mirror, and shower. It's about the size of my entire bathtub at home and you have to press the shower head every couple seconds to keep the water flowing, and yet I like it. It's bright and clean ... and feels sort of like I'm brushing my teeth in a spaceship!