Host Family

I finally got my host family!

I'll be living with the Henriques family of Orange, France.

Orange (what a funny name, I love it!) is located in the southeast of France, down by Marseilles apparently, and I'm relatively sure it's part of Provence. I'm extremely pleased, I was really hoping to go to the southeast. I've heard stories about it being the most beautiful part of France.

The family, though, is even cooler. I'm going to go from my American three-person family, where I'm an only child, to having four siblings! I can't even begin to imagine what that's going to be like. There are three girls, Marjorie, 16, who I'll be sharing a room with, Sandrine, 14, and Alexia, 12. Then there's a boy, Théo (or possibly Téo, they've spelled it both ways) who's only three. The parents are Joël and Sylvie, and they've expressed in their application that they'd like me to help their daughters with English, which I guess I'm fine with.

So far I've only got two pictures of the family: one picture is of them in Venice, and it's pretty recent, but also very blurry. The other one seems far less recent, but it's very clear. From looking at the pictures, they all look very nice. (Not that you can really tell what kind of people they are from a picture, I guess, but whatever.) The parents look pretty young, actually, I think their application said they were 44 and 38, almost exactly ten years younger than my parents.

I'm so excited, I haven't been able to stop smiling! It's one thing to know that you're going abroad. It's another thing entirely to know where you're going and who you're going to live with. I can't wait to meet these people! There's already so much personality in the application I have from them. I know that Sandrine and Alexia like to do cheerleading, I know that Marjorie plays the violin (and I'm a little apprehensive about sharing a room with someone that plays the violin, it must be said), I know that M. Henriques has an absolutely lovely script type handwriting (and that it's impossible to read), I know that the family keeps not only a dog, but also a chicken and several rabbits, and that's only the beginning. I'm going to try and e-mail them soon, if they don't contact me first. I want to get to know them...

(Subject change, sorry.) On a different note, I'm leaving soon for San Fransisco to get my visa. Thanks to my host family's timely arrival, I will soon have all the paperwork I need to turn in. Seriously, it's a pain in the butt. My parents have to fill out about a million forms, but half of them are in French. I know, you're thinking "So what, Josie? They're in French, but you speak French! Just translate for your parents." And I'm here to tell you it's not that easy. These forms are in both very formal and very paperwork-y French, which was really not covered in French 3. They ask simple enough questions, like "How long are you going to stay in France?" but they ask them in the most roundabout way possible, like "In France, you plan to stay for how long?" until your head spins. So, I should be helping Mom get those done soon, and I'm not looking forward to it. But whatever, it's good practice.

Anyway, I'M SO SO HAPPY THAT I HAVE MY HOST FAMILY! It's so great, you don't even know. I'm going to be in a good mood all week, not even summer school is going to drag this down!

~Josie Harris