Ma Famille en France

So of course everyone was nervous to meet their host families. Language and cultural barriers are certainly intimidating. I'm living with Noelle (another SMU student), so that took away some pressure of meeting our host mom Elisabeth for the first time last wednesday night. She came to pick us up at the school in her car and we load it up with our humongous bags. She was very sweet. It's Noelle's first time to france so she drove us by the Eiffel Tower and down the Champs Elysees. Paris drivers are CRAZY!! They just go wherever they want. All over the place! The roundabouts have no lanes... that I could decipher. People just swerved in and out, if they want to merge they just go, the world must yield to them or suffer a collision. But their reaction time must to superior to American's because they drive SO close together. But oh man! The buses too!! Those drivers have talent!! They squeeze those huge machines through itty-bitty streets around signs, buildings, parked cars, cyclists, pedestrians and they don't even flinch when pass things by mere centimeters. Ok so now that I've finished my vehicular tangent, back to meeting The More family. We arrived at our house which is through a wooden gate and tucked away behinds some apartments away from the street. Its so nice. It has the feel of a loft, very wide open. Noelle and I are up the spiral staircase and we each have our own bedrooms and showers. It's much more spacious than I had anticipated for Parisian living. We met her son and his girlfriend and they greeted us with two kisses on the cheeks ("La Bise") (I felt so french!!!) Overall things went very well (and are working out great still). They are very understanding about how we feel as foreign students and they are very warm and hospitable. Of course the stereotype for the french is that they are cold but the Mores are very approachable. I feel very comfortable. If anybody is making things awkward in our interactions it's definitely me. A couple of my favorite exchanges have been the first night when we played a flavor guessing game with the Jelly Beans that we brought (they had never eaten them before) and the second night Noelle and I spoke english with french accents and Elisabeth and Christophe spoke french with english accents and we poked fun at eachother. As the days pass we become more and more at ease. I'm very pleased with the whole set-up.