Sofia P - Family Stay
Family stay blog entry
At first the family stay was very akward and nerve racking, but gradually we both (the family and I) got used to each other and loosened up.
One thing that shocked me was at the first dinner, (and at all the meals) the family was very casual. My host girl, Mrise, had one hand in her lap, the entire meal. That was refreshing and relaxing after all the hype about having perfect manners. At first almost everything they said was complete gibberish, but every day I gradually picked up more and more and by the end of my stay I could understand most of what they said. the most rewarding part of my experience was probably bonding with my family and understanding more of their culture. One thing that was really different was how the bathroom and toilet were separate rooms. Another thing was my family seemed to have shortage trash recepticles. The most difficult thing was trying to speak to them, an analogy that I thought of was that speaking to them was much like playing the game taboo. For those who don’t know, in the game Taboo, one has to convey a certain word to the members of one’s team (or their host family) without using a certain list of words, because of this, one ends up describing things like one’s nose as “the protuberance on one’s face” – explaining things in ridiculous ways, in a desperate attempt to get the point across. Speaking French to my host family was much like that, especially because they did not speak any English.