French Family

I haven't really talked much yet about my french family; mostly that's because all these posts were actually made at the same time and backdated because I was busy and had some trouble with power adapters which spontaneously cease to work.

My host mom is really great; her name is Madame Charron, and she's very friendly and welcoming. She cooks delicious dinners every night which are served in multiple courses following the traditional French pattern more or less: first there's a soup or some sort of side dish, then a main dish, maybe a salad, then she offers us a cheese course (sometimes we're so full by then that we can hardly eat more) and then dessert, which is typically a small cup of yogurt, pudding, or fruit. She is an excellent cook, and hopefully later I'll be able to get her to teach me to cook some of the things she makes.

She's very insistent that we behave as though we were at our parent's house at home, says that we should take things from the fridge whenever we want and don't need to ask, sit in the sitting room and watch tv, and generally just wants us to be comfortable. She also didn't seem at all troubled when I told her that I'm vegetarian, which abroadco somehow forgot to tell her, or by the fact that my roommate is lactose intolerant. Despite effectively having two food groups made unavailable, she doesn't seem to have difficulty preparing food that we can all eat and that tastes wonderful.

My roommate's name is Greta, and she's from Seattle. We are getting along well thus far, and this is quite a fun paragraph to write because she knows about this blog, so it feels like talking about someone behind their back when you know they're listening. Hi Greta! Actually she's a horrible awful person and she's reading over my shoulder right now.

On to the apartment! It's a pretty decent sized apartment, we all have our own bedrooms. It's laid out around one central hallway. On the right side there's my bedroom, the sall de bain (the room with the bathtub and sink), Greta's room, and then Madame's room. On the left side is the toilette, the kitchen, and the living/dining room.

It's odd getting used to having the toilet in a separate room from the shower and the sink. The shower itself is odd, though somewhat typical of European showers from what I've seen. The showerhead is on a hose attached to the faucet, and doesn't have anywhere to hang, so you have to hold it yourself. There's a nob on the showerhead so that you can stop the flow of water without adjusting the temperature, and conserve water by not using it when you're soaping up etc. I keep forgetting about the switch and trying to turn the water back on with the knobs, then either freezing or burning myself. You also turn the cold and hot water in different directions to turn them on. The cold knob is turned forward, and the hot one back (I think), so you end up making a motion with your hands as if you're closing a jar to turn them both on.

I like my room; it isn't huge but it's plenty large enough. I have a full sized bed, a set of shelves with plenty of space, a waist height cupboard that I use for my clothes, and a beautiful antique desk that belonged to Madame's grandmother. And the walls are green.

All in all, my living situation is pretty great.