8 August 2009, 18:43
First impressions? I promised myself that nothing could be worse than in Cologne. I guess it’s sort of like some personal protection mechanism to convince myself that the words “host family” are not synonymous with “devil family.” I mean, how could it get worse than A. and friends? Locked in the basement on Sundays with no access to food? Cooool. Really. How can it get worse than that?
Well, I’m really trying to decide what I think of this whole situation. The school I chose to go to has good reviews from students. It also has good reviews on the internet as a whole. So, I thought, how bad can it be? It’s touted to have one of the best home stay programs in France. Wow. Am I glad I didn’t choose a different school! This is weird, to say the least. First of all, my host mother was an hour and a half late picking me up. I kept trying to tell myself that the resemblance of this trip to Cologne was just a coincidence. So she called me. “Je suis grande et blonde. Find me.” Sweet. So, I find her. She rambles on about how there were a lot of cars, or something. Everything seemed to be looking up, until we got to the house and the woman needed her daughter to let us in. Okayyy.... So, A. (not Cologne A... oh goodness.. the similarities are starting to be frightening. We’ll call her AP, and AS was the witch from Cologne). So AP tells me only to have one shower per day, or there will be no more water. Fair enough. This woman is obviously not here to make friends, but get some easy money.
She showed me my room, and closed the door. At least AS offered me some tea... Anyway, I texted H. to let him know I was safe and started unpacking. Then some other girl comes in, speaking garbled, quiet French. Hey, I’m learning here. Speak clearly, like you’re talking to a retarded person. Otherwise, I won’t understand. Anyway, she starts rifling through my shit, playing with my phone, opening drawers, and going through my purse. Ummm... how do you say “get your dirty mitts of my stuff” in French? And then she just stared at me for about 15 minutes. I tried not to say anything so maybe she would think I was slow, and leave. It took forever, besides the fact she was trying to figure out how to open/turn on my computer. Errr... have you even ever seen a computer before? I get that you live on the beach and all, and that I’m more reliant on my computer than I probably should be, but come on. It’s a MacBook, not rocket science. Pressing the caps lock key will not turn on the computer, nor will the escape button.
So, there’s no internet. It looks like I’ll be uploading these posts and downloading my homework to do offline in the evenings as I go during school time. That’s kind of what I was expecting, but it still would’ve been nice to have the internet. A girl can dream, right? Too bad the pay-as-you-go site won’t... let me pay. Silly Frenchies. All of a sudden, that German “efficiency,” which really isn’t efficient, is looking reeeal good. And it’s only the first couple of hours. Crap.
Anyway, this should be quite the interesting saga. I’m hoping things will be better on Monday when I actually get to classes. Maybe that won’t be so creepy. I’ve just got terrible visions of coming back here, and that weird girl that was in my room will be prancing around in my clothes, or something. This might actually be the place where it’s safer to keep my passport on my person than leaving it locked up. Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to be here. I think. But I’ve kind of got a chip on my shoulder, and am more than a little paranoid when things look this bleak from the get-go.
I’ll stop complaining if I get fed tomorrow. Thank goodness for past experiences...
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