Famille

 - family, because the days of looking at the paper and wondering are over!

And since my days of wondering are over, yours will be too! My home stay family is super nice, a fact for which I am naturally very thankful. They're an older couple with three grown children, so they are used to living with people at about my age. Also, since they've hosted multiple foreign exchange students in the past, they are very good about speaking to me in only French, except to occasionally translate singular words.

I believe my host father speaks English, since he often supplies the English word for words I'm not sure about without the use of my dictionary, which I carry around everywhere. He has a garden in the country, and was quick to tell me which fruits and vegetables he grew himself. I don't blame him - they were really really tasty vegetables, especially the tomatoes.

My host mother is very artistically gifted - many of the porcelain cups and vases around the house were painted by her, and I often saw her embroidering a cloth which would later become the back of a cushioned wooden chair. All of them look professional, and I never would have guessed that they were done as a hobby had I not been told.

Both my host mother and father are very traditional, so I got to learn a lot about French etiquette. I think it amuses them that I often watch what they do first before I proceed at the dinner table. They definitely encourage my learning about the French language and culture, and they are both extremely nice and attentive. I think it's going to be a fun three months.