Learning to Love my Host Family

Tu es timide?

Enrolling in a cultural immersion program to live with a host family and study at an international school for three weeks in the South of France was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, and I almost didn’t do it.

Before I got on the plane, I was all nerves. The prospect of visiting a foreign country to live with a family of strangers, coupled with the fact that I had never flown by myself even domestically before, had me up late every night dreaming up the worst possible scenarios. What if I missed my flight? What if the airline lost my luggage? What if I couldn’t find my way around the city? And, worst of all: What if everyone hated me because I couldn’t speak French well enough?

I took four years of French in high school, but three years later, my grasp of the language was slipping — I had “je m’appelle Jillian” down, and not much else. Yet there I was, about to spend three weeks living and breathing in France with a family that spoke minimal English. I’ve had nightmares that scared me less.

When I finally arrived, my host dad picked me up to take me to the apartment I’d be staying in with them, where I met my host mom and the two other international students that were living with us. I was so tired from traveling that all I could do was listen and nod, occasionally stumbling through a few poorly-constructed sentences of my own, before they took pity on me and let me have some time alone to rest. That first night did nothing to alleviate my fears, and I went to bed dreading the next three weeks. Sure, I was in France, but it’s hard to enjoy even the best opportunities when your anxiety is hellbent on making sure you don’t.

Once I started attending daily French classes and fully immersing myself in the culture, things started looking up. I slowly relearned enough conversational French to hold my own in dinner conversations with my host family, though I still struggled. At one point, my host father asked me, “Tu es timide?” and I had to explain to him that my shyness at dinner wasn’t just because I had a hard time with the language — I would have been just as quiet if we had been speaking English.

By the end of the three weeks, I had done a complete 180. I was by no means fluent, but I felt much more comfortable speaking French than I had when I arrived, and I found that I actually enjoyed and looked forward to those long, talkative dinners with my host family. Most of all, I had completely fallen in love with the region — I finally felt comfortable in my skin, and I never wanted to leave.

If you had asked me at the beginning of the trip whether or not I was willing to extend my stay by a week, I would have said no. But by the time I got on my return flight, I would have given anything to have just a few extra days in France. Living with a host family in a foreign country for three weeks is one of the scariest things I’ve ever had to do, but by opening myself up to that opportunity, I was able to learn so much — about the country, about the culture, about the people, and about myself.