Living with a host family during my time in Grenoble, France was a truly unique experience. As I stepped off the train with all my friends at the train station, I was exhausted and wrecked with anxiety. Miranda, our liaison, warmly welcomed us and started handing us off to our families. At this point I have only read a brief email with names and basic information. My name is called and Anne-Marie, my host mother, walks up to help me with my belongings. I met André, my host father, in the car.
One of the things that first put me at ease was Anne-Marie translating “miaou” so she could try to explain that their cat, Sonique, loves to meow until they feed her. I was freshly coming off of my second semester of learning French in college so basically I knew how to describe travel, food, housing and use some grammatical structures with very basic conversation. Meanwhile, they both spoke basically no English. The language barrier was very difficult at first, but that’s what the experience was designed for. As someone who lives with anxiety, the first few days were hard on me and my mind. As Sabine Gabaron, my professor, taught us more everyday, the barrier melted away little by little. Now I could enjoy dinners with them with Sonqiue interrupting us with “miaous”.
I grew close with André through watching Normandy documentaries and having conversations with him about history. Almost nightly we would watch another history film, usually about Normandy, or once we even watched a comedy in English with French subtitles. The unit on cinema helped enormously so I could help André figure out subtitles and other functions if they happened to be in English. I was lucky enough to be in France during the 80th anniversary of D-day and André was so excited to watch everything. We sat for hours after my class watching the ceremony in which he was excited to point out the US president “JOE BIDEN!” to me.
Anne-Marie usually cooked amazing meals every night for dinner and provided me with croissants and fruit for breakfast. I had never eaten so much at one meal in my life before until I lived with them. Miranda has warned us that if our host families had boys, we might be eating a lot more compared to the families who have girls. Well my family has three sons, so Anne-Marie was used to feeding them at dinner. Nightly, I got to enjoy five courses and explore French culture. Over dinner we chatted about what I did in class or they would give me suggestions for weekend travel.
One of my favorite memories was celebrating my birthday with them. They knew I was missing home a little and they had savory crêpes for dinner and sweet ones for dessert. Anne-Marie also brought out a cinnamon dessert with a candle that she would make for her sons and they both sang to me in English. They had gone out of their way to learn how to do this just to make me feel a little more at home. Both had also gotten me presents representing the Olympics and France since I was there in June, right before the 2024 summer games.
I went into this abroad experience in my summer after freshman year, scared about occupying someone else’s house and coming out of it with two amazing people that took care of me for six weeks. Now being in my sophomore year and reflecting on it, André and Anne-Marie made my experience what it was and it wouldn’t have been the same without a homestay. My language skills vastly improved and I pushed myself more than I might have before. I left Grenoble to a smiling and waving André, someone who I would call a great friend.
