Host Family!

A few weeks ago, I was given the information about my host family. When my dad told me to check my e-mail, I thought he was messing with me. I wasn't even thinking about my placement yet. I knew that I probably wouldn't know where I was going until a month or two before departure, if I was lucky.

 At first, I thought it was one of those e-mails that AFS periodically sends you telling you not to worry, as your acceptance by AFS-USA/acceptance by AFS France/host family placement will be coming soon, which, in turn, causes me to worry even more! I was seriously interested when there was a link that said "Permanent Host Family Placement". I, of course, forgot that the computer I was using at the time did not have a touch screen, so I stupidly poked the screen, trying to click on the link, for a few seconds. I realized my mistake and I used the mouse to click the link.

The page that was brought up required me to log into my AFS account. My AFS username and password happen to be a series of random numbers and letters that I will never remember. I typed those in from a document I have saved containing said information, and after waiting a few seconds for the page to load (which seemed to take longer than it should have, but I'm sure I was rather impatient), but surely enough, my host family's information popped up.

I will have a host mom names Marguerite-Marie, but she goes by Margot, and a host dad named Luc. I will also have a host sister named Ségolène, who 17, a little over one year older than me. Ségolène is in California on an exchange. I have two host brothers, Valentin and Pierre, who are 20 and 23, respectively. I probably won't see too much of the brothers.

I will be living in a suburb of Lille called Lambersart. I am in the very north of France, by the border of Belgium. I have been doing an unreasonable amount of research about the area in France that I will be placed in, and I am absolutely overjoyed by my placement, Lambersart, the small city where my host family lives. Lambersart is a suburb of Lille, a larger city. On a map, Lambersart is in the very north of France, close to Belgium.  The picture to the right shows where Lambersart is.  Lambersart has a population of  28,131 while Lille has a population of 226,827. The town where I live in, Middletown, has a population of 8,905 and the city that Middletown is a suburb of, Harrisburg, has a population of 49,673.

To be honest, those numbers mean very little to me because I'm not very good with numbers. I'm very bad at looking at something and coming up with a numerical value. I can't look at a room and tell you how many people are in it, and similarly,  I can't imagine how large Lille and Lambersart are, so I made a bar graph on Microsoft Excel. It's rather simplistic, but it helps me visualize the different sizes of the cities. I also creates a bar graph of the land area of the different cities. Middletown and Lambersart have a similar land areas, while Lille is much larger than Harrisburg.

The school I will be attending is pictured. My host sister and I will both be going to the same school, and my host mom has just enrolled me. It is a private school, and it is also Catholic. Even though it is a private school and it is Catholic, there are no uniforms. French schools rarely have uniforms. My host sister and I are both in the "première" year of lycée, which is the French equivalent of the junior year of high school. There are three focus groups that one can be placed in. They are Economics and Social Studies (ES), Literature (L), and Sciences (S). I have also been enrolled in the ES section and I'm in English and Spanish classes, and the English and Spanish classes were the only ones I can choose. The other courses I will have to take are math, French, natural sciences, French and International Economy, sports (sort of like a gym class), history, and geography.

My host family also has a beach house in Ambleteuse, which is on the English Channel. My host sister told me that she wants to take me to England at some point.

My host sister and I get along very well, and we message each other on Facebook often. I e-mail back and forth with my host mom often, as well. My host mom told me that she knows a little bit of English, but she wanted to send e-mails to me in French so that I can get used to the language, but my host sister gave me the option of communicating in French or English. I told her I would prefer to communicate in French so that I can improve. I, because I'm not very good at communicating in French, type what I think the French is. Then I use a dictionary to figure out all the words I don't know. After that, I type what I have into Google Translate and see if I have made any major errors.

I am just so incredibly fortunate that I found out my host family's information as early as I did. I am even more blessed that I adore my host family already. :)