Chez Moi: Croissy-sur-Seine

10 years ago (can't believe it's been that long!!!), I was lucky enough to live for a few months with a French host family in a lovely little suburb of Paris.

It would have been fun to live downtown, but I ended up enjoying spending all day in the loud crowded city and coming home to a cute, quiet house. The only problems were 1. waking up early enough to commute to class, and 2. Getting home on time... because the trains stopped running at midnight!

Hanging out in the neighborhood.

Along with one other BYU student, we lived with an older French couple in Croissy-sur-Seine, a town of about 10,000 people about 30 minutes west of Paris.

That other BYU student was Brittney- she was a great roommate and I was so happy she wasn't from Utah so we could be sarcastic together! haha

We each had our own little room and only had to share a bathroom with each other. As I recall, the internet mysteriously only worked in my room... so I lucked out.

We didn't venture into the rest of the house much because we felt awkward. 

Thankfully, that wasn't a huge deal because in the months I lived there, there was only one day that I didn't go into the city at all. We usually had class 6 days a week, and church on Sundays in the Marais. 

I remember very clearly the ONE time we hung out in the living room we were freaked out that our host mom would come home and "catch us" in there. We also tried to use the TV and couldn't figure it out and were then afraid that we broke it.

Three times a week we ate dinner with our host mom. Her husband was, again, mysteriously very rarely there. We never knew why. It was good French practice though! 

Now that I think about it, for part of the time he was in Miami visiting one of their kids who lived there. It took me a while to catch onto that because he pronounced it like "Mee Ami." 

Since 'ami' means 'friend' in French, I thought for a while he was just visiting a friend nearby.

Another unexplainable situation... for some reason our host mom usually only addressed questions to me, but her husband mostly only talked to Brittney. Did they do that on purpose?? We'll never know.

One of the biggest culture shocks for me in the neighborhood was that every house was surrounded by a tall gate. French people seem to love gates and fences.

I have another vivid, embarrassing memory of our host mom trying to teach us how to use our keys. I am notoriously bad at opening things. I was riding the struggle bus learning how to open the door. She kept saying "Hop!" as I turned the key. 

The confusing part was that 'hop' is pronounced like 'up,' so every time she would say it I would jerk the key upwards and it wouldn't work. What she actually meant was something like 'Bingo!'.

Our walk to and from the train station was very picturesque. It's a pretty ritzy area. 

We would also walk to a Carrefour grocery store to bring home the baguettes, cheese, chocolate, and pastries that made up our healthful diet. It all worked out for me, because I actually lost a lot of weight on this trip thanks to 1. walking so much, and 2. being too scared of lighting a match to use their gas stove and eat pasta. 

Why was there so much fear associated with this host family situation? I'm laughing so hard remembering this. Maybe it was just part of being 20, maybe it was that French people are usually not warm and fuzzy in the way that Americans are used to... but probably a combination.

Our host family were perfectly nice people. Except for the time that Frédérique tried to limit our toilet paper usage. She thought we used too much and was very concerned that we would use it to wipe off our makeup and waste it. As I recall, she would check our garbage can to make sure we didn't use it in unapproved ways. Totally normal. 

That lady is probably feeling pretty smug right about now about her ability to hoard toilet paper.

Anyways, that's a little taste of what it was like to live with a French host family near Paris. I regret that I didn't write a blog back then, but I have since done a few throwback posts:

A summary, 5 years afterwards

My diary entries, first impressions of Paris

Good times.

Other places I've lived (I love House Hunters and house tours, okay...):

Cannes, France

Mandelieu-la-Napoule, France

Haifa, Israel

Strasbourg, France

Jerusalem, Israel

It's hard to believe I lived in such tiny places! I'm really glad in these times to have a little more breathing room. I don't know if David and I would be getting along as well if we had to be cooped up in a 100 square foot apartment ;)