When you don't speak the language, everything seems mysterious

I’m not sure how much more butter my stomach can take. This, of course, is saying something considering I grew up eating my father’s cooking. But I have found the French take their butter (and whole milk) to unprecedented extremes – more so than I had at first imagined. It’s either the butter or the hearty helping of whole milk in my morning bowl of coffee, but one of the two is causing my stomach to grumble a bit. Nothing serious, it’s just griping as if to say “Butter? Really? What am I supposed to do with all of this?” So clearly my body a bit out of practice with digesting large quantities of butter/whole milk, but I hope to soon overcome this.

My host family is fun to be around, or at the least, interesting. Sometimes I’m the clear outsider, the stranger living in the house who cannot communicate clearly. Other times it seems they are waiting for the opportunity to say something to me. For example, this morning I had a question about the bus system: I was invited to go to church with a friend, but I didn’t know how to get to her house. When I asked my host family, they all jumped to my aid. What began as a simple question soon turned into 4 or 5 people swarming two different maps, comparing and contrasting the different routes. Needless to say, I didn’t feel like much of an outsider then.

I’ve been with this family for three days now (two and a half, really), and there are several things I find perplexing. First, my host mother does not take dinner with the rest of the family. She sits at the table, but eats nothing. I can’t tell if it’s because she has already eaten or if she is skipping a meal. I cannot imagine spending so much time preparing a meal and not enjoying it with the rest of the family. That’s unheard of in my opinion. Second, I’m not sure when she cooks the meals. The children help, but when one considers how many people she is feeding for three meals a day, it’s remarkable how little time she spends in the kitchen. Come meal time, food seems to magically appear. Incredible. Third, thus far no pattern seems to have emerged as to meal organization. One day we will have three or four courses (so it’s important to pace yourself) but the next there will only be one or two. This poses a bit of a problem because if you are eating moderately in expectation of other courses to follow and none come, then you resign yourself to hunger. However, if you eat expecting no courses will follow and more come, you over eat and are labeled as the gluttonous American. Fourth, for the past two and a half days, there have been sawing and hammering noises coming from a shed in the back yard. I’m not sure what’s being built, but judging by the amount of work going into the project, it’s something big. I hope it’s an ark – judging by the looks of the sky, we might need it.