Living with a Host Family

As promised, a post about my homestay experience.

I didn’t know what to expect for homestays.  The only homestay experience I have had so far was staying with a family for one night when we were in Mexico for ASB.  Me and 1 other girl who both had high school level Spanish were with a mother, her mother, her 10 year old daughter and 5 month old son for a night.  She knew next to no English (less than I knew Spanish) so the other girl held a brief conversation while at dinner while I spent most the time making faces at the baby.  Needless to say I was a little weary about living with a family for a month after that but we were told all the families would speak English so one less thing to worry about (especially because my German is essentially non-existent).  We received our homestay assignments about a week before we left and I found I was living with 4 other girls from MSU.  I was glad there were so many other MSU students but was unsure how that would work when living with a family.   

All the rooms had Roses.  We also got welcome cards made by the girls and chocolate.

Our host dad and his 2 daughters picked us up from the train station.  We found them because they were standing with Willi (described in my previous post) and we were introduced to Klaus, Keli and Lefe (and I probably spelled both of the girls’ names wrong).  He then took us to their house and told us we would be staying in the apartment on the top floor.  In Bregenz many of the houses have individual families living on each floor in separate apartments and the family we are “staying” with owns both the ground floor and top floor apartments with another family living between the two.  There are 3 rooms plus a bathroom (with toilet and sink in one room and shower and sink in another) and a kitchen.  With 5 girls this means only 1 girl gets her own room.  That girl isn’t me which is fine.  Sarah W. and I share a king sized bed so it’s essentially like having our own bed. 

Bed in our room.  I just have to remember not to hit my head on the ceiling.  

 We don’t see the host family much which is somewhat disappointing as we don’t have the same experience as some other students on our trip but it is also nice to have a place to ourselves.  The first night we were here the parents came up and talked to us and Lefe came up with them and talked to us for a few minutes.  I found out she is 4 years old because I can count to 10 (and now maybe a bit higher) in German so I started counting and pointing at her.  She then continued talking and I just smiled.  I would love to learn more German so I can talk to this adorable blonde, curly haired little girl (but that would also involve seeing the family more than in passing).  The host family has to provide us breakfast and a place to do laundry.  I haven’t had to do laundry yet (it hasn’t even been a week, I brought WAY too many clothes to need to do it anytime soon) but they did put some breakfast food in the fridge/pantry for us and then got us more yesterday.  Unfortunately they did it during class so we didn’t get to see them.  A stack of towels also showed up this afternoon so I know they come up here but we are not in the apartment much.  (Update:  2 of the girls were here and they took our towels and are washing them for us.)

My version of unpacking.  It's only gotten worse... 

We did talk to them for a bit tonight when they came up because a light bulb burnt out in one of the rooms.  I think they are trying to find the right balance between letting us have our space and being there when we need something.  Overall the homestay experience has been uneventful since it is essentially living in a families extra apartment that has breakfast food magically show up and the garbage taken out for us.  Maybe overtime we will talk to the family more however since there is no internet at the house it is more likely that our evening when we are not out (or after we have been out) will be at the school so we can do homework.  (There is homework to do offline too but I decided writing this offline sounded like a better idea than doing homework which I now can no longer avoid.)