I've just finished a lunch with a French family through a program in Nancy called Faim D'Echanges. With this program, a family in Nancy invites a few new students to their home. I was given the sign-up information from a colleague, because even though I'm not a student at the university here, I am a foreign assistant and we are eligible for the program. One word: free food. One description: awesome.
To begin, the lunch was excellent and, according to the host and to Megan, very traditional: Foie Gras to Boeuf Bourguignon to apple tart to coffee and truffles. Wine throughout, but not a lot. There were two other people my age there. One young woman from New York and the other a young woman from Poland. We spoke mostly French but also some English and it was great to practice a little. Of course the Polish woman spoke French, English, and Spanish, but hey, benefit of the European continent so I wasn't toooo jealous. Our hosts were retired English and French professors and very nice--they had even spent five years in Baltimore, Maryland so it was nice to talk about the U.S. here and there.
My two euro cents for this experience are that a city with an emphasis on making foreign people feel welcome is great, and I am interested to see what programs exist in U.S. cities that are similar and that Megan and I can later sign up for to help foreign students feel welcome. This time, Megan stayed at the apt., but only because she didxxxn't think she could come because she hadn't signed up. What do you think the first question to me was when I arrived? In January Megan and I are invited to come back and share another lunch.
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