I've made my decision. I need to leave my host family and look for a new place to live here. I just can't do this anymore. I'm tired of walking on egg shells all the time. I can't do anything right in my host parents' eyes; with each step I make a huge "faux pas" which then escalates into something huge which usually ends up making Madame mad at me for one reason or another. I can only do bad things in their eyes. Take last night for example. I went to McDonald's so I could skype with my parents (yeah, that's right, I have to go find a place with wifi since I don't feel like I can comfortably skype in my host family's house--that should have tipped me off that maybe I'm not welcome here...) but the wifi at the restaurant didn't work. I returned to my host family's house about an hour after I left (around 11:15pm) and when I entered my room, I found this note on my desk and saw that the sheets on my bed had been removed and that new ones had been set aside for me to remake the bed. It's 11:15 at night--how can I remake my bed when it's noisy and I'm constantly being yelled at for shutting doors to loundly? Heck when my bed creaks when I stand up I think Madame is going to come barging into my room and yell at me that I'm making too much noise. Anyway, back to the note. This is what Madame wrote:
"Sarah,
Je n'ai pas pu faire le manage dans ta chambre car tu n'as pas donne signe de vie toute la journee. Ce que tu fais est tres mal eleve je suis desolee. tu aurais pu me dire que tu ne bougerais pas de la journee. Le menage ne sera pas fait cette semaine. Nous avons parle l'autre jour mais je pense que tu n'as rien compris. Il faudra que tu vois avec Celine quoi faire parce que ca ne va pas."
"Sarah,
I couldn't clean your room because you didn't give any signs of life all day long. What you are doing is very rude I'm sorry. You should have told me that you would not move at all during the day (she means leave my room). Your room will not be cleaned this week. We spoke the other day but I think that you didn't understand anything we talked about. You need to go talk with Celine (the housing lady with IES) to figure out what to do because this is not ok."
I give up. I was in my room all day because I had spent the last two days and nights with friends and had to do homework and wanted to sleep and have some time for myself. Is that such a crime? And "didn't give any sings of life all day"--that's sooo not true! I was moving around in my room, I took a shower, I ate meals in the kitchen. I left my room! Also, would it have been so hard for her to knock on my door and ask ME if she could come in and clean my room. How is it that it has escalated to such a point that I'm starting to think that what she did--put a note in my room during the one hour we weren't in her house together during the ENTIRE day--was more along the lines of passive aggressive behavior and does not amount to simply another instance of cultural miscommunication and misunderstanding? I need to get out of this house. I don't feel welcome and I'm actually starting to get a bit angy. I love Paris, but I don't love living in this house. Time for a change I think.
No comments:
Post a Comment