Why France?

My adventure really began in December 2005 when a young lady from southern France came to live with me, my husband, and our youngest daughter. Like many life events, Cécile was not planned. Cécile was an exchange student who was about to be sent home because her original host family situation was not working out. Luckily, Cécile knew my daughter’s good friend, Curtis. Within minutes of hearing Cécile sob about how she was going to be sent back to France after her parents spent all this money for her to study in America, Curtis reassured Cécile that he had a family for her. 

That evening as we sat down for dinner, our daughter, Elena, explained to us that “her friend” needed to desperately find a host family or she was going to be sent back to France. Our parental heartstrings were saying yes, but we had to remind Elena that the program director may not approve because of our living situation. 

We had just sold our home and quickly moved into an unkept 70s house with balding, green shag carpet. The extra bedroom and formal living room were lined floor to ceiling with boxes because we were in the process of moving to Texas to be near our first born grandchild (grandparents get this crazy, rash plan). Plus, Cécile would have to get an intradistrict transfer because we moved out of the high school’s district.  We also would be flying back and forth to Texas to oversee the building of our new home (and see our newborn granddaughter) so the girls would be left alone for a few days on more than one occasion. Surely, leaving two 17 year old girls alone would not be acceptable. 

Two days later, the exchange student supervisor was sitting at our kitchen table in our 70s kitchen with its olive green microwave cooking center and mustard yellow patterned linoleum. We explained our living situation thinking she would not be satisfied, but they were desperate. We were Cécile’s last hope. 

Cécile moved into her room a couple days later. It didn’t take very long for us to feel like we had another daughter. We knew our lives would be changed forever.