Our Exchange Student

The Tour Guide by threeundertwo related [litandlaundry.blogspot.com]

That comic is a true story (all my toonlets are).  Only the sad part is, Drama Girl believed him for quite a while.  I wasn't with them on their whirlwind tour of San Francisco but apparently my husband jumped at the chance to give money to some random guy at the pier with a fishing boat.  They went under the Golden Gate Bridge and around Alcatraz.  I have no idea really what our French exchange student thought of the whole thing.

It's been an interesting, challenging week.  His English isn't advanced to the conversation level yet, and he turns to Drama Girl to interpret almost everything.  They whip out their phones and use a translating app to "talk" back and forth.  I think he probably gets particularly lost during our inevitable rollicking conversations around the dinner table.  As much as I try to steer conversations back to being inclusive, the kids are used to chattering on.  Hopefully he will get an impression of how much we enjoy talking together.

Like any 15-year old boy, he has a real sweet tooth and the kids have bonded over various forms of candy, my homemade cookies, and pastries they buy downtown.  He was excited to see a shop called "The Boulanger" and insisted on speaking French to the employees.  He was amazed that nobody there understood him. 

My husband started a conversation last night about going to the beach at Ano Nuevo to see the elephant seals.  Drama Girl started laughing as she described "seals" by spelling out the word in French.  "Oh F***!" blurted out our French student.  Yep, that's the word for "seal" in French.  The laughter around the table didn't die down for 10 minutes.

This has been great fun for all of us, and I look forward to cramming in a lot more attempts at American culture into his next week.  So far I have him hooked on peanut butter and watermelon.  Could be worse I guess.