La Fille Francaise

My wife and I were just talking quietly about the French girl who's with us this week, and will be for about ten more days. We've got kind of mixed feelings about her.

When we think about those feelings, we're sort of like the people in the sixties who would start to admit that they really didn't care for black people, then abruptly stop and say something like but some of my best friends are black, of course... Our feeling is that we really don't like this girl. But that's not quite right. We do like her. We just don't like her.

It's not that we don't think she's nice enough. She is. It's that we have the subtle feeling that the person we see every day isn't exactly the person she really is . She's hiding something. It's probably nothing awful, but there's something. Like when we found out that despite the solemn statement on her application that she didn't smoke, which included the stern notice that if she did, she promised not to smoke while she was here, she does smoke, fairly often. Okay, it happens. But I noticed that she's made some comments on Facebook, to friends, which basically say that she's finding this experience not to her liking. She doesn't say she hates it, or doesn't like us, or anything like that. It's more that she doesn't say she likes anything. When she does mention something, she's a little mocking about it -- which, from the responses, tends to be how her friends act. They mock each other, they say fucking this and fucking that. I asked her if they drink, and she said yes. Too much? Sometimes. You, too? .... Yeah. Okay, they're teens. Don't draw major conclusions from it. But the result is, we think that she's putting on just a bit of an act. She's not the enthusiastic I just want to come to America and get better at English kid we thought we were getting. And though the result is that we get someone who's closer to what we'd want than the reality probably is, it also means that we think so what does she really want? Does she really like this? Is there something that she's wishing we would do? Now, we had some of those feelings last year, with the kid we so liked (and still do). We weren't always sure if we were communicating, if she was happy, if we were missing any cues. But we got past it. We bonded so much, we went and visited her family! Stayed with them! With her, there wasn't any pretense. What you saw was what you got. With this one.... not quite.

I asked my wife if (purely aside from the fact that we have other plans, anyway, for next summer) - if, based on this kid, would we host again, and she said, probably not. Which is kind of my feeling, too. Oddly enough, we both think that if the current had been the first kid we'd ever hosted, we'd have done it again, but with lower expectations; if the actual first kid then arrived, we'd have been pleasantly surprised. But the bar was set so high, with the actual first kid, this current one would have had to be damn near perfect to make us happy. And she is likeable. Just not as likeable. So, again? Um...probably not.

Maybe we'll mellow.