Homestay Adventures: Homeless in Provence Pt. 3

My French home-stay mother handed me the landline. Her friend that could speak a small bit of English said hello. She also promptly said, "Andrea thinks that it would be best if you found somewhere else to stay."

Oh. Ok. I looked at Andrea. She was not looking at me, eyes instead set on the news broadcaster who exclaimed at the flooding across France. 

Well then. One part of me, I won't lie, was a little relieved. 

Right after I agreed on the phone, I contacted my university and relayed the message. I definitely would not be staying with my home-stay for the remainder of my time studying in Aix. I packed my things and got ready for bed. The next day, after a morning of Andrea ignoring me and stressing what I was going to do with my things that were obviously still in my room as I left for classes, I went to housing offices.

"I found you a new place to stay, but they cannot take you until Friday."

Friday? I explained the situation. That I was now not only an American struggling with the French language too much for even my host mother to handle, but I was unwelcome. I still had to stay there for at least two more days? 

"You can either stay or book an Airbnb or something, but that will be on you," the housing coordinator said.

Throughout classes I searched for any Airbnb that would let me stay only two nights with bookings being denied on account of the place not being ready, or that I contacted too late. I knew as I sat in the school building however that I was not going back to that home, as tears streamed down from my eyes, unsure what I could do. I couldn't go back.

Not only was it a bad situation, but this was supposed to be my time, traveling and enjoying myself. All I found in my body for the past few days had been dread, not a day where tears did not slip unwilling across freckled cheeks.

My friends, some from my own school and some from others surrounded me as I tried not to let my tears turn into sobs as my chest crashed into my ribs and my head simply ached. What to do? I needed someone to tell me what to do. This time though, there was no one. There was me in another country, by myself to take care of my ultimate well being body and mind.

Another woman of student life, dressed in smooth class and a take no bullshit sort of attitude that made me like her even more when she first introduced herself the other day with the quickest flash of a French smile, took notice.

"I just feel guilty," I explained. It had been a feeling I had become well acquainted with the past few days. "I just don't want to make her feel bad."

"Her," my new favorite person in that moment said, "You don't worry about her. How you feel is you problem and how she feels is your problem. You do what is right for you."

In this time, I knew what was right for me. It also meant however that the thing that was right for me meant me becoming homeless while abroad, at least for a little while.

Luckily, the three guys who had been around me also had been staying in what seemed to be the home-stay of all home-stays, even though they were far from the city themselves. With their home-stay mother being a woman named Nadine, I was curious if there was already a saint with such a name. If not, there should be.

"Nadine says that you can come over for dinner tonight and sleep on the couch if you can't find an Air bnb to go to."

We collected my bag and left the home-stay I had know for approximately four days. Going in with one of the boys, Andrea didn't bat an eyelash I rolled my heavy Samsonite into the street. 

When we got to Nadine's she introduced me to her husband, Lulu the cat, and Greely, the other cat who stared at me, accessing. Nadine handed me a glass of red wine and fed me all the pasta I could eat before we all watched Project X, one of her favorite movies. Her cat snuggled up with me on the pull out couch each time she went out for a cigarette with her son on the balcony covered in plants.

She may not have been an average saint, but she certainly was to me the next two nights she let me make up her pull out couch. For once in my life, I could say when someone asked me where I was living, that I didn't know. I was couch surfing and living out of my cramped suitcase. I was homeless in Provence, you could say.

But onward we go to home-stay number three?

To be continued...