Enfin

For over six years, ever since my year abroad ended, I have been inviting my French host family to come visit me. They have never been the biggest fans of the U.S., and they always sort of laughed me off and told me that they'd come to the U.S. for my wedding and not before. That always drove me crazy, because it seemed like it would be years and years before I got married--if I ever did.

But now my wedding is almost here and so is my French family. They are in a plane RIGHT NOW, headed this direction. I have to say that I won't truly believe it until I see them in person, but I'm pretty sure it's true. They're really coming. I don't know if they even remember promising me that they would come for my wedding, but regardless, they are.

And I am DYING with excitement.

I've lost count of how many times I've been back to visit them. Their house is like my house--I am always welcome, and they even redecorated my old bedroom in purple--and I have been there in every season, traveled with them to visit grandparents and friends, celebrated birthdays and anniversaries with them. I've even been to visit them with my own parents. For me, it was worlds colliding--but it was great. And I like that my two families can place a face to a name when I talk about the other one.

But they have never been here. One of the kids has (he came to visit last year), but he (and his sister) aren't coming this time, so it'll just be the parents and the youngest kid, who's nine. He gets to skip school, and take the longest plane ride of his life, and from what he told me over the phone last weekend, it sounds like his classmates are all very jealous and impressed with his new, jet-setting ways.

We don't exactly have big plans for them--but there were a couple things I was thinking of doing. Of course, we'll take them around the city, show them the monuments and the museums, make sure they can figure out the Metro so that they won't be stuck at their hotel, bored, all next week while we're at work. But then there are the subtler things, the typically American things, that I'd love to show them. They introduced me to everything French--cuisine and cars and movies and clothes and everything else--and by the end of the year they were telling me that I had become a true Française, the highest compliment that they can give.

So I'd like to return the favor, but I haven't planned it out that well. So far I've thought of inviting them over for breakfast and making them pancakes. They've never had pancakes, and while there's a distinct possibility that they will dislike them as crepes gone wrong, I want to make them anyway, and I want to pour maple syrup on them.

But what else? What is a truly American thing to eat, or do, or see, that I should make sure my French family gets to try out while they're here?