How accommodating can a host family be?

Two posts ago I wrote about what the guidelines were with what students should expect and how students should act around their host family.  It was all common sense stuff but taken to the extreme compared to other places.  I was prepared to deal with those things, but instead you can just disregard all of that since my host family is much nicer than they could have been.

On arriving in my host family house, I waited at the door for slippers because I know it's sometimes the case that a family will have some for guest use.  However from what I understood of what they said, they were ok with me just wearing socks in the house.  And that's what everyone has done since.  Either they always do this or they made an exception while I am here, and if so that would be nice of them since I didn't even ask.

On the second day, my host mother had asked a question which needed to be rephrased once or twice until I understood, but basically what she said was that she would like to do my laundry for me unless I really wanted to do it myself.  So thanks to a very nice host mother I don't have to worry about laundry, although I am still on my best behavior and bow and thank her every time I get the laundry returned.

Also, fridges were supposed to be off limits, but that same day she showed me into the kitchen and showed that she cleared out one shelf in the fridge just for me, along with some stickers to keep track of what is mine, and told me that I am free to have anything in the fridge whenever I want.  Although I was like you don't have to do that.  It's too kind of them.

For bathing, I was going to shower the first night and told them that I wanted to in order to announce that I was going to before I did anything without permission.  I noticed that I didn't bring a towel and too little shampoo, but before I said anything about a towel, they went in to my room and showed me that they have towels ready for me to use every night.  I got out my shampoo but they told me to just put it away since I could just use theirs.  There also seems to be no order to when I can shower.  I shower after the child does, since he showers before bed so I know when it's 'shower time' from that.

Also,  I have a key to their house.  That's really nice of them and it means that I can come back when they are away.  They also gave me cards for using the public phone booths in case I needed to call them.  I didn't understand what they said when they gave them to me, so I don't know if they bought them for me or if they were around the house, but either way it's extremely nice.

Also, I'm the only one in the family apparently that doesn't need to worry about finishing my food.  I do every single time except for once when they brought over something for me to test - a bowl of very very tiny whole fish, where I ate one and then said sorry but I don't want to eat the rest since I don't want to eat anything with faces.  But anyway, I am apparently allowed to be super rude by not finishing meals if I wanted, and they always ask me if I am doing ok with the food.  But I be polite and finish everything since there's no reason to be rude just because you are allowed to.

Also, every day or every other day they tell me that I am super polite and that I don't need to speak so formally if I don't want to.  They said that I should just call them by their names without suffixes if I want - which is something only family members or really close friends do.  I still speak formally to be polite, but basically overall I'm being treated like close family.  But I continue to be as polite as they day I arrived.  At the very least I will be collecting good behavior points so that if I do something bad later it won't ruin everything.


I have a bunch of pictures to share, so I will be doing that, but not tonight ( it is 12:30 am here ).  I even have a video I took that shows off the apartment that I live in.