Meine Familie - Mi Familia - My Family

I haven’t written a detailed blog about my host family yet, but the short answer is, they’re awesome and have been unbelievably welcoming. Even though our village is pretty remote, that is, not very accessible by public transportation or even by bike (this is a whole blog post for another day), I couldn’t have gotten luckier with my host family. My immediate host family is my two parents Markus and Sandra and my brother and sister, Linus and Haley. This is fairly similar to my family in America, two parents and me and my brother Leo. What is different, though, about my host family in Germany is the sheer number of cousins, aunts and uncles, and grandparents I have here. My host mom Sandra has one older brother, one younger sister and an identical twin and almost all of them live within just a few miles of us. Her brother and his family live on the same farm compound as we do. And then there’s my host dad’s side of the family, too.

I have ten host cousins and most of them are within the age range 10 to 19. Having all of these cousins, so close to me in age and living so close by, is a huge difference from my family at home. My mom and dad each have one younger sister and I have four cousins, but they are nearly a decade younger than me and my brother.

Adapting to German culture is one thing, but it has also been interesting getting adjusted to being part of this massive host family. Since my dad was in the military, we have never lived close to anyone in my extended family. I'm used to having to drive at least 500 miles each way or take a two-leg, all-day flight to see any sort of blood relative. So it's been a whole new experience for me to move into a family whose neighbors are also their cousins. I love my real grandparents in the US, but I only get to spend time with them maybe once or twice a year because of the distance. Here I see my host grandparents almost every weekend. 

It’s also a little ironic that I come from a part of the US, the Texas-Mexico border, where a lot of people do have really big families, yet I had to come all the way to Germany to get one. Back in El Paso, my friend Charlie is constantly booked up on weekends with family events and always having to drag a cousin or two with him everywhere. It never seemed that appealing to me, but I have to say that having a big family is really working out for me here, since it kind of provides built-in social events. 

I see my host cousins all the time. It seems like we are celebrating someone’s birthday every weekend. When it was warmer, there were backyard birthday cookouts with bratwursts on the grill. For my 18th birthday back in September, we had a cousins sleepover at our house where we played volleyball and grilled meats. Now that we’re in the never ending cold dark season, we mainly stay inside playing board games and eat more soups and stews along with the birthday kuchen. This is very new and strange to me because I have never even been to one of my own cousins' birthdays! 

I’m also still trying to figure out who is related to who in this family. Since I'm used to having one aunt and one uncle on each side of the family, it’s pretty easy to keep track. I hate to admit this, but it’s possible that I still don't know all of my host aunts’ and uncles’ names. In my extended host family, it would be much more convenient if everyone was wearing nametags.