When I received my information about who my family was going to be, I was told I would have a host mother, father, brother, and two sisters. My actual family, however, is bigger than this. They forgot to mention another brother and another sister. These siblings popped up because of their association with my immediate siblings. The extra brother is the boyfriend of Mariela, my 18-year-old sister, and the extra sister is the girlfriend of Eric, my 17-year-old brother. Over the weekend, they spent most of their time at our house.
Surprisingly, there wasn't that sort of awkward dynamic between the parents and the boyfriend/girlfriend of my siblings. They were treated exactly as family. It was Eric's girlfriend's job to wash down the place mats we used for dinner every day she was here. The parents would ask the boyfriend/girlfriend to go retrieve something from the house and they would know exactly where it was. They would sit at the dinner table with us and help set the table, and were just in general completely integrated into the family.
When we are just all spending time together, they sit on the couch with us and watch television, or just talk to everyone. I don't know how long these relationships have actually been going on, but there just seems to be a much smoother integration into the family which is a bit of a contrast I feel to the United States. Though a relationship may be supported in the U.S. by the family, and the family may approve, there's never fully a sense of “He/She is part of our family,” which is very apparent here.
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