She Had To Escape Her Host Family’s House While Studying Abroad In France

The especially troubling host mother gave Jenna a lot of attitude, judging her for the amount of luggage she had on her and acting disappointed upon discovering she was 27 years old, not 20.

“I was just really sad because I needed that hug, y’all,” says Jenna in one of her TikTok videos.

“I needed a mother’s love. If you’re signing up to be a host mom, be a mom. Be helpful, be kind.”

Thankfully, another student in the household named Lea was studying abroad from another country. Lea gave Jenna all the information their host mother should’ve given her after she was dumped into a bedroom with no house tour or even a towel for the bathroom.

As her time in the household progressed, Jenna learned that her host mother likely had a distaste for Americans.

Although she showed great affection to Lea, she was extremely cold to Jenna. She wouldn’t even say Jenna’s name correctly and called her “Gemma.”

Jenna’s host mother accused her of slamming doors in her house, yelled at her for “stomping around,” accused her of disturbing her household’s peace, and referred to her as a rude American behind her back.

When Jenna would let her host mom know in advance if she wouldn’t be home on time for a shared meal like breakfast or dinner because of school, her host mother would sometimes lock up her kitchen instead of leaving food for her and wouldn’t unlock it even if she was home.

The host father was not much help and was mostly memorable for making weird advances on the two students, like asking Lea to hug him whenever his wife wasn’t home and awkwardly stroking the back of Jenna’s head after dinner one night.

After experiencing more unfair mistreatment from her host family, Jenna went to her school to report what happened and potentially move to a new household. But just as she was talking with administrators from her school, the host mother called and denied all of her claims.

“This mom [was] like, framing me,” recalls Jenna. “Now [the school] doesn’t know if they can believe me or her, so they just say, ‘We’re not taking sides.’ That felt even worse.”