FRANCE NEVER EVER AGAIN
At uni, me and 3 other students had to do a 'french exchange' with 4 of the students in France. We were supossed to stay with them for 3 weeks, and then they were to stay with us for 3 weeks!

anyway... we get there and are paired off with our French 'buddies' that we are to stay with for the next 3 weeks.

Mine... it has to be said was a very, very strange girl called Helen. we got in her car, where 3 of her friends were sat, and i was ignored the entire journey as they all spoke in French.. which i didnt understand a bloody word!

Helen drops off all her friends then drives up to her parents house and gets out the car and walks in her house. im left in the car and can only assume we have arrived at our desination and that i am to get out of the car!

I enter her house and stand in the hall way. the house is empty and i cant see helen. I call her name, and she pops her head around her bedroom door and tells me shes going to bed, and slams the door shut.

i stand there not knowing wat to do. eventually her mum arrives home, who thank god, is actually nice! I tell her Helen has gone to bed. she said that was very rude of her and appologuised on her behalf.

realising i was chewing gum and didnt want to appear rude either, i looked up the word for 'rubbish bin' in my french-english dictionary, and said along the lines of "la poubelle sil vous plet" (prob spelt this wrong). (meaning do you have a bin please?)..

I got many strange looks, and didnt understand what i was saying wrong. eventually i took out my chewing gum and pointed at it, saying the same phrase. Que the mother laughing her ass off.

Apparently i was saying the chewing gum was beautiful! (got the right word for bin, but i said it wrong)...

So que a very interesting start to 3 weeks in france!

including... finding out the next day my friend was made to sleep on a hard wooden kitchen floor and was fed cold vegetables out of a tin... he had it worse than me!!

being taken to a horse saddle museum.. for fun!! i never laughed so much in my life! really bizarre horse saddles with weird spikey bits on them!

getting it together with Helen's brother out of shire boredom... (whole other story!)

minding my own business trying NOT to stand in all the dog poo on the french streets, and suddenly being whacked on the back of my legs by a blind man with his stick... my friends almost died laughing!

trying to call home to england to our teacher, but had the french headmistress monitoring our call. so couldnt say anything bad.

much more happened.. but you get the jist!

all four of us sang 'rule britania' on the way home on the ferry.. ive never been more proud to be english!
(chixor, Thu 14 Dec 2006, 15:19, Reply)