The summer I traded for five weeks with a French family

The moment I hopped off the train at a small regional town an hour north of Paris and into my host family’s car, I knew I’d plunged into the deep end – where I would remain for the next five weeks.

At 14, with two years of high school French under my belt, I struggled to understand more than a few words in any conversation that wasn’t severely slowed and simplified to toddler level.

My host sister Romane and I going for a walk with her friends Heloise and Elisa.

Romane, my host sister, was an excellent interpreter, carting her clueless sidekick around to everything from Christmas at her grandparents’ house to Zumba classes with her mum and even a few weeks of middle school.

The difficulty of lessons ranged from breezy English classes, where I became the fountain of knowledge, to Latin classes delivered in French (which quickly humbled me, leaving me more confused than when I’d walked in).

My favourite subject was social science, where, despite spending most of the time during pop quizzes translating the questions, I felt most excited to learn. Even then, by the time the school day finally ended at 5pm, I was ready to retire.

I spent most of my time during assessments, translating the information and questions.

The darkness that book-ended the country’s shorter winter days was disconcerting but brightened by jokes I could increasingly understand (and, when I had enough time to translate a cracker line in my head, deliver).

Between our shared love of Taylor Swift, staying active and learning each other’s languages, Romane and I grew closer, and my vocabulary – with a healthy share of swear words and slang, to the dismay of her mum – expanded.

Eager to make the most of my time there, I pushed through my fears of seeming awkward or saying the wrong thing and learned to make conversation with friends, my host family, and anyone with the patience to have a slow and bumpy chat with me.

Romane, her dad Ludovic and brother Aubin at a historical site they took me to in northern France.

Romane’s parents and grandparents, being less fluent in English than her, spoke to me almost entirely in French.

Beginning with questions such as “Are you hungry?” and “Are you cold?” (they quickly and very kindly bundled me up in a scarf, beanie and coat), our conversations continued to challenge me as I got used to the basics and graduated from small talk.

I especially loved learning about French history and politics from Romane’s dad, doing my best to explain what it was like back home in Australia in my clunky French.

The culinary delights also pushed me out of my comfort zone. Frog legs, as it turned out, were totally fine, and pate – after several bites – became more than palatable. My Waterloo? Blue cheese.

Trying it for the first time, I could barely swallow – and when I had, it threatened to hop right back out (not the food I thought would induce that feeling). But not wanting to seem rude, I nodded my head in appreciation and, as subtly as I could, chased it down with an outsized portion of bread.

While I felt my brain working overtime every day and tackled the steepest learning curve I think I’ll ever encounter, being thrown into the deep end showed me there is so much to learn from the people and world around us. It also taught me that making mistakes and asking questions with the curiosity of a toddler can help us learn to float in the deep end.

Five years after I waved goodbye to France, I returned to see Romane and her family for a few weeks in 2019. With a few more years of French under my belt, an acquired taste for blue cheese, and a new addition – a little sister named Elisa – to their family, it felt like a lot had changed. And yet, as I yapped happily with them in my (still) straggling French and caught up on life, it felt like cosy deja vu.

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