My French Exchange experiences were strange, undeniably difficult but extremely fun! For a whole ten days me and thirty other students from my school went to live in Sedan, a town in northern France. We all lived separately (a huge challenged for me as I have always had my twin sister by my side) with a French family. It was so scary having to rely completely on a family you had never met before and there were many things I had to cope with alone, such as the huge storm on the first night, the odd foreign food, homesickness and obviously the language barrier. I didn't enjoy it much for the first few days as I never knew what I was doing that day, what I would eat and who I would visit however I got into the swing of it eventually and then I learnt how to enjoy myself. The secret was to take every day as it came along and to not worry about speaking too much, after all laughter and crying sound the same no matter where you are in the world.

That was then that my time I France got better. It wasn't the things I was doing or the people that were with me that changed, it was the way I looked at it. We had a fantastic time from then on and we visited Euro Disney, Paris, a felt museum (a little weird), a woodland safari park not to mention countless bakeries. I learnt a lot too and by the end of the trip my French had improved hugely and I discovered a love for all things pastry. Also, I really bonded with the girl I had been partnered with. She was a year older than my and was pretty cool compared to my bookish, nerdy self but she showed me what being a French teenager was like, from the stuff they studied at school to the mad, crazy stuff they did in their spare time. For a week and a half it was like I had another sister!

By the end of my stay I had grown to love the little house I had lived in and the hippyish family inside it. Rainy England was starting to look bad compared to this sunny, beautiful place but I had to go... The night before I left I was presented with a book that the girl's mum had made for me. It was beautiful and had inside pictures of everything we had done together and, of course,  burst into tears of happiness. I found it incredible how after such a short period of time I could feel as though I fitted in. I knew that I will never forget this adventure and that it would stay with me forever.