<p>I’m sorry that your French teacher didn’t emphasize (or you missed it) how rude it would be to “tutoyer” a stranger. So I’m not surprised that the French seemed to not understand you when you spoke in tu form. A large part of your language classes should have been about French culture. You were obviously very unprepared for this France experience. Do a bit more studying up before your next foreign adventure, then you will be better able to handle it.</p>
<p>I think we’re all being hard on early_college for having reported on his bad experiences honestly. I’m not sure we’d be so hard on our own children.</p>
<p>That said, early_college, I think you have not yet learned everything you can from this experience. You need to sit back and think about how you could have changed the situation for the better. What could YOU have done differently that might have changed the outcome? Trusted people more? Tried harder to speak French? Read more before you went? Been more willing to try unfamiliar foods? (That one is hard for a lot of us!) Thinking about these things will help you deal with future situations that make you uncomfortable. </p>
<p>Again, you can’t change how other people behave, but you can change your own response to their behavior. If people didn’t even respond when you said “tu parle anglais?”, could you have said “je parle francais tres mal; je cherche quel qu’un qui parle anglais pour m’aider parler meilleur.”</p>
<p>When I went to Paris for the first time many years ago, I learned immediately that the French I had been taught in high school was formal French as taught before WW2 (no surprise, since my French teachers were French women who had married American GIs after WW2). Sales clerks and waiters would smile and say “you remind me of my grandmother” (I was 22). They were happy to teach me extremely inappropriate slang!</p>
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<p>No kidding. :rolleyes: As it happens, the part of France in which I have spent the most time is Brittany/Finisterre, where the OP stayed. As a 14/5 yr old I ate food cooked by actual French housewives that included things I would not choose myself, such as rabbit. I’ve also shopped in local markets and cooked myself. I did once encounter a sausage that turned out to include large chunks of obvious body parts that I decided NOT to eat 
but I can’t imagine that he was served a steady diet of extremely strange foods. (And if you prefer your meat well done, why not simply ask the kid to leave yours on a bit longer? For heaven’s sake…)</p>
<p>IMHO, the main value of this thread is as a cautionary tale for any other teens contemplating a trip abroad. Be prepared to be flexible, or stay home until you are old enough to travel in a way that enables you to control your entire experience.</p>
<p>The baguette thing is the final culinary straw! :)</p>
<p>It is clear that the grandma of the OP was correct. Not so much because she knew the foreign country but because she knew her grandson. The family should have booked a Disney cruise with plenty of American tweens for a better fit.</p>