my french friend

Dallas, 16, was thrilled out of her brain when her girlfriend's parents asked her parents for permission to take her to France with them as their daughter's companion.

"My girlfriend's parents are French," explains Dallas, "and Claudette was their only child and she didn't want to go with them unless I came too."

"Claudette and I were very close and I'd stayed at her house lots of times – what a change from my own home with two younger brothers driving me mad! – but I never dreamed that our friendship would lead to a trip to France."

"It was the first time in a plane for me - but not for Claudette. She had traveled overseas with her parents lots of times."

"Despite being French, Claudette didn't speak the language very well," says Dallas, "so we had a hard time getting ourselves understood whenever we went outside the village."

"One particular time Claudette's bad French became dangerous was when we were walking through the fields and had no idea where we were and we had to run away from two old men who looked like they were going to rape us when she tried asking for directions."

"Claudette and I had a good time together before she fell in love with one of the sons of an American family vacationing nearby," says Dallas, "and, despite feeling really left out of things after that, I don't really blame her for the way the trip turned out.”

"She had a boyfriend to bring home with her," sighs Dallas, "and all I had to bring home with me was a new disease – asthma – and my best clothes badly stained by flower juice after participating in a flower festival."

“We're still friends, sort of, but she's changed so much that our friendship will never be like it used to be."

Read more about Dallas:

Paris, full of foreigners!

a sensible taurus girl

trip induced breathing problems