I was not a likeable teenager. I never stayed out late, got detentions, or brought home tattooed motorcyclists. I was simply extremely immature. Combine this with a complete lack of personal hygiene standards or responsibility, and the solution became clear: I should live with a family abroad.

Somehow, no one saw the obvious flaws in this plan. I was a terrible guest by anyone's standards: I didn't clean my room, I could barely cook eggs, and if left to my own devices, I would happily stay online until 5 AM.

Despite all this, I had great plans for my month in France. I imagined swanning around with a group of black-clothed, cigarette-smoking French friends, eating pate on baguettes and laughing at tourists. It didn't matter that the extent of my French added up to, "Where is the discotheque? I too love dancing." Presumably my new companions would all be avid dancers and discotheque enthusiasts, so I had nothing to worry about.

I was placed with a family in Montpelier, a sixteen-year-old girl named Marie and her mother and young sister. Since I was sixteen too, I imagined that Marie and I would be instant best friends. She would introduce me to French boys, all of whom would immediately find me mysterious and sexually appealing. No matter that no American boy had ever thought so, or even recognized me as a anatomically correct female.

"Rachel," my French suitors would say, tucking a rose behind my ear and taking a drag of my French cigarette. "You are a puzzle to all of us. Please tell us the secrets of your eyeliner and sexual dancing."

The moment I met my host family at the airport, I had a feeling that my fantasies might be slightly overconfident. Perhaps it was my stained t-shirt proclaiming "Old Navy Island Gal". Perhaps it was that my host sister was coolly, mind-blowingly beautiful. Perhaps it was that I made them wait at baggage claim for an hour before I realized that my bright red suitcase had been circling around the whole time. Whatever it was, I had a vague and troubling feeling that I wasn't going to fit in.

We chatted on the way home from the airport - as it turned out, they did not particularly like dancing, or know of any local discotheques - with increasing discomfort. By the time we reached their apartment, the group was silent.

Trying desperately to think of a way to break the ice, I remembered the gift in my suitcase. Before I left, my mother had forced a box of Frango's upon me, asking me to please, please remember how to be a tolerable guest. Surely the Frango's would ease the tension between us, or at the very least, replace it with a grateful reverence on their part.

I rummaged through my suitcase for an awkwardly long time before producing them, along with two more shirts bearing island scenes. "I brought these for you," I said nonchalantly, as if my incredible generosity was no great burden.

My host mother glanced at the box, then looked at Marie. "What are these?" The question wasn't directed at me, and in fact sounded as if I had presented her with a box of my own feces.

"They're chocolate mints," I said helpfully, wanting to add, "and they're quite expensive and highly-regarded."

She nodded, and continued to hold the box delicately, as if I had bought it from the trunk of someone's car at the airport. "How ... American," she said.

It was the first time I had heard someone say "American" as if it meant "stupid and worthless," and I was honestly shocked. In Lemont, Illinois, Frango's Mints meant something. At the very least, they said that you had driven twenty minutes to the mall and entered Marshall Fields. I expected my host family to understand this. I had imagined them clutching the mints breathlessly, thinking I had gone enormously out of my way to procure them. "Clear off the mantle piece, Jean-Paul," they would say, holding the Frangos aloft like a chocolate Simba. "You can put Pierre's graduation picture in the cellar."

Then they would gather round me, clutching my arm and looking embarrassed. "We certainly cannot repay you," they would say, "but have the master bedroom, it is the least we can do."

Of course, I would rebuff their offers, but from then on, the Frangos would sit on the mantlepiece, a continual reminder of my unreciprocable generosity.

Instead, the Frangos went into the fridge, where passing visitors wouldn't even be able to see them. What was the point? I thought, if people couldn't stop by and say, "Oh, Frangos, where on earth did you get those? I thought the last box had been sold to the King of Siam."

My disappointment only deepened as the week went on. As it turned out, Marie did not share my ideas about our international sisterhood. Instead, she left at 9 AM the first morning, opening my bedroom door only to say, "I 'ave to work, okay?" and promptly leaving.

A more sophisticated sixteen-year-old would have ventured into the city, struck up conversations, stopped into cafes and chatted with French boys. Unfortunately, all my social experience added up to a few marching band friends watching PG movies on Friday night and occasionally insisting as a group that masturbation was disgusting. I had no idea what I would say to a group of cool French teenagers, other than, "Where is the discotheque?", assuming such an establishment existed and was open in the middle of the day.

For a few days, I tried minor acts of rebellion, such as putting my Alanis Morissette album in the stereo and blasting it on high volume. Once, I even partially removed my shirt, imagining myself a city-wise single gal for whom sexual boundaries did not exist. But the excitement of living alone wore off quickly, and to make matters worse, I started to get hungry.

In retrospect, I don't know how my parents let me go abroad without checking that I knew a few simple life skills - how to fold clothes, for example, or how to cook anything. There was pasta in the cupboards, but I wasn't sure what to do with it - or if I was even allowed to touch it. If Frangos were uninteresting and forgettable, it was entirely possible that pasta was a rare and celebrated commodity.

I spent a few days eating bread and hunks of Roquefort cheese before I turned my eye to the Frangos. "There are nearly forty of them," I reasoned. "No one will notice if I eat a few." Unfortunately, this was predicated on the assumption that I can limit myself to a few chocolates at a time. Within a week, I had depleted the box to about seven Frangos, which I spread out in a pitiful attempt to hide the obvious gaps.

I still don't know how I didn't forsee the inevitable conclusion. My larceny was hidden for a few weeks, until someone came to visit.

My host mother looked in the pantry, but presumably all the pasta had been eaten and she had to lower her standards. "Ah!" she said. "We 'ave those things that Rachel brought."

Shit, I thought. Shit. What do I do? I briefly considered screaming something to distract her from her goal, but it was obvious what was going to happen. I watched as, in seeming slow-motion, she opened the fridge and took out the box of Frangos.

She opened it, revealing a few sorry chocolate huddles and an almost unfathomable amount of blank space. Artists could have drawn murals on the amount of blank white paper in that box.

"C'est bizarre," she said, in a tone that suggested it was not at all bizarre and in fact quite obvious. "Where are the chocolates?"

"Hmmm," I said, as if it were indeed a curious mystery. I looked around at the others, trying to spot the culprit. "Perhaps Sophie ate them."

My host mother looked at me with unmasked contempt. "Oui, perhaps," she said. For a moment, I thought I had been granted a miraculous reprieve, but then - "Sophie, come here! Sophie!"

The five-year-old trotted into the kitchen, beaming at everyone. Greedy baby, I said, trying to convince myself of the obvious lie. You ate them all, didn't you?

My host mother took one of the remaining chocolates and offered it to Sophie. "Would you like a bon-bon?"

Sophie looked at it, then made a face of disgust. "NON," she said, and then, as if my guilt wasn't obvious enough, "Non non non non non non non!"

What the hell, I thought. What, no one in France likes chocolate mints? This scheme would never have failed in America.