She’d eagerly looked forward to cooking meals in France beforehand, but Joanna says that she had trouble finding quality produce to cook.

“You go to the supermarket, and the produce is terrible,” she says. “You pick up a piece of celery and it falls over. It’s so limp. So old and so horrible. Who would eat this?”

Also: the couple has struggled to make friends, McIsaac-Kierklo has not yet mastered the language (or learned much of it)

“I honestly don’t think we could have put in any more effort to acclimatize to the French way of life,” adds Joanna, who describes their experience as “a nightmare.”

Don’t give up, lady. Try and bond with them by talking smack about French produce loudly and clearly in English. You’ll get through sooner or later. Even the French will eventually give in to determined gregariousness.