France’s most famous gift to America arrived in 1886. Clara arrived in Minnesota in 2023. Both changed things forever. 🗽
What does it actually feel like to leave home for the first time — at 17, alone, for a whole school year?
Clara grew up in the south of France, dreaming of California and Hawaii. YFU sent her to Minnesota. She ended up doing ice fishing, a New Year’s cold plunge, prom on Lake Superior, and watching The Traitors with her host mom every week — and she wouldn’t change a single thing.
Clara shares the full story of her exchange year with YFU USA: meeting her host family at the airport, surviving -20°C winters, matching Christmas pajamas, and why coming back to France felt harder than leaving it.
She also gets honest about the parts nobody talks about — the exhaustion of thinking in a second language all day, being homesick for the sound of French, and how a family in Minnesota became her American family for life.
Clara’s one word for her exchange? Lucky. But this conversation sounds a lot more like courage.