California (Ali) Perkins, a seventeen-year-old virgin-lips club member, spends the summer after her senior year in high school working as a nanny in Belgium even though she doesn't speak French, doesn't like kids, and has never traveled outside her home state of Texas. After recovering from culture shock, Ali makes friends with an international band of nannies, falls in love with the produce boy at the grocery store, and travels to France on a dream vacation turned nightmare, where she cheats on the only boyfriend she's ever had with a rich college boy from England. In order to impress her rich college boy, Ali steals from her employers, lies to her friends, and gets caught breaking and entering while wearing a $7000 dress, only to discover that it was all for naught. Disillusioned and distraught, Ali must redeem herself before her summer in Belgium is over.