French isn't all that bad... Claire you probably hate it cos when you're younger, you hate almost every subject. And because you don't speak it today, you probably feel that they wasted your time which makes you hate it even more. I have the same feeling with German. I was forced to do it because I already spoke french and I was falling asleep in class, so now I hate german because I was forced to do it and because I've forgotten 5 years worth of lessons
Anyway, french is a really nice language. I agree that written french is hard, but it depends what kind of level you go to. If you wanna know the frnech that most french people know, its not so hard. But if you want to learn the higher level (ie, authors, advanced litterature etc), then good luck. You'd need to spend a lifetime on that. But that french is almost useless unless you want a career in writting french.
So, french isn't that hard. If you learn the basics and go live in france for about a year, you'd probably be pretty fluent!