So I like to think of myself as a flexible creature capable of adaptation to new environments. Luckily for me, my experience thus far in France has proved me correct, but this adjustment hasn’t been without difficulty. Cultural differences can be interesting and engaging, but some of my observations have jolted me with moderate-voltage culture shock.

It’s funny how I never considered myself to be someone with a ton of nationalistic pride. I always said that I will live elsewhere when I’m older; that I’ll raise children on foreign soil- but the grass is truly always greener on the other side!

Thanks to the cushy, ultra-accommodating tourism industry, it is easy to vacation just about anywhere. But to try to live à l’étranger- to integrate oneself with the indigenous- is an entirely different animal. It means having the awareness to allow your biases and presuppositions about what is “right” and how things “should” be done to take a backseat to the way things are in your new territory.

For me personally, one of the most perplexing qualities of living amongst the French is the way that they do nearly everything in the most inefficient, convoluted way possible. They mean it when they say that both teachers and students alike love to form unions and strike (faire la grève), and classes can basically be whatever the teacher decides to make them about. Classes also do not provide syllabi; anything goes. Apparently it is also not rude or unusual that our literature professor didn’t show up on the first day without giving any type of notice. 

But the life of inefficiency extends beyond the classroom- I kid you not when I say that the ticket I pulled when waiting in the office to get a tram pass said that I would be helped in 315 minutes!

 I also will never understand why it says in our international student guide for success that we should smile less often because people here tend to be somber in public. I interpret that as the human equivalent of having bad weather, but hey, that’s just the American in me.

^ My professor droning on about whatever he feels the desire to… With no outline or visual aid.

^ The beautiful, wildly sanitary university bathrooms where one must squat over a hole in the ground. Three cheers for socialism.

^ French notebooks (represented by the higher one) have many itsy-bitsy lines both vertically and horizontally- perfect for taking notes in Whoville.

More on this soon,

RJB

Location: Montpellier, France