I've been in France for a little less than a week now, and so far I'm loving every moment! I apologize for not posting as soon as I got here. I meant to post earlier, but things got busy pretty quickly, plus I've been trying to avoid using too much English these first few weeks.
Anyway, as a quick summary, I arrived at St. Exupery airport (yes, my French class friends, the same one who wrote Le Petit Prince :P ) in Lyon, and then drove to Sorbiers with my kinda sorta first host family. I spent a few days with them in their home, and got to visit a museum, meet family friends, eat delicious frog legs, and do all sorts of fun things like that.
Yesterday, I moved in with my first (second? I'm not really sure...) host family in Montbrison, the town where I'll be living this school year. I absolutely adore the town! It's been continuously inhabited since at least the early Middle Ages, and there are tons of ancient houses still standing (and still in use!) today. The house I'm staying in is about a five minute walk from the school and, frankly, about a ten minute walk from just about everything else. It's nice to live so close to everything and to be able to walk everywhere.
So now that I've settled in a bit, and you all have a vague idea of what my life is like now, I thought I'd just share some observations and surprises I've found after (nearly!) a week in my new country:
- Cheek kissing. This is a big one. Yes, they really do it in France- one on each cheek, in my region of the country, though it varies elsewhere. It's not so much a kiss, though, as just touching cheeks and making a sort of kissing noise. And it's actually surprisingly easy to get used to. I ended up cheek-kissing the majority of the people in my host parents' church when they took me with them on Sunday, and walked me around after the service so that everyone could meet "this young American" (which is generally how I'm referred to here). Anyway, after that experience, I consider myself fairly well-versed.
- CHEESE! It's a wonderful thing in this country, and I'm having doubts that I'll ever be able to appreciate plain old American cheese anymore. My town, Montbrison, actually has a local cheese that they're very proud of (as in, proud enough that they throw a big festival for it in the fall) and for good reason too! It's absolutely delicious. :)
- Food in general is actually quite different here. Meals are longer and more relaxed, and more about the conversation than the food. The French tend to eat a little, but taste a lot, meaning we generally have a variety of foods in small portions at each meal. I've found that I already prefer French meals to American meals. They're just more enjoyable and less rushed, which is nice.
- Smoking definitely makes the list of things that are different here. I knew before leaving home that Europeans generally smoke much more than Americans, but I'll admit that I'm surprised at just how... acceptable it seems here. Students and young adults smoke during breaks from there lessons, in broad daylight in front of parents, teachers, etc. It's really not nearly as taboo here as it is in America, and smokers aren't seen as delinquents of any sort as they're sometimes portrayed in America. This is going to take some getting used to for me.
- Houses are old, towns are ancient, streets are narrow, churches are breathtaking, and these characteristics are pretty much the same for every town and city I've been to or driven by so far. I think it's all wonderful, and yet every local seems to know the difference between a beautiful town and a dull town and a cool town and an ugly town. I'm not quite sure if they all take their unique historic hometowns for granted, or if I'm just too starry-eyed to see the obvious right now, but time will tell. Now that I think about it, it's probably a combination of the two.
- Everyone seems shocked by the fact that I can understand a word of French. I honestly don't think people around here had terribly high expectations for the American exchange student, but their reaction to my sufficient (albeit butchered) French is really kind of bizarre. A lot of people will try to start speaking English to me when I first meet them. I typically respond in French to show them that I can speak, and they generally switch to French too when they realize my five years of French are about as good (and often better) than whatever English they remember from high school. That being said, I have met a couple of people who do speak English. One was an older Englishman from my host parents church, who came to France in '59 and kind of just never left. The other was my host sister's choir director, who, though French by birth, has an English boss and has worked in places like Poland and Indonesia, where English is the common business language. I ended up having a brief conversation with each of these men, and though it was nice to hear someone speaking my native language, I'm actually quite glad that English speakers are so few and far between. I'm really enjoying speaking French. It's frustrating at times, but I can tell already that I'm improving, and, hey, that's what I'm here for, after all.
