Reverse culture shock
I had a nice email this morning from one of the American students who has returned to the USA. She lives in California and found it so hard to leave Bordeaux.
But she talks about how strange America seems now. The SUVs (4x4s), the pickup trucks, the chewing gum, the familiarity and informality. The freeways!
I think French culture is somewhere between Britain and the USA. For example, we were surprised by how much gum the French chew. We chew it now, too. Loads of it. Pat and the kids dispose of it in paper and I swallow it, but the pavements round the law courts are spotted with the stuff! And Bordeaux seems full of 4x4s, many of them with those special exhausts for driving through rivers. "Why?" I ask myself. And it seems normal now to shake hands with people at the school gate. Normal and nice.
But it illustrates how you do become used to a new culture, and how your home country can seem so foreign after a while.
But she talks about how strange America seems now. The SUVs (4x4s), the pickup trucks, the chewing gum, the familiarity and informality. The freeways!
I think French culture is somewhere between Britain and the USA. For example, we were surprised by how much gum the French chew. We chew it now, too. Loads of it. Pat and the kids dispose of it in paper and I swallow it, but the pavements round the law courts are spotted with the stuff! And Bordeaux seems full of 4x4s, many of them with those special exhausts for driving through rivers. "Why?" I ask myself. And it seems normal now to shake hands with people at the school gate. Normal and nice.
But it illustrates how you do become used to a new culture, and how your home country can seem so foreign after a while.
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