Departures and (sort of) related thoughts
My friend Bethan is leaving town in a few hours. We met for coffee today at a shockingly American coffee shop called, inappropriately (and in English) "the French coffee shop". They had all kinds of fancy, sugar-filled coffee drinks in addition to the espresso that is normally available.
We started talking about the things we miss about home, and what we'll miss about France. I think the thing that drives me crazy about being here is the utter lack of pressure or stress that exists. There is no emphasis placed on efficiency or customer service, as far as I've seen in my several months here. All of the concentration of those people I've directly observed goes to aesthetics. Leisure. Personal relationships. Which is great for the worker or the citizen, and pretty terrible for the consumer (or, maybe, my type of consumer). Maybe my problems stem from my deep hatred for shopping and desire for blitzkrieg execution of all plans that involve buying things or services. I should have a lot more patience for waiting and begging people for things, if I want things to go smoothly here. Patience is, evidently, something I lack in abundance.
Still, these same things that make dealing with university things or businesspeople frustrating increase the quality of life. Everything is pretty before it is functional, and no one is stressed out or in a hurry. Everyone takes a lunch break and no one works on Sundays, even though, as far as I can tell, that's not because anyone who would otherwise be working on Sunday necessarily decided to go to church. For the most part, the attitude toward religion is one I find refreshing after growing up in Oklahoma.
For instance, during a lecture on poetry today my professor launched into a rant about positivism and, pointing at Alex and me on the side of the classroom, declared it hypocritical that America should preach about separation of church and state while forcing our presidents to place a hand on a Bible while being sworn in. I declined to tell her that it doesn't necessarily have to be a Bible, mostly due to a habit I have unfortunately learned while living in this place where my use of language is so rarely (and at great difficulty!) understood, even if grammatically correct and contextually applied. I think francophones are, for some reason, less easily accepting of foreign accents than I want and expect.
I guess my point (because I think you might be wondering, at this point -- and for that I apologize to those of my former English teachers might be reading this post) is that there are differences. Huge, glaring differences that I notice, and that French people love to highlight for me. There are things I miss about home. More than that, there is the growing concept of what "home" even is, which is something I never had until I went away. But every day I am more certain that I'm creating a scale, on which Bordeaux's place is gaining in importance.
Going home is going to be...what's a word for "bittersweet" that didn't sound like I was trying to build up to it intentionally?
Six and a half months down. Three to go.
We started talking about the things we miss about home, and what we'll miss about France. I think the thing that drives me crazy about being here is the utter lack of pressure or stress that exists. There is no emphasis placed on efficiency or customer service, as far as I've seen in my several months here. All of the concentration of those people I've directly observed goes to aesthetics. Leisure. Personal relationships. Which is great for the worker or the citizen, and pretty terrible for the consumer (or, maybe, my type of consumer). Maybe my problems stem from my deep hatred for shopping and desire for blitzkrieg execution of all plans that involve buying things or services. I should have a lot more patience for waiting and begging people for things, if I want things to go smoothly here. Patience is, evidently, something I lack in abundance.
Still, these same things that make dealing with university things or businesspeople frustrating increase the quality of life. Everything is pretty before it is functional, and no one is stressed out or in a hurry. Everyone takes a lunch break and no one works on Sundays, even though, as far as I can tell, that's not because anyone who would otherwise be working on Sunday necessarily decided to go to church. For the most part, the attitude toward religion is one I find refreshing after growing up in Oklahoma.
For instance, during a lecture on poetry today my professor launched into a rant about positivism and, pointing at Alex and me on the side of the classroom, declared it hypocritical that America should preach about separation of church and state while forcing our presidents to place a hand on a Bible while being sworn in. I declined to tell her that it doesn't necessarily have to be a Bible, mostly due to a habit I have unfortunately learned while living in this place where my use of language is so rarely (and at great difficulty!) understood, even if grammatically correct and contextually applied. I think francophones are, for some reason, less easily accepting of foreign accents than I want and expect.
I guess my point (because I think you might be wondering, at this point -- and for that I apologize to those of my former English teachers might be reading this post) is that there are differences. Huge, glaring differences that I notice, and that French people love to highlight for me. There are things I miss about home. More than that, there is the growing concept of what "home" even is, which is something I never had until I went away. But every day I am more certain that I'm creating a scale, on which Bordeaux's place is gaining in importance.
Going home is going to be...what's a word for "bittersweet" that didn't sound like I was trying to build up to it intentionally?
Six and a half months down. Three to go.
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