In order to understand exactly WHY living in France is so different, there are some things you should know.
1. There is no word in the french language for "seventy." So when you count, it goes "sixty-nine, sixty-ten, sixty-eleven," all the way up to "sixty-nineteen, eighty." But there is also no word for "ninety." This is complicated by the fact that the word for "eighty" means, literally, "four-twentys". So when you get up to ninety-seven, it is "quatre-vingt-dix-sept," or "4 twentys and seventeen," which requires both addition and multiplication, and always makes me pause and add it up in my head.
2. Baskets of bread at restaurants here come without a cloth lining the basket, and that is completely normal. Sour cream (or Creme Fraiche, which is the closest thing they have to it here) is sold in the grocery store out of big buckets in a chest of ice. Bugs could land in there. But nobody cares. But walk around the house barefoot and you are ridiculous and dirty.
3. There is this widespread stereotype that American young people do nothing but drink alcohol. And so it is bizarre to everyone here when I can’t open a bottle of wine and don’t want more than one glass with dinner.
4. I look French. Fair skin, light eyes, straight brown hair. But that makes things complicated when I open my mouth and people immediately know that I am not. Because then it is, "oh, but you look so French, you act so French," whatever, but they are so surprised they start speaking English, which is exactly what I don’t want.
5. Eggs are not kept refrigerated in the grocery store. Or in the kitchen of the woman we live with. And it is nearly impossible to find white ones.
6. Milk is only sold in two varieties: "entier" or "demi-ecreme," Entier is basically whole... and I haven’t figured out demi-ecreme yet. It is either like half-and-half or like half of whole milk, but it is what we always buy.
7. Milk is way more expensive if you buy the kind that comes in plastic bottles by the liter. If you buy the kind that doesn’t have to be refrigerated and comes in a box, it is cheaper. But drinking room temperature milk out of a box is a little too shady for me.
8. People USE phone booths here. I always feel like Superman when I step into one though.
9. Clothing stores, even smallish boutiques in normal neighborhoods almost always have security guards installed at the doors. Not like rent-a-cops, but real security people in suits and ties. I don’t really know why. But they are always really polite when you come in and leave.
10. Today the woman we live with invited us for Sunday lunch with her and her daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter. The first course was oysters. I have eaten oysters before, I thought. But in the US at Chinese restaurants or out of a can, oysters are nothing like these suckers. It was like being Ariel in "The Little Mermaid." They were the size of my fist, and the oyster part was too big to swallow all at once, but you aren’t supposed to CHEW them... and they still had their... LIDS attached to them.
11. The French put hazelnuts in EVERYTHING. Candy bars either have whole ones or hazelnut paste that is kind of like peanut butter; nutella is pretty much its own food group here and made of chocolate and hazelnuts; street vendors sell them warm at night; coffee has it mixed in; I mean really the telling thing should be the fact that I know the word for hazelnuts (noisette)... and not the word for doorknob.
12. NOBODY eats Mexican food here. No one. There are no restaurants. And it crushes me to the core, since I pretty much subsist on that in the States. So here we have crepes. All the time. Which I try to convince myself are like tacos, but really they are nothing the same. I still eat them almost everyday though... Here they will put anything in crepes, jelly, sugar, nutella, cheese, ham, it doesn't matter. And they are usually pretty cheap. BUT they are not tacos. If anyone can figure out a way to mail me queso or nachos or taco shells... I would be eternally grateful. Ha.
P.S. Pictures are too complicated to figure out. I don't have the time to mess with it. But perhaps, someday, they will come. If you are lucky.
Just kidding.