You know You are in France When...it's the little things

There's much on my mind as I sit here in my living room soaking up the sun.

One, I am thankful for unexpected time on my hands. My right foot started hurting yesterday. I was walking to language school and I felt something like a little catch take place inside my foot. I assumed it was no-big-deal. But by the end of the day I could hardly walk on that foot.

I tried to go to school today, but by the time I got to the Metro stop, I decided to turn around because of the pain shooting up my leg with each step. So, here I sit with ice on my elevated foot doing something I love to do: blog. And, all of those crazy French verbs can wait until I get this blog written, right! :-)

I have yet to personally see a doctor here (everyone else in the family has, but not me!) and I hope my foot improves so that I can keep my track record. Good thing I'm not in need of the doctor right now because we just read in the paper today that all the generalist doctors are on strike today. Gotta love France!

So, I thought I would add another installment to the "You Know You are in France When" lists and this time I'm calling the list "It's the little things." There have been many days when life here just seems totally normal, and then some little thing will remind me that I'm in another world. I'll show you what they are:

1. Clocks - especially after Noon and until we go to bed. In American, we'd say 3 o'clock and we just knew it was afternoon unless otherwise specified. Not here. They use what we Americans call "military time." So, 3 o'clock is "15 hour." Now, an old fashioned wall clock (or a wrist watch with hands) looks the same at 3 p.m., but we need those pesky alarm clocks, and they are digital. See:


So, what time is it? Can you answer in a millisecond? We're trying to get used to telling time all over again. It's rather interesting making an afternoon doctor's appointment and trying to process "16 hour" quickly enough to know if that will work for you! One plus though, you can never get confused over whether you set your alarm for 7 a.m. or 7 p.m.!

2. Calendars. We brought our 2009 calendar with us, but bought a 2010 calendar here. I scoured the stores looking for something that looked "normal" to me. What a job! Here's our 2010 calendar. Can you see the differences?


Well, that was probably not very fair as it is hard to see the details from this photo. So, here's what you would notice if you were standing close enough to read our calendar.

One, the first day of the week is Monday - not Sunday. AND, this particular calendar counts the weeks of the year. So, the first box on the left is actually the week we are in in the year (i.e., this is the 10th week of 2010 out of 52 weeks total), then the next box is Monday. The last box on the right side is Sunday. It takes some getting used to. We are so accustomed to glancing at the calendar and seeing the days in different spots.

Also, most of the calendars in France have the birthdays of the saints written on every day. Thus, everybody here seems to know which saints birthday it is everyday of the year. We were able to find a calendar without the saints birthdays, giving us more white space for writing in our events and so forth.

3. The Phone. Yep. It sounds different when it rings and everything on it is French...the messages and all.


Even more, when it rings, we have no idea if it is going to be someone who speaks French or English on the other end. You think telemarketing is bad in your own language, how about in a language you are just learning! I just let the kids answer the phone. It's much safer that way.

4. Money. It is obvious that money would be different, but it is another world to use different money every day. You don't realize how much you know your money until you have to use something totally different! You don't have to look at each piece, you just know it's shape, color and the things that differentiate it from others. It's taken a while, but now we know French money like we know American money. Have a look:


Paper money is different colors and different shapes. The 5 dollar bill (not pictured) is literally smaller than the 10 and so forth. Not a bad idea! But, by the time you get to a 20 Euro bill, it doesn't fit into our American-sized wallets any more.

Here's a fuzzy close-up photo of the coins:There are more coins: 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 cent pieces, and then there are 1 and 2 Euro coins. I have gotten really used to using 1 and 2 Euro coins. They are very handy. I wonder why we don't use our 1 dollar coin more...or why we don't have a 2 dollar coin. They are nice.

Then, here's a photo of the 1 and 2 Euro coins with our debit card (with the numbers digitally removed). When we use this card, the "Carte Bleu", it takes money directly from our checking account.


And, here's a receipt from a purchase using our debit card. It's a bit shocking to shop here at first, because they still show every purchase in Euros and French Francs. Both amounts are shown on the cash register read-out, and on the receipts.

If you look closely at this debit receipt, you can see that we paid 42,74 Euros and just below it, you can see that amount listed in Francs. This purchase would be 280,34 Francs. You can see why my heart has skipped a beat or two when I see that Francs number first! This country has been using Euros for a long time now. Why, oh why, do they still show the Francs?


5. Showing this receipt leads me to another subject. Numbers. They are really different here. First, they are written differently. I asked Lena to write them on a piece of paper to show you. Here's how you write numbers in France:


It is really easy to mistake a 1 for a 7. And, the 9's often looks like our lowercase "g". If someone writes a lazy 4, it's hard to tell that it is a number but instead looks like a character from a Greek alphabet or something.

And, they use commas the way that we use periods. If you noticed, the total on the receipt above was 42,74 Euros. Here are some simple comparisons in how we write number amounts vs. how the French do:

USA: $42.74
France: 42,74 Euros
USA: $.95
France: 0,95 Euros
USA: 2,100
France: 2 100
USA: 1,000,000
France: 1 000 000

Who would have thought that I would miss punctuation marks used the way I like them to be used. Funny, huh.

6. Washrooms. OK, I promise this will be the LAST time that I comment on the bathrooms in France. I promise. But, we deal with this everyday. Or, at least I do because I am at school everyday. Here's a normal bathroom. This is the arrangement in many, many public bathrooms here. Here's the door to the bathroom:


What would you expect to find behind this door? A hallway to a girls and a boys bathroom? Here's what it looks like behind this door:


I don't think I'll EVER get used to coming out of a bathroom stall to meet a man washing his hands. Or worse yet...a male classmate. I don't know the etiquette for that situation!!! Yes. Many bathrooms and most washrooms are shared spaces. I can assure you I ALWAYS check and double check that I have locked the stall before I go to the bathroom.

And since it's my last time commenting on bathrooms, I'm going to include a photo of the hand soap provided in many a bathroom at my school, too.

Took me a while to realize that the yellow "ball" was a bar of soap attached to a stick.

So, there you have it. Just a few of the little everyday things that remind us we are strangers living in a foreign land.

Before I go, I'll include a couple more recent photos. We went to a large woods just outside of Paris on an especially warm day recently. Here are a few photos:


We walked around this lake and discovered that the highway that circles Paris goes directly under this lake. (As I took this next photo, the lake was behind my back.)


I love how a simple thing like a big rock can inspire my kids to pose for a photo:


This was their idea too:


I'll spare you of all the other "each kid jumping by themselves" photos that we took. Why are rocks so very much fun? :-)

I love this photo of Todd on his scooter:


There were lots of people walking in the park that day. I took this photo of a couple in front of us. This seems to be the pose for all French men walking. It's like they are pondering the world and drafting their next great philisophical book. :-)


And, we spotted this Frenchman on a bench near our bus stop. This is just classic as well:


Here's a random thing. On the way to my language school, there's a chocolate shop that is just amazing. They make incredible displays out of chocolate. I just had to take a photo of their most recent display. Sorry about the glare on the glass, but I hope you can see what this is:



There were about 5 different chubby ballerina girls in tutu's and they were made ENTIRELY of chocolate! Too funny. These funny little girls made me smile every day that they were there.

Finally, we took a team photo which will be on our next team prayer letter, but while we were there, our teammate took this photo of our family. I just thought I would share it with you!


Well, those crazy French verbs are calling my name! I better be off to study.

Have a fabulous day!