FRENCH CULTURE SHOCKS | American in Paris

Hey guys, welcome, welcome back to my channel if you're new here. My name is Tyla and I was American living in Paris. Now I'm back in the United States, but I'm still here to give you lots of tips and videos about me. time to travel abroad and be an au pair in Paris, so in today's video I'm going to talk about some French stereotypes, actually that's not what I'm going to talk about. I'm here talking about French

culture

clashes today. I'm going to be here talking about some

culture

shocks

I experienced while living in France so if that sounds good to you make sure you keep watching too in the last video I said thank you for 500 subscribers and now I'm close to 800 so I wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who takes the time to watch, subscribe or comment on a video of mine, it means a lot to me and I hope that in the next video we can reach a thousand subscribers and that would be really amazing, so if you are new to this journey with me, feel free to subscribe and I hope to see you.

Well, with that being said, let's get right into the video to the juicy stuff you know, so this will be the first culture shock ever. That my friend Tiana mentioned in her video, but I think it's important to mention in case you're moving to France or visiting France or maybe you've visited France and haven't done this and you're wondering why the French are so mean to me, Maybe it's because you didn't say bonjour when you entered a store or approached someone. This is something very important in France. If you need to talk to someone, if you need directions, you say, "Oh, excuse me." miss and then you start talking to them, they didn't invite you to talk to them like you have to say hello, first you say bonjour, they say bonjour and then you can have your conversation, this is like a huge thing every time someone says oh.

I went to Paris but I didn't have a good experience as the shopkeepers were very rude and I told them, "When you walked into their store you said hello and they said no because that's not something we normally do." doing here in the United States, but it's a really big thing in France, so if you go to France, make sure you don't forget the bonjour, so probably one of the biggest things that affected me when I moved to France as far as the crash cultural were the meals. Not only do they start later in France, but they also last longer, so you'll have an aperitif and that's like your first one, like your hors d'oeuvres, your appetizers, your wine, and your social hour because it's just a time to talk and relax. and then you'll have your main course, which would normally be meat and some vegetables, then you'll have a cheese plate and then you'll have dessert, which normally for me would be like yogurt and fruit or some kind of fruit variation and then after your fruit , you had coffee in the afternoon or tea in the evening, so it's a very long process and it's not something I was used to growing up in the United States, we don't really do dinners that often.

It's like a big deal like it is in France. Normally it's like dining in front of the TV or like we eat in our rooms. It's a very different type of setup that I wasn't used to moving to France and then also the breakfasts. so small, I'm usually used to like pancakes, eggs and bacon, I eat so many different things, and in France it's like Nutella toasted cereal and I usually eat a lot of it in the morning, so I'm always hungry at 9 or 10 a.m. . m., so I'll have my little nutella toast in the morning at 7 and then at 10 I usually stop at the lingerie and buy a chocolate panel or something from the laundromat, so imagine this, you're in the suburbs of Paris , you just left your host son. to school and now you're on your way to French class, it's 9 a.m. you're hungry because all you ate was toast in the morning i have to stop at the bakery to get a crystal you know something light actually order a bronze sour salad which is just a raspberry tart the lady says no contact and I say it wrong, I know because she corrects me every time it's just a courtesy for French people to correct your French when you're talking to them and it can sound like oh my god, like it sounds really rude, like I didn't say it right and they just came up to me and said no, it's this and I tell them and then they make you repeat it, but it's a great courtesy and honestly I'm very grateful for it because it's like I'm saying it wrong, what are they going to do? do?

Let me continue saying this word wrong for the rest of my days. No, actually I find it very nice and The people I've always interacted with were always very nice about it and if I had a question they always answered it, but the French will correct your grammar. Eating on the street is not a thing in France. I eat where I want to eat. I'm hungry, I'm going to eat, I need to eat something all the time, so I always eat on the go and there was this time when I was eating a salad on the way to a museum to meet a friend and this man.

He comes up to me and says "bon appetit" and I said thank you and he said "that's good" and I said "this sounds fantastic" and then I realized he was making fun of me because people don't eat on the street and then it happened to me again when I was sitting on the street and someone said: "Bon appetite" and I said: "This is something you do because you don't eat on the street." I understood something else that surprised me. What I said about France was that doctor and dentist offices are just offices, so they can be in someone's apartment.

I once went to a dentist appointment and I was so confused when I got to this guy's apartment and it's like half his apartment, half a dentist's office. I was sending my location to my friends like, um, if you don't hear from me in an hour, like sending a church party my way, but it was a credible dentist office and it just wasn't something I'd be used to experiencing. . in another country, so if you've seen Emily in Paris and I've seen the second episode, you would have seen the scene where Emily is running in the sun and a man is peeing behind her and she freaks out.

People urinate while please, in France they learn that in many different ways, you were sitting on a park bench and a man is also sitting on a private bench and he has to urinate, so he gets up and goes right behind you. That's a personal story. I too have I witnessed a man whose little boy had to pee so he held the baby on the subway tracks and the baby was just peeing for everyone, it's a normal thing, you just get used to it, that's why when you enter the subway normally they smell like someone's pee it's probably fresh it's probably fresh grocery stores in France don't provide shopping bags and there's no one to bag your groceries for you either.

I wish everyone in the world knew that you carry your shopping bag when you go to the grocery store which is not. something I was always familiar with in America because there is always a person there to bag your groceries, that's not how it works in Europe, you have to bring your reusable shopping bags, we should all do that, it's a crazy idea, maybe we'll save the environment yes having time on the side wink now one of the simplest things in the world is opening a door we open doors all day long how can it be so difficult?

I'll tell you how hard it can be to forget to press the button on the side of the door to open it because most doors in France have a button that you have to press and then you can push the door open and don't think about pulling the door , you push the door um that was something that never occurred to me that I would have to press a button to tell the door that I would like to leave, but yeah, that's just one thing you have to do there, press the button, press the door , another thing that was a big surprise to me, there's really no ice, like people don't put ice in water, it's always just room temperature water.

I quickly got used to it, but when I got home I remembered the luxury of having ice water and thought, wow, never! You know what you're missing until it's gone and then it comes back to you and you appreciate it completely in a different way ice water baby living large I'm kidding because I say that from a place of pain I wish I was drinking room temperature water in Paris of course , so this is a common theme throughout Europe. I've heard that people get their pockets picked. You may know one or two friends who have had their pockets picked or it may have happened to you, it's very common, personally.

It never happened to me. I was so afraid of being robbed that my first month living in France I carried a ziploc bag, basically a clear zippered bag full of my stuff and kept it inside my bag that way if anyone tried. to steal from me, I felt like they were literally grabbing all my things at once and I was always very paranoid, but luckily it never happened to me because I got a great lesson from my 10 year old host son who walked next to me and put his arm in my sweater and He grabs my phone and I didn't even notice and he says, "Tyler, you have to be more careful." He could have robbed you and he's holding my phone and I was like, "Wow, I didn't even realize." It was like, you have to be careful and since then I've always been careful, like if someone brushes against me, are you robbing me, are you robbing me, but it's one thing, just be careful, but don't live your life in fear. like me and I always had everything hidden, but I think if you come out as a people tourist then you are an easier target, so try to blend in with your surroundings, it's always okay guys, I think that's the whole French culture.

shocks

that come to mind right now, if you have any that you've experienced or heard about that might be a misconception about French culture and you want to start a discussion, definitely leave them in the comments section below.

I love interacting and chatting with you as I always do. One of my favorite parts of posting a video is being able to interact with you in the comments, so definitely do that and if you've watched this video in its entirety, do so! I'll definitely give it a big thumbs up. I really appreciate it. Let me know any other video suggestions, tips and tricks you want to hear in a future video and I'll be sure to pick them up for you, so thanks again. Much to see and see you next time, goodbye.