Interesting Tidbits Volume #1

We thought it would be a good idea to chronicle some of the interesting things we have noticed during our time here in France.

1. For starters we find the grocery store to be one of the more interesting places to visit.  It can tell you so much about people's habits and everyday lives.  As many of you might expect food is very important to the French and the grocery store reflects this fact.  They are full of entire departments of fresh produce, meat, cheese and enough bread to sink a battleship.  For those who want to know food generally tends to be slightly more expensive with things such as bread and cheese being less expensive and items such as peanut butter being priced through the roof compared to the states.

2.  Since a good bit of our support base is in the South, y'all might be intrigued by this one.  Some of you might know that one of us really enjoys listening to country music (bet you can't guess which one that is :)).   We were riding in the car one of the first days we got here and jokingly said "I bet they don't have country music here".  A few days later we discovered one of the  stranger things which is that there actually is an English country radio station and it is even more country than what you would normally hear in the south.  We would be interested to find out who it is exactly that listens to that here.

3. One fact that might surprise some is that the French do not all hate Americans.  This is especially the case if you at least try to communicate in French to start with.  If we have learned nothing else during our time here in the past two weeks, we have learned that stereotypes are not helpful and you must approach each person with an open mind willing to learn about them as an individual.

4. In our experience so far it seems that most shirts with writing on them are in English.  Apparently the French like to buy shirts with English writing.

5. Who knew that the days were so long here in the summer.  It starts becoming daylight a little before 6:00am and doesn't get dark until after 10:00pm.  This has been quite challenging for trying to go to sleep at night but I think we have finally adjusted.


To be continued...