The 10 things they don't tell you about living in another country

Bonjour à tous!

After a four-month hiatus, I decided to write another blog post. Life has pretty much settled down here, so I haven't had as many updates to share with you. In fact, in this blog post I'm not going to tell you about all the cool stuff we've done. If you're actually disappointed by this (I'm talking directly to our parents and grandparents right now), check out my Facebook photos of Copenhagen (April) and Toulouse (July). No, instead, I'm going to tell you about the other side of living in a new country -a country in which you may or may not speak the language very well.

After living in France for nine months, I've begun to realize that most of things that make you feel like a competent adult don't come from formal training. They stem from simple, everyday tasks that make you a functional human being - like doing your banking, buying groceries, conversing with a sales person, going to the doctor when something's wrong, or declining a cup of coffee. I've also learned that when all of the things you know how to do suddenly do not apply, you start to feel very incompetent indeed.

Below is a list of 10 things that you didn't know you wouldn't know how to do when living in a foreign country:

1. Going to the hairdresser - I finally went to le coiffeur (the hairdresser) after living in France for something like 8.5 months. I thought it would be easy, but just in case, I looked up a few words on Google translate before I left (a well-engrained habit for me at this point). I learned the phrase, "seulement les points" ("just the ends") to mean that I just wanted a trim. I thought I was set. However, I wasn't totally prepared. It turns out that when you sit down to get your hair washed, they ask you all kinds of confusing questions in French, one of which sounded like they are asking whether I wanted "care" ("soin") or just "le shampooing" (one of the best nouns in French--second only to "le brainstorming"--and which is actually pronounced like "le shamp-weh"). I thought it was weird that they were asking whether I wanted conditioner, as this is standard practice for women's haircuts in North America and naturally follows the shampoo, but after some hesitation and their prompts ("it's better for your hair"), I agreed. I don't know what else they added, but there were three additional 6-12 € fees ($9-18 CDN each) on my bill at the end. I learned about all of this when I Googled "going to the hairdresser in France" after the fact. Next time I'll skip "le soin" - I'm sure my hair will survive without a $12 one-time conditioning treatment.
2. Buying bread - instead of just picking it up off the grocery store shelf (which you can do here, but why would you)? you go to your favourite boulangerie, which is at most a 5 min walk from your house. But, be prepared! Simply asking for "une baguette" is not enough. Actually, you need to know whether you want "une tradition", "un pain", "un pain pavée", "une tradition grain", "une tradition céreale", or one of the other 15 varieties your local bakery offers. Once you've got your order down-pact, you'll need to learn to describe how you want your baguette cooked. After living here for 9 months, my order has progressed to "une baguette céreale, pas trop cuit, s'il vous plaît". The boulanger always greets me with a huge smile and was impressed when I added the "pas trop cuit" ("not too cooked") part to my order, as we had learned that we like our multi-grain traditional baguettes nice and fluffy inside.
3. Opening the windows in your own home - yes, even this may be a struggle the first time. For example, the windows in France don't have cranks, or slide up and down, as do those in North America. Instead, they have a handle which you turn one way and then pull towards you to open your window halfway from the top,  or which you pull sideways to open all the way. They also have no screens, so all kinds of bugs get in your house (luckily, there don't seem to be any mosquitoes in Normandy).

   

   Opened from the top

   

   Opened from the side

   
   
4. Sending and receiving mail - ok, this is basically the same. However, the post office ("la banque postale") is also a bank, as the name implies. So, when you just need "un timbre au Canada" (one stamp for Canada - my probably incorrect, but habitual request), you often have to wait in long lines of people doing their banking and other mysterious post office activities. You also can't mail letters on your lunch break (la banque postale is conveniently closed from 12pm-2pm) but you CAN receive mail on Saturdays. Weird.
5. Buying drugs and cosmetics - at home, you can do this at a drug and cosmetics store like Shoppers Drug Mart, any local pharmacy, pretty much any large grocery store chain, or if it suits your fancy, Wal-Mart. Here, you can spend hours searching in the GIGANTIC supermarket near you, only to learn that you can only buy certain products at an actual pharmacy from a real pharmacist, despite the fact that they are not drugs (e.g., contact lens solution). Others aren't available at all without a prescription (i.e., vitamin D - to my chagrin). You can't even buy painkillers or antacids at the grocery store; you have to ask the pharmacist for these in French as well (I just ran out of the Tums I picked up at a UK convenience store - eek!). While Acetaminophen (aka Tylenol) doesn't exist at all in France, Ibuprofen (aka Advil or Motrin) comes in small packs of something like 10 or 12 individually sealed pills (rather than bottles) so can't really stock up. You also better hope you don't get a headache at an

   

   French allergy meds & Ibuprofen

   inconvenient hour (god forbid): the pharmacy is fermée over the lunch hour and closes again for the evenings at the same time as most local businesses. Finally, allergy medicine comes in packs of 7 tablets, so if, like me, both you and your partner realize you're suddenly allergic to every pollen ever during your first spring in a new country--despite having mild or no allergies in your home country--you need to buy two packs every week just so you can each take one in the mornings.
6. Simple banking - most banks here have an ATM built into the wall outside for street-side access, which is quite convenient. The catch is that you can't actually deposit a cheque there. Instead, you need to do this at the ATM on the inside of the door -- and you have to do this during regular banking hours. Like the pharmacy and post office, banks are obviously closed for lunch - normally between 12pm-2pm--and again for the evening by 5pm or 6pm. To make things more confusing, once you've successfully deposited your paycheque, you can't actually withdraw money from the same ATM. Nope, you need to take your card, go back outside and withdraw your cash from the machine on the wall outside the store. Because pulling out cash on the street seems much safer than inside the secure walls of the bank. Speaking of banking, I've also learned that e-transfers are a North American phenomenon. In France, to get paid or to pay bills (e.g., electricity),  you must provide the company with your IBAN/RIB (International Bank Account Number). In France, your bank provides you with these little slips that display this information, and it is very normal for new employers--or pretty much anyone you have any sort of contract with (e.g. cell phone company)--to ask for your IBAN/RIB. I have taken to carrying one on my person, because it's requested that often. Oh, and if you want to send someone money, you better do it the old-fashioned way: cash or cheque.

   

   A sample RIB

7. Asking if you can use the bathroom - Don't laugh. In our apartment--and in most French homes I have been into--les toilettes and la salle de bain are separate rooms. The former is literally a room with a toilet, and the latter contains the sink and bathtub or shower. So if you're invited to someone's house and ask to use their salle de bain, they will wonder what you are going to do in there ("would you like a rubber ducky??"). Despite your North American tendencies to dance around awkward topics ("Can I use your restroom, please? I'd really like to take a rest in there for approximately a minute and a half"), in order to be understood, you have to ask to use the toilet; there's just no getting around it. If you've ever heard a French person (or other non-native English speaker) say "I'm going to the toilet", they aren't being childish or strangely direct. This is just how you speak in their country. Take-home lesson: "Où sont les toilettes?" is a very useful phrase to know when travelling in French; and you should banish "Où est la salle de bain" from your memory unless you plan to take a bubble bath in the restaurant at which you just had lunch.
8. Declining a cup of coffee (or a drink, a piece of cake, you name it) - as a Canadian woman, I am by nature, polite and decisively indirect in my language use. I've already given you one example ("Can I use your bathroom", which essentially means, "I have no intentions to take a bath, but all the same, I don't want to tell you I have to pee, because how would I ever look you in the eye again?"). Another example is my typical response to "Would you like anything?", a common question posed to you when you enter someone's home. In Canada, if I don't want what the person's offering (or more accurately, I would actually love a piece of chocolate banana bread but am too ashamed to admit it so I politely decline), my typical response is, not the simple, and direct, "No", but "I'm good, thanks". After living here for exactly 8 months, I found out that "Non, merci, je suis bonne" is not a great translation of that phrase. As my private French tutor explained to me after I used this phrase on her unassuming husband, "Je suis bonne" has, well, sexual connotations, and does NOT mean, "I'm fine". As my French tutor said to me, in very direct terms, "Just say, non merci. We won't be offended that you don't want any coffee. Seriously."
9. Finding a job - this is both obvious and not at the same time. On one hand, it's not difficult to imagine that finding a job in a country where, as the French say, "vous n'avez pas parfaitement maîtrisé la langue" (you haven't perfectly mastered the language), would be, well, challenging. After all, job searching is difficult even in your home country.  However, I wasn't prepared for the level of incompetence I would feel when presented with this challenge in another country. For one, your CV will be in the wrong language. For two, it will be in the wrong format - even after you've spent hours and hours translating it and having a French friend edit it, and have followed a French template found online, adding all kinds of things you would never put on your CV in Canada (like your marital situation and your age), you will still be told by a chuckling employment agency officer, "c'est pas un CV français" in a somewhat condescending tone. Hmpf. For three, you won't know where to start with your job search. You'll have to discover and subscribe for all the local job searching sites, most of which require you to complete their fillable forms for an online CV. You will have to get acquainted with the local versions of sites like Kijiji and post ads online, which will take you 5x longer than usual, because again, you have to translate your ads and get them edited by a friend. Fourthly, you will have no reseau social (social network), or at least not a professional one. You will have no idea how to break into your field, because you know no one locally who is part of it (this is particularly important in the case of academic jobs). Fifth, you will have no idea how to write a cover letter in another language, and will resort to copying an Internet template, changing names and subject lines and deleting things that are most definitely not true about you, while leaving the ones that are kinda-sorta-true but you would have never written them yourself. Sixth, if you have successfully managed to figure out where you should apply, after weeks or months of sending out your CV to companies with no job postings (la candidature spontanée), you will realize that this method is highly ineffective. You will then turn to the last possible resort: going to an unemployment agency in another country. Seventh, if, like me, you live in France, and you have worked up the courage to walk into an agence d'interim, you will be hopeful that someone will finally explain the local system and will help you find the absolute best job for you. You will have your hopes dashed, as you are asked "c'est quoi, ton métier?" and quickly realize that you need to know your profession in order for the agency to help you. When you hazard a guess, "formatrice d'anglais" (English teacher) and mutter that you think it's your best chance, you will be told that you've come to the wrong place, and will soon realize that each agence d'interim (there is at one on every street) specializes in a different profession and that you need to go to the one most appropriate for you. You will be sent on a wild goose chase wherein you walk all over the city being sent from one agency to the next, only to leave one measly CV with one agent who promises to call you if something comes up, but honestly doesn't look very hopeful. Eighth, you will get even more desperate and sign up for the national job searching/employment agency (in France, this is called Pole Emploi, and seems to be government-funded), which will involve countless hours filling out online applications, going to multiple meetings which you informed of through official letters in the mail, and get accidentally signed up for a job searching program through an associated company that involves multiple rendez-vous obligatoires (obligatory meetings), and which you really hope is free. Ninth, you will realize that even if you've spent 12 years in university (in other words, the lifetime of a seventh grader), you are unemployable in anything outside your specific academic domain, and that even jobs like secretary, bakery employee, or daycare worker require specific diplomas that you, unfortunately, don't possess. Tenth,  you will ultimately remain hopeful, because at least now you're making use of all elements of the system and no one can say you didn't try.
10. And finally, saying hello & goodbye. Forget hugging - it's weird and touchy-feely and very North American. If you're going to live in France, you better get used to l'art de la bise - in other words, donner les bisous (AKA giving the double-cheek kiss). You should be prepard to do this to pretty much everyone: when you meet friends at a bar, when you are introduced to someone for the first time, when you say hello, when you say goodbye...I have literally seen lines of six or seven people line up to kiss the newcomer in a group of friends. I've also almost tripped on the stairs because people will stop to do this in the middle of stairwells - but I've already talked about that in a previous post, so I digress. As I was saying, you have to give les bisous to just about everyone...just not if you're a straight man greeting another straight man, in which case you should shake hands. But if you're a gay man greeting a gay or straight man, les bisous are fine. And make sure to not actually kiss the person's cheek - that would be weird. No, just kiss the air, while making a kissing sound so it's more convincing. Confused? Watch this video (warning: graphic language). 

That's all for today, folks! Now please excuse me while I go off to stay in my apartment all day where it's just Alex, myself and a cat and I feel competent and safe and understand all the social norms.

À plus!