Fin

I don't think I'll ever know or understand every facet of French culture. Two months is a good amount of time, however, to notice even little differences between French and American society.

Like how French kids will hold hands with their parents, even when they're eleven or twelve years old. And French couples don't really hold hands--they just kinda "hold fingers" or "hold pinkies."

And how French people never really hug. It's always bisous, bisous, bisous.


Or how they say Bonjour to everyone when it would be equally polite in America to just stay quiet (walking into an elevator with someone, passing by the cleaning lady, getting on the bus).

How about the way they often wear the same color of shirt and pants? There's no such thing as matching too much in France.

These little differences are the really fun  things to notice. They might be insignificant things, but that nevertheless make French culture French. And it was interesting to insert myself into that mindset for a little while. I certainly didn't turn French--I'll always, in some ways, be very different from the people I met in Toulon. But there was goodness in that: even though I was American me and they were French them, we got along fine. I learned to say the Bonjours and to do the bisous. They learned (hopefully) that even an American can be cool and have a good French accent. I love French now even more than I did before, and it's great, because I don't have to stop learning from my experience in France. I get to keep going. Keep studying. Keep learning. ...And I won't let the fin of this journey stop me from going back again.