09 November 2006

I feel like I’m not learning about the deeper roots of French culture because I rarely talk with anyone my age, let alone about profound or complex topics. Sure, I can point out the little things like everyone drinks coffee and has bread with every meal, but that’s old news. Actually, more than anything else, being here has given me a chance to see American culture and my own beliefs/cultural values from a distance. Every time I’m asked about life in America I find myself suddenly unsure why things are the way they are…there doesn’t seem to be a logical explanation. What’s more, I’ve just never been asked to share my opinion on a lot of their questions, hence, never have had to question my most basic ways of life. ‘Yeah,’ I’ll often think to myself, ‘that IS a good question…I don’t know why things are that way!’ And, I realize that one’s culture can not be summed up into a few sentences for it’s complex and not easily definable.

The hardest part is that many people have a skewed interpretation of American culture and I try to tell them that things aren’t that way, but then I don’t know how to explain how things really are. I begin to question my own responses. I doubt whether I truly do know what I’m talking about…because I am after all, just going off of my own opinions and observations. I’ve been learning over the last few years that there are many, many, many different kinds of people in this world, all of whom have different ways of seeing life. So who’s to say that what I see as ‘American’ culture is what another would define as ‘American’ culture.