Submitted by Kayla Dickens on the 2014 fall semester study abroad program in Paris, France…
The real culture shock things that I have had to adapt to have had to do primarily with food, but also with service. Being vegetarian in France is not very fun. It’s not so bad at restaurants where you sit down and eat because they usually serve eggs of some sort (interesting here that eggs are an all-day food rather than a breakfast food), but I do not have the time or money to do that every day for lunch, and it is incredibly difficult to find a sandwich or anything other than plain bread (or worse, bread with chocolate) at the boulangeries or sandwich shops, and this is not a culture where you ask a chef to alter his dish. So that’s been a difficult adjustment, one that I was expecting, but have found more frustrating than I was prepared for.
As for service, it is something that they see very differently here (and not just at restaurants, anywhere that you go to shop or anywhere you might have to ask a question). They will answer your questions for you, but they do not go above and beyond to help you get what you need. For example in the U.S. if I asked a yes-or-no question regarding whether or not I was on the right floor of the bookstore to find a particular book at Barnes and Noble, I would most likely either get a yes followed by what section I’ll find the book in or a no followed by what floor I need to be on. Here when I asked that same yes or no question last week looking for my textbooks, I got only a yes or only a no, but nothing following. It was not until I asked what floor I needed to be on or what section I needed to be in until that information was provided. As someone who not only experiences different levels of service in the U.S. but someone who also works in the service sector at home, I have found that to be a highly difficult adjustment.