Un peu de culture française/A little French culture...that is Belgian!

Gaston Lagaffe celebrates 57 years!

Picture Retrieved from: Google France

This is the drawing for the word Google at the top of the screen for Google France. However, André Franquin is a Belgian comics artist. 

He also is responsible for Marsupilami.

                                                                      

Picture retrieved from:http://www.marsupilami.com/insolite/dessin/ 

You can learn more about Franquin and his comics at: www.franquin.com 

Franquin wrote in French, so there you have it. It is popular French culture. My husband grew up reading Gaston Lagaffe. Do you know Gaston? I did not know him until moving to France. He is funny though!

Assimilate, Separate, or Integrate? (The Script)

Have you ever experienced culture shock? My name is Pamela and I sure have. I am an American married to a Frenchman. I began my cultural journey five years ago in a small village in the south east of France. I did not I truly feel the geographic culture shock in the beginning because I was busy with a newborn. The culture shock of being a mommy helped keep separated me from my host French culture. I went on to spend three years in Belgium where there are three national languages. I felt the language barrier more, I missed home, I missed the foods I was used to in the states, I didn’t have a strong social network yet, and I had another baby. I sought relief from culture shock in Belgium by shopping at The American Food Store for a few expensive imported comfort foods and surrounding myself with American or at least English speaking church family and friends. Now I have been back in France for roughly a year and a half. What I find to be the most shocking in the sense of regularly dealing with culture, is the difference in language. However, with continued progress in my French fluency this part gets easier to deal with. Yes, I still miss things about Alabama and the United States in general. I miss my American/English speaking family and friends, I miss church worship in English, I miss small things like Ranch dressing, Tootsie Rolls, and Little Debbie cakes, I miss parking that is free and easy to come by, and I miss stores being open 24/7. Yet, I have adapted, I have integrated, I have made the choice to replace things when possible or better yet simply move on and accept the change. Really, for a lot of things I have merely forgotten I even missed them. It is tough at times. In the beginning milk was a huge shock for me. Here in France milk is homogenized and comes in different fat levels as in the states, but French drink UHT milk. It is sterilized at ultra-high-temperatures to kills germs which allows it to stay on a shelf in my garage non-refrigerated until opened. The taste was startlingly different to me in the beginning. With time I got use to the taste. That is one small example of shock. Other shocking for me things were: greeting with cheek kisses, the strong taste of French cheese, comic books resembling porn available in my local grocery store, and everyone having a name day or fête. These things may still be strange to me, but I have grown accustomed to them. Finally, I am a mother of children who are dual citizens and bilingual. I want my daughters to partake in French as well as American culture. This may be difficult if not impossible for some things since we are in fact in France, but I do what I can. For instance, Americans celebrate Thanksgiving which is non-existent in France. The French have a yummy holiday solely for consuming crêpes known as La Chandeleur. For Thanksgiving I prepare as traditional meal as possible. For Crêpe Day I have learned the art of making crêpes. Again, I have shared only a few examples. There are plenty of ways I have run into and continue to run into culture differences and at times feel “shock.” So, what do you do? Do you completely abandon your native culture and take on a new one, assimilating? Do you separate yourself completely and try to maintain your own culture in a community of liked mined others? Or do you integrate yourself? To the best of my abilities I have embraced living in a different culture and so I have integrated. Let’s say I am French American now. It is difficult, frustrating, and exciting all at the same time. In my opinion it is all about choice and attitude. If you remain positive and welcome change integration can be relatively easy. Remind yourself that this shock you feel is simply the fact of being faced with new and different things or experiences and you will be able to roll with the punches. If you are unwillingly to try or you resist completely there will certainly be difficult long lastly “shock.”

Tout est en français!/Everything is in French!

I mean everything: the speech around me, my daughters speaking to one another, my husband speaking to our daughters, the television, the radio, the internet (I am aware I can do setting changes, but things still pop up in French), food labels, directions, billboard advertising, newspapers, flyers, books, and I am sure I am leaving things out that make a difference in my life.

Yes, sure, I know. These are all good things when it comes to learning a new or second language by way of immersion. Yet, sometimes, these things are simply all a huge pain in the derrière (bottom, rear end, butt). You never really think about it when you are in your home country on native soil or even when you are merely a "less than 30 day" tourist/traveler somewhere. Language just does not matter when you are surrounded by those who speak the same. However, when you are surrounded by a different language regardless of whether or not you speak and understand does not matter. Some days I just want to be surrounded by English.

I want to be able to carry on a conversation without thinking while listening, "did I say what I meant? did I conjugate that verb correctly? or crap, I should have said..." Granted perhaps this sort on inside your head conversation goes away as you gain fluency. For me it has not happened yet. I still think about a French conversation days later. I am sure at some point I will be able to just listen and not translate as well as speak without lots of thought about my sentence structure. I will simply speak French as I speak English. I look forward to those days...

Créativa

On the weekends I occasionally run away from my home, husband, and children. I try to be an adult without a little one asking for something, showing something, crying about something, or otherwise occupying my mind. This weekend I was able to go to a fantastic creative outlet extravaganza for a little over one hour.  Oh yeah, in the same building there were booths of chocolate too! If you want you can check it out, but it is in French: http://www.metz-expo.com/







Flyer/Billboard Advertisement picture taken from:
http://www.creavenue.com/creativa/metz/default.aspx

Mardis Gras

Well for anyone who may not know Mardis Gras means Fat Tuesday, really. I know why people celebrate Mardi Gras, but I don't really understand the intense craziness just because Lent is coming. I mean why do a bunch of off the wall stuff and then fast for 40 days? Why not just choose to be "good" or "bad" year round? I like banana moon pies as much as anyone, but I would prefer to witness Carnival in Italy or Brazil than Mardis Gras in New Orleans (been there done that I was not impressed).

On y va..let's go!

I have been in Europe for close to five years now. It has been interesting to say the least. I started with a few basics in French: bonjour, comment-allez-vous?, colors, some food. You know simple stuff. Three years I was in Belgium with English speaking friends and church family. Needless to say I did not practice French nearly as much as I should have. Now, I have been back in France for over one year and I have made definite progress. Before I managed to say a sentence maybe two to try and get my point across. Now, I can carry on a conversation. I can joke (attempt to joke) with friends and even the cashier I see all the time in the grocery store I frequent. I mentioned attempting to joke. Oh my, how culture and language can play a role in making a joke or getting a joke. I have to learn a bit more about France, its entertainment, the language, etc. There are times when literal translation just does not work. When I watch a animated movie in French I try to watch it in English if I have not already. Take the 2012 animated movie Hotel Transylvania. First, when you watch something in a different language the voices are some what different. If you know Adam Sandler and hear him do this Dracula voice it is a bit different than the French voice for the same character. Then there is a matter of translation. Sure some things can be literally translated, but then there are other things that are just different. In this movie Dracula has a daughter named Mavis. At one point he offers her "scream cheese," get it cream cheese. In turn she offers it to the human character, Jonathan. He declines saying he is scream cheese intolerant. Well, in French scream is not scream, so does not rhyme with cream. However there is the cheese La Vache Qui Rit fromage (The Laughing Cow) so the French joke is "vache qui crie." To scream in French is crier. In French Jonathan does not have the same sort of comment as in English, but that is okay. This is merely one example that came to my head quickly since my girls have been watching this movie non-stop. I will also note that French subtitles rarely ever completely match with the spoken translation.