How would you show a french girl US culture in a nutshell?
Most of the French people I’ve entertained in the US were very enamored of a good, big hamburger. Fast food hamburgers are common over there, but not the sort of grilled onions and bacon type made with meat from a local butcher or the like. Really, France is only so different from the US. Just do things, she’ll see the similarities and differences herself. A lot of times, the most interesting cultural differences are in details that you only notice by living normally, since they are in assumptions about things rather than things themselves. For instance, 24 hour grocery stores are, as best as I can tell, non-existent in France, even Paris. Even being open on Sunday isn’t universal. Do, however, hit some of the scenery in Utah. National parks are awesome, and don’t get the sort of international play they deserve.
I’d just like to echo a lot of the sentiments already expressed: a lot of the differences between France and the US can be found just by going through everyday life and seeing how you both challenge each others’ preconceptions of your respective cultures. In large part, and for some reason I always find this interesting, it happens through food. True story: my French foreign exchange student (when we were both in high school) had never had root beer. She thought it was absolutely the most repulsive thing she had ever tasted and couldn’t understand how I loved it. It can also be difficult to express food-related vocabulary in another language, as it’s often idiomatic and/or strangely specific. I remember that we had learned practically no food vocabulary in class, and when I was in France my exchange family forced me to put down my dictionary and describe what it was that I wanted to say (in French) with them correcting me once they figured out what I meant. That was actually a really g
Having entertained some French co-workers on their visits to the US I can tell you that they loved shopping at the mall! (We are near one of the largest malls in the country, and most of them would stay at a hotel across the street and shop there every night after work.) They all stocked up because prices were a lot lower here than in France. There was one guy in particular who was totally into American movies. I think he taught himself English based on Terminator movies or something. So he definitely appreciated seeing the latest blockbusters before their European release. I think a really neat way to learn about any culture is to see where they do their daily shopping. Especially in the US, supermarkets can be overwhelming to visitors. I took an international business class where the instructor told us about a French woman who moved to the US when her husband’s job transferred him, and she started crying in the middle of the cereal aisle at the supermarket because all the choices wer
In Europe one can’t drive for hours and hours and not see anyone, not pass through any major cities. The space will amaze her. Show her space. When I lived in Germany, this was one of the most striking differences to me (or rather, the inverse, that it was so dense). It was also one of the most difficult to explain to people around me. I also agree with the natural beauty aspect of things. You can capture the expansive spaces and the beauty simultaneously by taking a road trip down to Moab, UT, which is one of the prettiest desert places I’ve been to. They also don’t have Native Americans. Native Americans had a huge diverse culture that we basically destroyed in the name of progress. I also agree with that everyday things are really one of the most interesting. The German village I lived in was laid out in a sort of ring and spoke system with the church at the center, and the main road being a ring around the village where the walls used to be. The American city I come from is a grid.
If she’s from the suburbs, she’ll almost surely be used to big box stores like Carrefour, Leroy Merlin, Mr Bricolage, and the like. The subtle differences might be interesting, though, like the absence of obvious security guards near the entrance. (American stores do loss prevention more subtly than a lot of French stores.) A short road trip would be a good idea. There are some wilderness areas in France but you have to go pretty far to see them. I was hiking in the Alps near Grenoble a couple days ago, and that was pretty wild, but the forests around Paris are criss-crossed with straight forest roads. A lot of France is rural but there’s not much wilderness. Chez Shoe’s suggestion of a state or county fair is great. A lot of daily life will be just unfamiliar enough to be intriguing (unless she’s a 16-year-old whose adolescent rebellion takes the form of a mask of indifference…). Houses in American towns are not all surrounded by big fences or walls; my French friends find that deep
