The truth is, as a foreigner living abroad, I am constantly observing people (and let's face it, judging), something which I might not do so religiously if I were living back home.
You try to characterize, describe, figure out, and place people based on their actions, reactions, and non-actions. I've been trying to figure out the French since 2001 when I first arrived here as a measly 17-year-old, and most of the time I just can't seem to get it right.
It is hard to put your thumb exactly on a characteristic that foreigners (or anyone, for that matter) posses. I've been wrong many times. Very wrong. And it is scary to feel that your sixth sense about people can be so far from the truth.
People also don't have just one side to them; they change based on their surroundings, who they're with, and how much PMS they've got going on.
In no seriousness, French people are often described as "assholes." I've personally never used such a term to describe my fellow camp mates, but you know, I've heard others doing it. Could it be perhaps that the French are largely misunderstood by the rest of the world? Do fermented grapes give you an attitude problem? Or is there just simply no word in the English language colorful enough to describe the French?
Here's a word: suspicious. Yes. When my friend Nashville said it a few years ago (to describe her mother -in-law, no doubt) something clicked. She was on to something there. Yes, this fishy, curious, slanted eye facial expression French behavior could indeed be described as suspicious.
So of whom and of what are the French suspicious, you might ask? Everything!
Take for example: couples.
I recently polled American and French couples (married or living together) about whether or not they had joint banking accounts, and 100% of French couples I asked maintained separate accounts, even when they had children together!
At my job, my colleagues are also very sucpicious of the customer. Every client, they assume, must be a 'mystery shopper' there to spy on us and report back to corporate (I work for a non-profit).
On the other hand, the French are not suspicious of food, as long as it has been sitting out of the refrigerator long enough to grow lots of bacteria, and as long as it contains the brains, guts, or lips of at least one farmyard animal. A yogurt out-of-date by a month or more does not scare a Frenchman.
Recently I've been looking for new ways to express my anger, other than yelling at telephone solicitors, hanging my children by their toes, and kick boxing, so I decided that doing a counted cross stitch might just do the trick. Before you laugh, check out my most recent creation, designed by the Deschodt's ourselves, and feel the rage expel from your body as you firgure it out...
