More French Culture Shocks! New Zealand Vs. France (pt 2)

Tutorial Transcript

Salut YouTube welcome back to my New Zealand vs France culture shock series so if you haven't seen part 1 of this video I highly recommend you check that out first where I talk about the first 10 culture shocks so I'll link that in the description box below but if you have already seen it let's go, let's talk about the next 10 culture shocks between (French) France and NZ - let's go! ok culture shock number one is that sweatpants are a no-go so as part of the kind of French refinement it's actually kind of important how you dress and present yourself which was very depressing to learn as a New Zealander because our weekend uniform is like skinny jeans, hoodie your hair done up in a messy top knot you know like pretty casual and yeah you've probably heard about New Zealanders yeah we can walk around barefoot it's nice and clean we'll go from our home we'll walk down to the corner shop which we call a dairy barefoot no problem, or in jandals at least, so we can keep it pretty casual to say the least, whereas in France if you go out like that even just down to the store to grab some milk or whatever it is you'll get those looks - you know the looks - you know the ones! And it's not even about just going outside it can be about the inside kind of house rules as well like I've noticed that here you don't really wake up on the weekend and stay in your PJs all day and in terms of like boyfriend versus girlfriend as well like I have this gorgeous Eastern European friend of mine who's living in France here with a French boyfriend and on the weekends she'd just wear some some track pants and I'm sure because it's her they were very skinny flattering track pants like showing off her body so not even the big sloppy ones that I would wear and he actually asked her to stop wearing her "home clothes" around the place because it looked a little bit slobby! I think this is definitely a thing here where you don't wear that oversized t-shirt and trackies and walk around barefoot because you look a little bit homeless and for us that's cool you can go to university like that you can go down to the shop like that you can go supermarket shopping like that but here c'est pas possible So number two is a little bit random but this is about the cars in France so I find the cars in France actually really cute there's loads of really little tiny smart cars or just small compact cars and even if you are wealthy you know usually in the states or in the UK Australia New Zealand in general I'd say if you're wealthy you buy those big cars to kind of show it off a little bit or if you've got a family you'll have those huge sort of big soccer mum cars Range Rovers, etc. I'm sure there's people that do have really nice flashy big cars but I've just noticed it way less, it just seems to be way less attached to your ego as well to buy a big flashy car for the French which is quite nice way less pressure for me and I will say that even though the French have quite the reputation for being terrible drivers I think they're probably the best at parking in the world. I have seen cars parallel park into spaces that are the size of the car and you need some skill to do that So number three is about the fashion and yeah I know that France has a reputation for being the most fashionable place in the world it's where fashion was born and yes when you're walking around on the streets everyone looks very smart and chic but what I was kind of shocked about is that it's very homogeneous and it kind of resembles a uniform I remember when I arrived in France I feel like every single French girl was wearing black skinny jeans that were slightly too short for her and exposed her ankle or maybe this kind of dark red burgundy color jean or pant and they'd be wearing a simple top with a black leather jacket and a scarf and wearing no or very little makeup and if they are wearing makeup just maybe a bit of mascara maybe some BB cream or a nice sheer foundation maximum and a lip color I find here even if you dye your hair you dye it a very very natural colour like you don't really take big risks you don't see a lot of pixie cuts or bleach blonde or let's say reds or deep purple's or kind of more creative things going on with the hair and I think it's because in France the beauty standards are really around "I didn't make much effort" I woke up like this Again yeah it looks nice, it looks chic, don't get me wrong but I mean you can really see the difference when you go to London for example and everyone's wearing what they want, they do whatever they want with their hair, anything goes you see some good sights you see some really bad sights but there's freedom and there's creativity going around and the way you express yourself and the way you dress Number four I mean I don't want to be cliché but I don't think I can mention culture shocks with France without mentioning French administration - my favorite! I just remember when I arrived here feeling like everything was so hard and so slow like you can't just stroll into your bank and get an appointment with the adviser, you need to book, why? Because the appointment will take one hour instead of 15 minutes Why? Oh because there are huge amounts of forms and paperwork and documents to provide and things to go through! Why does it have to be so hard, why do things have to be so slow. I mean and it's always in person it's always like physical copies you have to bring the original and photocopy original and photocopy why can't we just submit the documents online why can't we just text the Internet company that we want to join and they just set us up through a text by text process like they have in other sort of modern countries It just hasn't really hit France yet and there's this sort of like this big paranoia that we need all these documents we need to be safe and secure and otherwise I don't know people are gonna steal our identities or something bad is gonna happen if we don't pile paperwork onto every single process you can imagine Another culture shock I had hear about the food capital of the world is there a lot of the restaurants especially once you get out of Paris are quite the same same so chicken lamb veal steak tartare and then for the dessert creme brulée tiramisu mousse au chocolat melting heart chocolate pudding it just it just kind of seems very very similar from one French bistro to another of course in Paris you've got a lot more choice but I think we're kind of spoilt in New Zealand because we've got that nice proximity to Asia we have a lot of amazing Asian fusion style restaurants, Indian... whereas here you kind of have to go to special neighborhoods to really get the choice that you're after I find there's less diversity per square kilometre in terms of restaurants if that makes sense Number six is that you definitely have to be a little less trusting here when I arrived in Paris I was so fresh I was so naive I would be on the Metro with my handbag wide open I would just never have the reflex to think OK you've actually got to be careful with your handbag here and I'd be chatting away to a friend and they'd be like "Rosie!" what are you doing like close your bag! And I'd be like "oops! My bad" Nothing's happened to me where I've had something stolen a handbag a phone or whatever but I have seen it happen in front of me I've had friends have things stolen I've had friends who have just been eating at a restaurant with their work laptop down by their foot and when they go to leave the restaurant in the evening it's no longer there it's just got to be a little bit more wary which took me a long time to get used to because my default is very low crime you can trust everyone so it's just a kind of different atmosphere I guess and you've got to be a little bit more careful with your things you do back home for sure point Number seven I think is maybe a little bit unfair because I know New Zealanders are a little bit of an exception when it comes to being super cool and laid back but I definitely noticed a difference in attitude of people and I don't want to go into too much detail because I think I'm gonna do a whole nother video on this but in New Zealand the attitude is warm and open and friendly you smile the other day my friend told me that there was a woman with her on the train and she accidentally missed her stop and the train was a sort of fork railway system so it was going off in the complete wrong direction for her and so she felt quite stuck and she was just surrounded by offers of rides, people willing to drive her to where she needs to go people were offering that she comes back to their house and waits for her friends while they pick her up and that's just the right Kiwi thing to do whereas here I just find in general that attitudes are distrusting between people and I don't want to generalize but I've definitely noticed that there's less positivity and upbeat moods around me then I have back home Another culture shock I had is that the French children are so well behaved so even at the ages of four, six they'll be seated quietly and discreetly at a restaurant and they'll be eating their meals with the adults and they won't be trying to talk over the adults and they will you know ask if they can sort of jump into the conversation or they'll do so when there's a natural gap in the conversation I kind of feel in New Zealand when you're having dinner with people that have kids, the kids run the show like it's all about them it's all about getting them to eat, they'll refuse what they're eating they'll talk over you, they'll butt in, they'll have to be told please don't speak while adults are speaking and then they'll just do it again I don't know maybe we're less disciplined with our children less "cadre" as they say in French and I think that's definitely the case I'll never forget going to my boyfriend's cousin's house and she's got these two gorgeous girls and I think they were around 7 and 9 at the time or something like that and the eldest one was running into the kitchen while the mum was cooking and she's like mum can I please help you set the table? and it was just like whoa whoa stop the clock what just happened there? I do have some theories about how they achieve children like this which I as I said I'll do a video on that but in the meantime I do recommend reading Pamela Druckerman's bringing up baby book which explains a lot of the key principles really well and that will of course be in the notes below Number 9 is about the French people and their holidays when I first arrived in France it was September and I heard a lot about La Rentrée, I was like what is La Rentré? It's this huge moment of the year where people are back to school but also adults are back to work why because they took basically all of August off in France you usually take three to four weeks off in the summer and that's just totally normal and totally cool and once I realized how much leave you got here once you start working so you've got the five weeks minimum plus you often get extra above and beyond that I was just blown away and so what it means is that you can travel easily I mean the French that I'm around always seem to be going to Greece to Portugal to Croatia it's just so casual they live very beautiful lives in that way and coming from the other side of the world a little island in the middle of nowhere that was really shocking to me but to defend the French because I know there's a little bit of a stereotype about them being lazy we earn these holidays because we work way more hours I find in the days and then we have more holidays to compensate so we may be doing in 10 or 11 hour days as a standard and then get lots of holidays in New Zealand we only get 20 days of leave but at 5:30 you're out the door and you're enjoying the rest of your evening so I think it's just a different system Culture shock numbe 10 or number 20 if you've watched both videos is that the French are so polite and I know I've mentionned this before but you always say bonjour to everyone you sort of interact or pass - when you hop into the elevator you say bonjour when you go into the doctor's office you say bonjour you're always saying merci like even between you know boyfriend/girlfriend if your boyfriend just lets you go through the door first or whatever you always say merci or if he serves your water merci and it's kind of funny because of course we're polite in New Zealand but I don't think we you say thank you so much as they do here here I feel like the manners are very structured and in place which is super nice they're very very polite people the French So guys if you made it all the way here to the end of my video I salute you let me know if you want me to do a Part 3 because I could keep talking about this stuff for hours and please let me know what your culture shocks were I'd be really interested to hear what other culture shocks are coming from different base countries but until then I wish you a great day and I'll see you soon A bientôt!