I absolutely adored my time abroad in Aix-en-Provence. I look back on this experience with a light heart, and will forever be grateful for my time there. One thing that I really noticed that I liked about French culture was the importance of self-care and treating yourself and friends. For example, I noticed that it is encouraged in work environments to take a hefty lunch break and go out with your friends and co-workers for a nice sit down lunch at a bistro, or cafe or even just a snack shop. To me that was really nice to try to incorporate into my own life and it made me feel more motivated to go back to work, vs. forcing myself to continue work the whole day until I feel burnt out.
Then there was the practice of walking everywhere. When I needed something I could just get up and walk to go get it, and I felt good and productive doing so. Now that I am back in America, and still do not have a car, I am finding it way more difficult to function on my own. While we do have Park Ave. and that is wonderful, it doesn’t have a lot of the basic necessities that I need within a walking distance. Being able to walk to a Monoprix saved me so much money, I knew I was exercising a bit and that I was being even a little bit more environmentally conscious. Now I feel like I am scrounging to find someone to drive me just to the supermarket and having to spend money on gas.
When I think about the two cultural experiences I listed above, and try to see how someone from my host culture would see it I feel quite intrigued. To them, this is just their normal. They find it normal to go to a cafe almost every morning or lunch break, and it’s very normal, if they have the funding for it, to take themselves out shopping. While for some people in America, they try to implement this lifestyle, I feel as though it is more scarcely practiced than it is in France, specifically in the South of France. As for walking and even bus transportation everywhere, that is also just normal to them. I know for a fact too, that a lot of French people find it quite odd that the U.S. has still not developed a better public transportation system or better accessibility to walk to necessary establishments like the supermarket. To me I can completely understand this perspective, as I feel like I think the same thing.
To me this exercise just reminds me to keep an open mind towards other cultures that are not my own and maybe to also try to look around and find the little things so that I can learn more. These experiences also taught me to learn how to utilize this information towards my work, whether it’s for art or social entrepreneurship.
