Our days of class and nightly dinners with our family are becoming a nice routine I look forward to. Today was all lecture nut it was very interesting and we breaker for a nice Lebanese sit down lunch. Tonight we had a dinner guest, Francois, who had a fascinating life and a wonderful personality that kept Courtney and I well entertained. He lived in California for 20 years, owning a ski shop and teaching ski lessons to celebrities. He was even married to a Miss Universe! Christiane, our host mother, wrote a book about how fascinating his life is! We were disappointed he is going to be out of down for the rest of our visit, as he is visiting his girlfriend in another part of France, but we invited him to Cincinnati anytime. He loves American cheesecake and jello!
Last night we went with our host dad to the grocery for the week. It was a great opportunity to learn more about the culture of France. We went to a "Price Leader", which is a local chain owned by Casino, a larger chain of groceries in France. Part of our class assignment is to analyze the shopping experiences in France, so I am going to use this blog as a way to brainstorm for my first paper!
The experience: The French grocery stores are much smaller. They carry more fresh products, such as large meat and cheese sections and smaller aisles contain processed chips or cookies. There is also a large wine area, as one might expect for France! It takes awhile to get used to the prices in euros and the weights in kilograms instead of pounds. The products closest to the entrance were the staples, like wine, produce, and cheese. In America, often times you find the meat, breads, or junk food closest to the entrance in my experiences. More people used reusable shopping bags in France; in fact, I don't believe the store even offered to give you plastic or paper bags and we bagged our own groceries. People have smaller shopping trips, and they often return to the grocery several times a week. This could be due to the fact that they want fresher products, especially cheese which is very important to their dinners, or because they have smaller cars. A normal family grocery trip for my family would not fit in most European tiny cars. We purchased a lot of different foods, as Bernard wanted us to try everything special to France, and our bill was around 65 euros. This would be equivalent to a small to normal grocery bill in USD, but the other customers and cashier looked at us like we had an extravagant trip! I also noticed that fruits were sold more individually, like tangerines. In the States, we have large bags or crates of tangerines, but here you just take as many as you like. They also place everything in plastic bags, even bananas. Courtney put a group of bananas straight into the cart, and Bernard went back to the produce section later to bag them up.
Reflection and Theory: For one, I think many of these observations suggest that French people have different eating habits than Americans. They prefer quantity over quality, so they buy less food at a higher quantity. They also want fresher foods, like their cheese, wines, and meats. My mom often buys pre-packaged lunch meats for our family's lunches throughout the week and I don't think that would be offered in France. They take the time to prepare their meals with fresh ingredients each day. This would also explain why they buy less at the grocery and make more frequent trips.
These are just some thoughts after my first grocery trip in France, and I wanted to note them before they were forgotten. I will expand on how to validate the theories and any implications later if time allows!
Tomorrow we visit Albi, a medieval town in France about an hour away. It's a walled city, and I'm excited for our "field trip". We then are seeing J. Edgar, in theatres with our group tomorrow night. Tomorrow is a fruit and vegetable day to try to regain a sense of normalcy in my diet. Tonight we had sausage, cheese, plenty of wine, and bread followed by a Christmas log cake. I am soooo full! Our host family said all the girls leave here gaining 4-5 pounds. I've literally probably gained that in this week alone! Courtney and I feel disgusting, but at least we are having a welcoming, divine dining experience with our hosts! We can't complain too much!
Stories from our adventures to Albi and the cinema to come soon!
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