France Day 16

Today I realized something that made this trip so important and life changing for me as a person. Before I say what it is, I need to tell everyone right now, especially if you are my age or younger, that if you have never had a chance to study abroad or have an exchange student or pen pal, get one right now! It is the best thing I have ever done in my entire life. It has opened so many doors and I have learned so much from it.

So my great realization of the day is that the French have one thing that is more important than anything else and it completely makes their culture what it is. Everything revolves around food. Food here is not like anything in America. The appreciation of food is just so different. The food is everything.

In France, meals aren't rushed. Everyone sits down and eats slowly and sometimes dinner can last for over an hour and maybe even longer. I absolutely love this. Usually, at my house, we eat dinner in separate rooms or in the car on the way to something. Sadly, we rarely take an hour to just sit down and eat together. In France, we eat together at least for lunch and dinner.

Food is also a very import part of everyone's social lives. While I've been here, there have been may occasions where either we have gone to someone's house, people have come here or we've gone out to a restaurant and just sat around and talked and ate and enjoyed each other's company. I feel like we don't do that anywhere near enough in America. Everything is rushed because we are trying to get to baseball practice or swimming lessons or study group. If we would just sit down and have meals together, we would be so much closer as families and our relationships would be so much stronger.

I have also learned that by completely immersing myself in another culture, people do things differently and that's ok! Not everyone does things the way it's done inside my little Woodland's, Texas bubble. I love this. I feel like I am a much more well rounded person because I have done this. I am very blessed to have gotten this opportunity. I would not be here right now if I hadn't have stepped outside my comfort zone and hosted Maxime 3 summers ago.

Again, I cannot stress enough how amazing it is to do a cultural exchange. In Europe everyone always sends their kids to other countries to do exchange programs. I think that if we did this more in America, we would have people who were much more open to different cultures and foods and people. I hate to say this, but I think American's are just too closed minded.

So, I hope you enjoyed this because I didn't really do much today. I slept until almost 2 and then we ate lunch outside on the patio. After that I updated my blog post that I didn't have time to do yesterday and then I watched a movie on my laptop. After that Marion and I planned the rest of my trip out and discussed what we will be doing for my birthday on monday. For dinner some of the Louage's old neighbors came and at with us. It was absolutely lovely. We ate and talked and dinner lasted for almost two hours. This is the way it should always be, wonderful food, nice company and just relaxing and living in the moment. This is a huge lesson for me as well.

Love you all,

Sara