The Coconut and the Peach

Before we moved to France in 2005, Michelin provided us, along with the other soon to be expat couples, with a "cultural training" day. The title of this seminar was "Thriving in France", and this training was supposed to prepare us for cross-cultural living and the cultural differences that we would encounter in France. I was nine months pregnant with SA at the time and it was a whirlwind of a day, so I am sure that I forgot lots of things that would have been helpful, but I was pretty interested in this training that was specific to helping Americans prepare to live in France as I was in the middle of finishing my master's degree in Intercultural Studies at the time. I remember comparing American and French expressions and often quoted quotes which indicated values commonly held in each culture. I also remember one of our French instructors telling me about Picard where I could get "good surgeles" (already prepared frozen food). I am not sure if she knew the shock and exhaustion that I would experience when faced with the necessity of cooking more than I ever had in my entire life with no boxes or cans but entirely from scratch, but I was glad to know about stores like Picard while I was in France.

The thing that stuck with me from this class the most though was an analogy that was used to describe relationship building in each culture. Our instructors compared building relationships within the French culture to a coconut and building relationships in American culture (especially the South) to a peach. A coconut has a hard shell but once you "get in" it is full of sweet milk and fruit. (Is coconut a fruit?) Our instructors emphasized that it takes time to develop relationships in the French culture and advised us on tips like the gift giving that is important when you are invited into a French home and that being invited to someone's home is a really big deal. Once you have been invited you are "in" so to speak at least in terms of the coconut. During our time in France we enjoyed spending hours around the table of our home or the homes of our friends and enjoying meals together. It was often around the table that great discussions happened and relationships were built. Now we are back in peach country so to speak- where it is easy to get in but hard to go deep. It seems that Americans have many relationships on a superficial level so that even when you spend time together in each other's homes you can remain at the surface level longer- especially in the South where everyone is just nice. You can have polite conversations for hours and never really get past that hard peach pit. It seems frustrating to me right now, but I know that it all just takes time. I wonder how many meals we will share together before we are relationally at the point of sharing the first meal together in France? It is so strange to be back in my own country and have to adjust to my own culture all over again.