Grocery Shopping

"Homesickness frequently occurs when one travels and may be exacerbated by unfamiliar environments or foreign cultural contexts." - Wikipedia

When I was preparing for this exchange, the International office and the presenters warned us that homesickness might occur due to small triggers such as their favourite sandwich at McDonald's not being offered after a particularly stressful day trying to communicate in a foreign language.

I haven't ever been extremly prone to homesickness, but I wanted to talk about some of the cultural contexts that I am experiencing and the slight variations that remind me that I'm not at home.

I always get a jolt when I read a sign that starts with a word common to both English and French, and then the rest of the words are clearly French. My brain obviously hasn't switched to thinking in French, yet.

The cultural contexts, I think, that have the biggest impact are the ones based on necessity. It is necessary for me to sleep at night, but in France, square pillows are more common than rectangular pillows. It is necessary for me to go to the toilet, but the toilet paper here is often colours other than white, and public toilets often cost money to enter. If you smile at someone in the street, they might think you're giving them the go ahead to check you out and respond using inuendo. And none of this stuff may be specific to France, but the reason it reminds me that I am not at home, is because it is different from what I experience at home.

Obviously, eating is essential. I couldn't really relax here until I'd been grocery shopping. But grocery shopping in itself is a completely different experience to what I am used to. The "Simply Market" down the street still has self-check out and cashiers, just like in Canada. It still has aisles and shelves and prices listed on the shelves. It still has labels saying what can be found in the aisles. It has a section for beauty products. There is nothing outrageously different between Canadian grocery stores and French grocery stores on the surface. Just as they said at my Pre-Departure Workshop, it may just be the little things that add up. Grocery shopping in France feels completely different.

You start by picking up a basket. There are no real carts; the carts are just baskets placed into a  frame with wheels. You come first to the produce section, which only features food that is in season. A vast majority of the information cards list France as the country where the produce was grown. What a novelty!

The next aisle is the cheese produce section. Seriously. Half of an aisle just for cheese. And none of it is cheddar. I'm not used to old cheeses. Gouda sounds exotic. Above the cheese there are recommendations for wine pairings. I am already so lost. I grab Emmental because I recognize the name from something I've eaten before... Kraft Shredded Cheese Blend.

There is nothing here that I am used to buying and everything that is familiar is packaged differently or served differently.

• Wine and beer are sold right in the grocery store.
• The price on the item is the price you will pay. (I really don't mind this one at all).
• You have to bag your own groceries, and they will start serving another customer before you've even got yours sorted out.
• You can't see the price on the monitor and have to listen carefully when they say it to you and then look at you expectantly. I am terrible at numbers.
• There are only ever a few ingredients and most of the products say that, just like always, there are no added preservatives.
• The produce section is completely packed and in the rest of the store, there's barely anyone.
• They don't sell salty crackers.

My first few experiences at the grocery store have been a little overwhelming. It's like starting at a new grocery store and realizing that you don't know where any of the aisles are located, with the added problem of them having all different products and companies and that you can't flip the product to the English label on the other side if you're confused.

I'm sure after a few more trips it will all make sense, but for now, that place is like another dimension. Homesickness may be just contextual discomfort -- in the classroom, it's what we like to call learning through immersion. I need to overcome my North American food prejudice. The way they treat food here is just different, and I think it might be a positive change.