Of course, since coming to France, I notice all the little differences between life here and life in the U.S. I thought it would be fun to go through the house making photos of a few of those little differences:
It took me a couple of weeks of naturally reaching for the “C” faucet thinking that “Cold” water would come out before I finally learned. Nope! “C” is for “Chaude” and “F” for “Froide.”
Shopping for your average, daily life products wasn’t always easy, but eventually I learned things like “bio” means “organic” or “après shampooing” (after shampooing) is “hair conditioner.” Géraud has had to go into the pharmacy with me multiple times (even ibprophen and cough drops have to be bought from the pharmacy, they are not carried in grocery stores) to help me find various feminine and prenatal products that I could normally find on my own in the U.S. He’s always a good sport about it.
Pictured above are dishwashing soap (savon de vaisselle) and toothpaste (pâte dentifrice). The reference of “pâte” for “paste” in toothpaste is interesting to me because it is also the word for dough or pasta.
You often see toilets that flush with a button. If you look closely the button gives you the option of light or heavy flush…pretty fancy huh? Light switches and plug-ins are different too (hence the need for an adapter when I use my computer).
For my first visit with our midwife, she asked my height and weight measurements. I opened my mouth to answer this oh-so-standard question when I realized that I had no idea. The midwife looked at me like I was from Mars until I got the chance to remind her that we use pounds and feet/inches in the U.S. rather than kilos and centimeters/meters.
Even google knows I’m in France! (How do they do that?)
