Okay, so now that I am here in France and really starting to have conversations with people from here and other countries I am starting to realize there are a lot of things about America I've always just accepted and never really thought about.
•Newspaper machines: Maria (my roommate from the Canary Islands) and I were watching the Simpsons (in French) and there was a scene with a newspaper machine. Maria asked me if it was true that there were machines like that in America. I informed her that we do indeed have machines like that all over. She then asked if people could just put in however much it cost to open the door and take the rest of the papers and I told her that was easily doable if you wanted to. She then told me that this would never work in the Canary Islands because the first person to arrive would simply take all of the papers. I got the same reaction later when talking to a group of French teachers. I never thought about it before but the newspaper machines work very much on the honor system. I remember when I was younger I would always push the change return button to see if I could have any change and then I would check to see if the door would open. If it would open I would take a paper. However, I had a strong sense of morals even then and so I would close the door after having taken a paper and then try to open it again. If it opened a second time I reasoned that it was broken and I would put the paper back, if it didn't open the second time I concluded that someone had already put the money in but had not taken a paper so I justified keeping it. As flawed as that logic was, it was still an indication as to how our newspaper machine system works on honesty. Most of us in America just don't take more than the one newspaper we've paid for. The other justification occurred when Maria told me that the first person would take all the papers and my first thought was, 'why in the world would you want more than one newspaper?' In my everyday life in America I just don't have a use for a newspaper unless I plan on reading it (or I want to use it as packaging while moving but that only happens every once in a while and free old newspapers are not at all hard to come by), too many newspapers are just a nuisance.
Free coffee refills: My English teacher asked me if it was true that at diners you can have free refills on coffee. I informed him that you could get free refills on coffee at almost any restaurant I could think of in America. Free refills on coffee is an unheard of thing here in France where a thimble of black coffee costs about 3 dollars. But when I think about it, a restaurant that did not offer free refills on coffee in the United States would lose a good portion of its clientele who have grown so adapted to 'as much coffee as you can handle' with their breakfasts that they don't even think about how unheard of that is in other parts of the world.
Shopping carts: We went shopping for the first time as roommates a couple of weeks ago with the intention of buying not only groceries for ourselves but supplies for the house as well. Charlotte and Maria each went to get there own cart but when I arrived I thought you had to pay 50 Centimes (Approx. 75 cents) for a cart. Now I am used to having a cart free whenever I go shopping so you can imagine how this shocked me, 'You have to pay to use a cart here!?' But no, I had misunderstood. In truth you only had to put in the coin to release the cart and when you returned the cart you were able to retrieve your coin (it is a nifty little set-up where you use you coin to push the security chain out of the cart and then when you return the cart you use the security chain to push the coin out so the coin comes with you while shopping but is stuck in the cart until you return the cart to the lock up area). Some people even have nifty tokens they use instead of coins with the markets logo on them and everything. But here it is a need security precaution to stop the carts from disappearing. Now in America some carts have no security (and you do see a lot of carts floating around where they don't belong because they are easily taken) and some carts now have locks on the wheels that activate when you try to leave the premises. But I have to admit I was definitely flummoxed and then impressed when I first encountered the system here.
Radio/TV: Everyone here knows some America singers, bands, and TV shows. The TV they watched dubbed into French but the music they listen to English. Okay, so I knew that already but they also listen to music in German and Spanish. When Maria asked me what Spanish music groups I knew I realized for the first time that the only music I ever hear in America is in English. We don't have music come on our popular stations that is in another language and thus the only artists I know are American (or English). The same goes for the TV shows. You just don't come across a TV show that was filmed in another language and then dubbed into English, people in America are only interested in shows that were originally filmed in English. We therefore have no knowledge of what kinds of TV shows other countries enjoy whereas here everyone knows the Simpsons, Friends, Desperate Housewives, Tru Blood, etc.
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