Expat Stories: Silly Tales from Two Americans in France

Let’s face it: France and the United States are two very different countries. No matter how well we speak French, how much research we do, or how comfortable we are living in France, we are still two expats who sometimes do silly things. Enjoy these funny tales of our adventures in France!

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Jalen’s Taco Trouble

Maria is a pescatarian, but I regularly eat meat. That means that when it comes to buying meats at the grocery store, I’m pretty much on my own to decipher the viande section. Maria and I had planned to eat tacos one evening, and I set out to find some ground beef at our regular grocery spot. Not paying much attention, I picked up a pack of chair à saucisse, or sausage meat, thinking it looked pretty similar to ground beef and would do the job. I was so wrong! The chewy texture, extreme saltiness, and odd coloring really put me off, especially when I was hoping for it to taste something like ground beef. Turns out, I couldn’t have been farther off in my choice of meat – chair à saucisse is generally used for stuffed tomatoes or pasta dishes. After giving it my best shot, and almost failing to keep my dinner down, I decided that chair à saucisse was off my list for good. Yuck!

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Maria’s First Bus Ride

I worked at two schools during my year as a teaching assistant. One school was within walking distance of our apartment, and one was a 25-minute bus ride away. You can imagine, as an American who grew up in the suburbs, that I had absolutely no idea how Troyes’ bus system worked. After buying a bus pass, figuring out which bus I needed to take, and mapping out which stops would get me to school and back, I thought I had it all figured out. As I was waiting for the bus, I realized that I had no idea how to present my bus pass. Is it like a paper ticket? Do I show it to the bus driver? Do I swipe it or insert it somewhere? I thought, “No problem, I’ll just ask.” When I got on the bus and posed my question, however, I was met with silence, inquisitive stares, laughter, and a few eye rolls. A fellow bus rider plucked my pass from my hand, hovered it on an unmarked box until it beeped, and handed it back to me slowly with raised eyebrows. I’m not sure exactly what they were all thinking, but I must have seemed really foolish for asking about something that was so obvious to them. I was embarrassed at first, but remembering the shock and confusion on everyone’s faces gives me a good laugh now.

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Jalen’s Shower Situation

When Maria and I first arrived in France in 2019, we were staying in an Airbnb while we waited for the Teaching Assistant Program in France (TAPIF) orientation to begin. As one does, I decided to take a shower to freshen up a bit before going out for the day. I grabbed a towel and headed to the bathroom. The stand-alone shower had two heads – a small one pointing down into the shower stall, and a large one swung to the side, completely out of the shower and pointing down over the toilet and the bathroom floor. Assuming the large shower head was out of use or dysfunctional, I didn’t pay attention to it. I hopped in the shower, turned it on, and waited for the water to make its way through the pipes and out of the shower head. To my horror, I saw water pouring out of the large shower head, all over the toilet, and soaking the bathroom floor! After fumbling with the valve, I was finally able to turn the water off. I ran to enlist Maria to help me clean up the mini flood I had created and to figure out how to turn on the correct shower head. After wiping down the bathroom as much as possible, and figuring out how to direct water to the right head, I finally got to take my shower. The bathroom was a bit damp for the rest of our stay.

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We hope you enjoyed reading some of our wackier stories from life in France as Americans. If you have any funny stories from when you were abroad, let us know in a comment!

Learn more about our life in France here!

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