Cultural...Similarities?

Until this week, I have never felt so fulfilled by eating cheese.

For awhile, when people asked me what I wanted from the US, I said 'peanut butter' because, while not impossible to find here, it can be difficult and it is invariably more expensive than at home, and often all you can find are jars of Skippy (filled with hydrogenated oils) or cans--cans--of the stuff. Peanut butter in a can must be undead. Or similarly horrible.

Peanut butter is one of the classic American foods here.

But recently I discovered that there is a food I love (I didn't even know this until I was absent from it) that one simply cannot find in Paris, save peut-être at British or American specialty stores. This godly nectar is known in English-speaking countries as "cheddar", and lately, I cannot get enough of it. I recently brought back from London an extra extra strong (No. 7) variant that was quite good...

I've watched Virginia crave and get a lot of satisfaction out of buying and devouring slabs of the strange soft or goopy, slightly malodorous cheeses that one finds here, and intellectually, I've understood that she grew up eating it, she likes it a lot, and sometimes she just wants it. (I've heard other people describe cheese as a 'bonheur'.) But now I think I have a real, experiential appreciation for the French love of cheese.

Good God, does it hit the spot!

Differences

The thing about cultural differences, at least between France and the US, is that they are often rather subtle. Things like how formally you dress for work, how late you eat dinner, what you do with the bread that you have with dinner. Or, for instance, how you converse or argue. One that I discovered recently has to do with toilet etiquette.

See, I was taught throughout my childhood that it's polite to knock on the (closed) door of a bathroom or stall before you enter, in case someone is inside. Sure, occupants should lock the door, but sometimes people forget, so you knock. And, to my best knowledge, I think that's the general rule in the US. There are occasional times when it doesn't happen, but usually...

Anyway, totally not the case here. After noticing a certain pattern at work, and hearing about one of a colleague's several reasons for not using the teachers' bathroom much anymore, I asked Virginia about it. Seems that the logic in France is that the door to the bathroom should be closed and locked if you're in it, so there's no need for anyone to knock. They just yank on the door.

I'm sitting on the toilet at work and I hear someone enter the room. I listen to the person's footsteps approach the small room with the toilet. I expect a polite rap on the door. Instead, there is a boom as the door is nearly yanked off it's hinges (or so it seems to me) in the process of being tested, and then the retreating footsteps of the culprit, followed by silence as I wonder why no one bothers to ask. I'm nice. I'd respond, honest.