French Essay, Research Paper

From a young age, the French are taught to adhere to a certain schedule which helps them learn to be more independent people as they grow older and become adults. Typical work hours for the French are from around nine in the morning until about six in the evening. Interestingly lunch is an important meal for them and they set aside around two hours in the afternoon for this meal. As a result of working late, dinner is usually served around seven. Dinner is the biggest meal of the day, which may consist of many courses that span over three hours.

On the other hand Americans treat the average workday just a little differently. To start off, we usually get to work early, maybe around seven or eight. For some of us the motto is go to work early, and get out early . So as a result our lunches are usually a half hour to an hour. We unfortunately don t really enjoy our lunch as the French do since most of the time we continue working while eating.

In America we like to keep our belongings in storage places. Of course most of these things in storage we could do without. Well with the French people space or storage area is limited. Their living areas are much smaller than ours so evidently they share. Strangely enough due to the limited space, even in hotels, people staying in different rooms might possibly be sharing the bathroom together. Us, the Americans would have a bathroom in every room if we could. With regards to space, we like to take up as much as possible, sometimes to the point where we might be rude towards others.

For instance riding on a French subway would be a different experience than riding the subway in New York. The French people tightly squeeze into their seats allowing room for other passengers. This would never happen here, we usually stretch out and take up a three seater on the train for ourselves. The French in most situations are much more polite towards each other. They would rather talk to each other in person than to chat on the telephone. When they do sit down face to face and talk, the subject of their discussion is usually one that challenges the mind. On the other hand we Americans we could spend the whole conversation talking about ourselves.