TOO FRENCH???

My first weeks in France, I had this reoccurring (and curious) thought: that

Une boulangerie. In Paris, you can find one of these babies about every 10 feet.

somehow all the Parisians I saw in my daily comings and goings were TOO French. French to the point that they must have been acting. The more I observed, the more I was convinced that all these cigarette smoking, baguette buying, and small-dog toting people existed only to reinforce all the stereotypes that exist about French people. It had to be a farce! Un petit spectacle du théatre! And I am here to tell you that it is anything but. It’s life à la française! In Paris, daily living is art. Everything from self-presentation to meal preparation is a delicate process which requires much time and attention to details.  And the thing about the French is that they don’t apologize for their Frenchness, which is interesting to me, an American in Paris, who, for better or worse, is constantly apologizing for the supposed shortcomings or “unculturedness” of her home country. Having been here a little over a month, I’ve since decided to “laisse tomber” the apologies and instead take full advantage of my current (if unofficial) position as American ambassador to France and soak up as much Frenchness as possible,  and if in doing so, I happen to leave a little USA behind, so be it.