To be welcomed in...

03 Octobre, 2008

To be welcomed in

One aspect of French culture that I find both very interesting and very different than American culture is the reality of social networks here. In the United States, many people have as many friends as they can find, with perhaps a small circle of them that are close friends. Social networks are made up of people from acquaintances to family, and value is given to those who have many friends (for a good example of this, see any facebook profile page).

Here in France, things are very different. Social networks are often very small and very close. A group of friends may consist of four to six people, and those are the people who you interact with almost anytime you do anything social. The tightness of these social groups means that sometimes it can be difficult to really become friends with someone (and building a relationship takes a lot of time here), but once you do, you’re in.

Here, we have been blessed to have been invited in by for sure one group of friends already. It was a connection made through Katie (see team picture below) when she was here a year ago on summer project. After meeting Arnaud once, and being introduced briefly to his friends, they invited us to join them for lunch the next week. We did, and there decided that we needed to go out together later that week again, and we were invited to join them for lunch any time (they eat at the same time each day). Now, for French people to be purposeful about inviting us to do things with them was fantastic and slightly surprising, as we were anticipating to be the ones initiating the social gatherings to get to know people. Let me say that it was a very welcome surprise. Pray for these guys, you can read about them in my monthly update too!

Correction

In my update, I managed two moments of dyslexia, one while writing my address, and one my phone number! Yikes. Here is the correct info:

Erik Rohde

Esplanade de l’Europe

Batiment 19 Appart. 20

Port Juvenal 2

34000 Montpellier, France

06.82.11.11.47 (cell)

(it’s fixed on the update linked above)