The winds are stronger, the days are longer, the nights are wronger. Winter is here, and with it come deadlines for study abroad programs. As an English student of French history in the U.S. with an American wife and Polish legs, I'm no longer sure which is Abroad, let alone where I left Study. Allow me, however, to share some of my hard-earned, slightly soiled transatlantic wisdom with you as you consider your international options.
1. Americans don't "get" cricket. Not the rules, I mean. I have a friend from Pennsylvania who follows cricket more closely than I do. His imaginary cricket team beat mine online, and it stung.
This, in fact, is the problem. My friend thinks cricket is a sport. To him, it's something to compare with baseball, where men with first names that are actually surnames enhance their bodies with steroids so as to spit brown substances further. Cricket, on the other hand, is really more of a tradition. The most important standing in a cricket league relates not to matches won and points scored, but to the quality of lunches and teas supplied at a team's home pavilion. It doesn't matter that your team is an all-conquering behemoth if all you can offer visiting teams is a packet of store-brand crisps and a warm can of Fanta. Form is temporary. Little triangular sandwiches, cakes and tea from the pot are permanent. This is why all my cricket shirts are covered in stains.
2. The social norms of British and American education are hopelessly out of sync. At my state secondary school in England, the most exciting days of the year were the ones on which we didn't have to wear school uniforms. These were usually the last day of each term (always a half-day, thus reducing the amount of time we could spend insulting one another's trousers) and the imaginatively-titled Non-Uniform Day. Sports games brought no fanfare, generally taking place after school in front of a crowd of one slightly creepy old man with a worn-out Labrador. School discos were so anesthetized by teachers, cheap fizzy beverages and mind-twistingly awful novelty pop hits, that generally they were less exciting than a normal school day.
In this climate, concepts like "Homecoming," "Prom" and "seeing daylight after the end of the school day" take on an otherworldly quality. To my schoolmates and me, the idea that school events were supposed to be "magical," to be looked back on as some of the most wonderful times of our lives, or even to be remembered at all, would have been considered a lingering side-effect of hitting one's head while slipping over in the ever-present mud that surrounded the entrances to the Portakabins that functioned as classrooms. And this was a good school. So when I moved to America and found out that proms were a real thing, complete with silly dresses, portraits and hired limousines, instantly I surmised that a small gulf existed between my newfound friends and me. Thankfully, I know where to get my hands on a good supply of mud.
3. Anglophones — especially the ones who seldom go east across the Atlantic — have some ridiculous impressions of French fashion. Google that phrase (or just shout it out your window) and someone will knock on your door and start telling you about Coco Chanel and Yves Saint-Laurent. That person almost certainly will be a thirty-something American woman who has moved to Paris after breaking up with her publisher boyfriend and who now writes a blog about being a thirty-something American woman who has moved to Paris after breaking up with her publisher boyfriend. This woman will use words such as "classic," "elegant," "sexy" and "the." She will drop in expressions like "chic" and "je ne sais quoi."
What this lady will miss completely is the fact that most French people dress like German ferry-boat crewmembers. There are, of course, large numbers of elegantly dressed young women across France who shimmer past one in the street in a fabulous cloud of cashmere, perfume and self-regard. The main reason that these creatures look so maddeningly wonderful is that they do most of their sashaying down streets populated by people in flowery acrylic cardigans and Doc Martens. They sweep past cafes full of men in shiny nylon shirts and weirdly tapered jeans. They strut past bus stops of children with oversized leather jackets and rat-tails.
In many ways, small-town France is less Manhattan than Missouri: People unironically wear clothing with American flags and nonsensical slogans like "COOL U.S.A. #27." They wear basketball shoes. They wear Nirvana t-shirts. Long-sleeved Nirvana t-shirts.
There are, then, certain cultural and ideational gaps between these great nations that seem set to endure. They need not be concrete barriers to mutual understanding, admiration or even a quick fumble under the table in a hotel bar, but they are differences to which we must all be sensitive, like a thirty-something American woman blogging about not fitting into a dress in a Parisian boutique. With them in mind, go forth, dear readers — just stay out of the mud.
Stephen Wicken GS, a fifth-year doctoral candidate in the Department of History, splits his time making fun of people's trousers in the U.S., U.K. and France. He can be reached at stephen_wicken@brown.edu.
