differences between new zealand and france

hello everyone!

I'm just gonna add some random pics here and there so that this isn't a huge essay...

Here is the post that lots of people were waiting for - the culture differences between NZ and France, plus the differences that I've found at school. I genuinely apologise for this being soo late, I know I said multiple times "its coming in the next post", but it's taken me so long to make a list of all the things, plus new things get added to it everyday. So it's really a work in progress. If there are any more things I spot that are different between France and New Zealand I'll make another post about it. I found it sooo tricky trying to figure out how to structure and format this post, and even where to begin. But yeah anyway, let's go..

DIFFERENCES IN SCHOOLING

This part is going to focus on the differences between school and education between France and New Zealand. Mainly I have found there to be an extremely large difference coming from high school in New Zealand and going to school here. I am guessing that this is probably because I went from private school in NZ to public. I initially found a massive shock and still from day to day sometimes struggle with the differences. Obviously, now I am becoming quite accustomed to school here and all the differences are becoming normal to me. I think when I go back to New Zealand I might even have a reverse culture shock..if that's possible?

What I will do is outline a normal school day in New Zealand and afterwards outline a normal school day here in France so you can read the differences for yourselves. After this I'll also add some general points about things that are different here compared to in New Zealand.

Firstly, in New Zealand, my school hours were from 8:30am to 3:30pm. From Monday to Friday, with the exception of Wednesdays when we finished at 2:30pm. I chose 6 subjects  in year 13. These were English with Shakespeare, French, Calculus, Physics, Chemistry, and Philosophy. I later dropped Philosophy in the middle of the year. As you can tell, my subjects were quite a mix between the arts and the sciences. We would have one 20 minute break after our first 2 classes (usually at 10:30am) where we would eat morning tea (snacks) and then have a lunch break around 12:30pm although this varies slightly from day to day. Lunch would go for almost an hour then we would continue with classes. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, we would have chapel/assembly in the school church. Chapels and assemblies lasted from 15-30 minutes. Chapel was held after morning tea on a Wednesday while assemblies were held Monday and Friday after lunch. 

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays we would have 5 periods and on Tuesday and Thursday, we had 6 periods. Everyone considered Tuesday's and Thursday's the worst because of the extra period. A lot of people did extracurricular activities outside of school, including music or sport. At lunchtimes, we had a canteen which would sell individual items such as a hot food menu with 2 or 3 options, packaged food such as nuts, muffins, chips, ice creams and bottled water. You would pay for each individual item and it would be charged to your account - you get billed this amount later. Depending on the person, some people would mainly eat at the canteen or others would bring a packed lunch of whatever they felt like bringing. In New Zealand, we also wear a uniform which is compulsory. A lot of schools have a uniform.

By contrast, in France, the school day varies from day to day. I'll attach a copy of my timetable below. While you can choose your subjects in New Zealand, in France they only have a few options which are general - meaning you cannot choose exactly what you want to do. You sort of have to choose a general direction to specialise in. So I'm in the French equivalent of year 12 (which is called première) and there are 5 options for students at my high school: S for Scientific, ES for economics and social sciences and L for literature. There is also STMG which is Management Sciences and Technologies, and lastly STI2D which is Industrial Science and Technologies and Sustainable development. I'm not particularly sure what the last two involve, but I do know that literature is when you take like 6 languages and sciences is when you take Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Maths, English, Spanish, French, History, Civil and Moral Education, P.E, and a class which is personalised support. 

Thursday's and Friday's are the hardest, I mean look - I start at 8:10am and finish at 5:35pm.

Keep in mind that because I don't do Spanish, I have a slightly easier timetable than others. Also, do you see that I have classes on a SATURDAY???? I don't know about you but only having a 1 day weekend is the most tragic thing 😓 I suppose having no classes on Wednesday sort of makes up for it, but I'd way rather have classes on Wednesday and then get to have Saturday's off.

Anyway, in France it's really difficult to adjust to the long school days, and in addition it's even trickier that there is no morning tea break! I mean, there is a 10 minute break between some classes, but nobody eats and it's more a break where you walk to your next class and wait for the teacher to get there. At lunch time, the meal is huge, and you eat either at home or at the canteen. If you eat at the canteen, you have a special card (like a bus card in New Zealand), that you have to swipe before a certain time each day otherwise you won't be able to eat at the canteen. The majority of people eat at the canteen because it's more convenient than going home. The lunch break is 1 hour and 25 minutes each day - between 12:10pm and 1:35pm. Also, in France nobody brings lunch to school - as I said you either go home or eat at the canteen, but lunchboxes aren't a thing.

Also, at school, there is no uniform! Which means mufti every day, which I'm not the biggest fan of. If I'm being honest, I actually kinda miss the blanket-looking kilt and the blazer, and also the summer skirts. I think maybe it would've been a better idea to bring my uniform here so that I wouldn't have to decide what to wear each day..

Other differences with school:

The lack of technology is crazy compared to my school in New Zealand. Nobody brings laptops to school (BYOD isn't a thing), and cellphones are a big no no in class. At home we used cellphones in class reasonably often even with the teachers knowledge and it was pretty chill, but here it's like super super bad to use your phone in class. In France when marking absenses they have a special book with slips. In it the teacher will write down the names of the people who aren't in class, and then there is an admin person who goes around every single class and collects the slip of paper. At my old school the teacher would mark the roll online on the computer.

Getting into school in France was such a weird change for me! I would say that I prepped myself actually quite well before I came by reading lots of other exchange students' blogs, which means I already had an idea of what would be different and would know what to expect. This was one thing I was completely surprised about though!! To get into school, you have a special ID card with a photo of you, your name and your class. This card has a chip in it, and you have to swipe it and then go through a turnstile gate before you're actually in school. Once you're through the turnstile gate, there is another gate which is only opened at certain times during the day (so imagine classes start at 2:30pm, it's probably going to be open between 2:20pm and 2:40pm), and if you arrive after that you'll have to wait till the next class for them to open it again. Does that make sense? In NZ you could just walk through the gates whenever you wanted and basically anyone could get in. Here's a pic below of the turnstile gates

Also, here in France I haven't had a single class that has had a powerpoint presentation! At home it was more common than not to take notes from a powerpoint. Instead of using a powerpoint or writing notes on the board or handing out a sheet with notes on it, the teacher will do a dictation. This is the difference I hate the most. In France, 9 times out of 10 the teacher will read out what you will write as your notes. This has been sooo hard to me because they usually read it out initially and then repeat it once, and then move on. Or sometimes they won't even repeat after saying it once, and then if you didn't get it then you've missed out on a whole sentence of notes. And it usually goes that they'll dictate a page or more of notes for you to write. Soooo tricky. In addition, there are heaps of classes that use blackboards here in France, there are also some whiteboards. At home there were never blackboards and always whiteboards.

It is a typical mannerism for people to be talking during class. At school, there will always be some people talking even while the teacher is talking. This is more in some classes and less than others and I suppose has a wee bit to do with the respect for a teacher. There will always be noise, (EXCEPT when the teacher is doing a dictation) and people will have conversations and the teacher will just continue talking. At home it was pretty disrespectful to talk while the teacher was talking and they would call out the student who was talking. Here, it's kinda just the norm I suppose, and the teacher just keeps talking.

They are very strict here in school when it comes to being late to a class. The teacher will not let it slide and you'll have to get a late slip even if you're 2-3 minutes late to class. At home the teachers would usually let it slide if you were late, but here they're a bit less forgiving. Also, at the end of a class, nobody ever says thank you, and sometimes students don't say hi or bye at the beginning or end of a class either. This was so weird to me, because I'm so used to talking to teachers like they're a friend of mine and everyone always said thank you after classes at home.

If a teacher isn't at school and is absent, there is no relief or substitute teacher and it's just a free period.

Along with the tough dictations, another thing I don't like are the workbooks here. It sounds a bit silly, but workbooks in France have SO many lines. Literally can't exaggerate this enough!!! Why are there so many lines???? Here's a picture..

What really sucks is that they don't have lockers here in France!! So you have to carry your backpack with all your textbooks in it :(

If you're still reading by now I'll be stoked, here's the last difference that I've found to do with school. Their school years (e.g. year 13), unlike NZ, go in reverse order! So your final year of school is called terminale, your second to last première and year 11 is seconde. Also, as far as primary, intermediate and high school goes, their way is also pretty different to New Zealand! High school is only 3 years and begins in the French equivalent of year 11, when you are 15. Their 'middle school' is for students between the ages of 11 and 15, and before that it's primary school. Also, although it's not compulsory, a lot of parents send their children to school from age 3! Can you believe it! After 15 whole years of French education I think I would need to take multiple gap years, I honestly don't know how they do it!
So their school years in comparison to New Zealand are as follows:

• Year 13 = terminale
• Year 12 = première
• Year 11 = seconde
• Year 10 = troisième
• Year 9 = quatrième
• Year 8 = cinquième
• Year 7 = sixième
• and before that it's a bunch of weird terms, click here if you really want to see it all in depth.

LANGUAGE DIFFERENCES

For a lot of people who are learning French or already know a fair bit, some of this is going to be super obvious. But I guess this is more for people who only really speak English? Most of these I knew before I came here anyway.

In France they call a colon: "two dots" in literal translation, and a semi-colon is "dot comma" if you translate it literally.

Instead of having dots to seperate a number from it's decimal (e.g. 10.68kg) they use a comma, so it would be 10,68kg.

They have two different words for "you". One is if you're talking to someone you know well, and the other is either used to talk to multiple people, or in formal use.

When someone says something like 'do you not know', instead of having to reply 'actually yeah I do' you'll respond with a one word answer which essentially means 'actually yes i do' but its just 1 word and it means yes but is used specifically for this context.

The written form and spoken form of French is sooo different. Like it's almost two completely different languages. The written form of French is very proper, and the spoken form is very colloquial, they shorten a lot of words and emit a lot grammatical stuff that would be included in the written form.

I'm quite accustomed to this (people who only speak English will be like ??) but every noun is either masculine or feminine, so you have to learn if "le" or "la" comes before it and its always a pain because I get it wrong and it deadset makes me look like such a rookie.

The French hardly ever use capital letters for anything. Be it a weekday, a month, a country - none of this is capitalised in French. Not even "French" would be capitalised.

CULTURE DIFFERENCES

Instead of a hug or a handshake, the French give a kiss on each cheek when greeting each other. Depending on the region, some areas give 1 kiss, some 2, some 3 and even some 4. These are called 'bisous', and I am still finding it weird kissing people all the time!

This is quite specific, but I found that at McDonalds the whole drink isn't filled with ice. Either theres none at all, or theres like 3 little blocks of ice, it's so good!!!

At restaurants with burgers or pizzas, they usually eat it with a knife and fork 😢 at home though we just eat pizza with our hands. But the one thing which is acceptable to eat with your hands is bread - especially baguette. And usually they'll just chuck the baguette on the table without a plate or anything underneath it, and we'll break pieces off with our hands. I find it kinda weird how they'll just put the bread on a table, I mean, what if it's dirty?!

They have square pillows for your bed, not like cushions but actual pillows!! I haven't seen a rectangular pillow here yet.

They drive on the other side of the road, and their style of driving is really different too. It's pretty aggressive, a few weeks ago someone beeped at me because I was walking on the side of the road???? I was like, well sorry for living, mate.

Some highways have a speed limit of 130 - the most common I've seen is 110, and all highways are toll roads and you go through a huge toll booth. In New Zealand, at least in the South Island, none of the highways are toll roads. This is what it looks like when you're approaching the toll booths.

Also to do with roads, they don't have a set of traffic lights directly across the street at intersections. So if you're pulled up right to the front of the queue, you have no lights directly in front of you and instead you have to look to the traffic lights directly to your right or left, and on the side there's a mini traffic light angled for the cars right at the front. I hope that made sense, but here's a picture to show what I mean.

See the wee red traffic light angled to the side??

Completely different topic, but they have pink toilet paper!!! But it's not a hot pink, it's more like a soft baby pink colour.

All the supermarkets have electronic screens which display the price on it. This is kinda funny because they're behind with technology in school but they're with the times in supermarkets 😂

On a typical suburbian street, they always park on the curbs, and on the footpaths (because the streets are really narrow and there's usually not enough space to just park on the side). So I guess mounting the curb on a parallel park is a normal thing over here...watch out dad we might need to take the car for a wheel alignment a couple months after I get back because I'll probably pick up on this habit even if I'm not driving over here 😬

There are strikes all the time. The other day at school, the canteen wasn't open because the workers were on strike. With the national transport system, they have strikes really regularly. It almost seems like they go on strike more than they actually work. Like, I'm not even kidding. This is the strike calendar for the transport system for the next couple of months. The blue days are when they're going on strike..

Also, I had the impression that French people don't work a lot. The truth is actually opposite, and it's not uncommon for full time workers to work over 40 hours a week. Sometimes 45-50 is like the average. 

In France, it has been so cool to see all the different nationalities!! It's very multicultural here - there are lots of different races, religions and people. I feel like in New Zealand it's mainly just white people, and that we aren't very multicultural. 

While people may think French people are very classy eating pizza with their knifes and forks, what you probably didn't expect is for people to spit everywhere.. Ok, not like, everywhere everywhere, but like on the ground everywhere. Like I don't know if this is a thing, but if you spat on the ground in New Zealand it would be considered really rude and dirty. Obviously I don't part-take in this activity, but lots of people do.

This isn't a difference, but the most surprising to me, aside from the turnstile gates to enter school, is that their stop signs are also in English and look exactly the same as the ones in New Zealand!! I guess it must be like a universal traffic thing?! 

A huge difference has been meal times and meals in general. In France, lunch is more likely than not the biggest meal of the day. At the canteen, we have an entree, hot meal, yoghurt, a fruit such as a banana, apple or orange OR a dessert (if there is), which could be something like a wee apple pie or a muffin, and then bread! Also, if you have like an afternoon-tea meal when you get home from school or in the weekend around 4pm. This meal has a special name "goûter", which basically means snack. Also during the day you're not meant to snack and all the advertisements on TV to do with food advise you not to snack between meals to avoid weight gain...hahaha. So breakfast is just depending on when you wake up, lunch is anywhere between 12:30pm to 2pm, and dinner is usually anywhere between 8pm-9pm. We always eat desserts with lunch and dinner here in France.

Keeping with the theme of food, when they eat yoghurt, the French have unsweetened plain yoghurt and then manually add caster sugar to it. This is so weird! I wonder if sweetened yoghurt exists here...

Part time jobs during school isn't a thing. I guess this is probably due to the loooong days, which means there isn't much spare time for a part-time or casual job, so it's basically unheard of that anyone going to school has a job at the same time. It was really weird to my host siblings that I had a job before I came here, which was super funny to me because at around 16, when you're allowed to start working, soo many people start working part time at a supermarket or a retail shop to get some cash.

Smoking is really common in France, even in school. Believe it or not, there is actually a fully designated area for smokers at school, which is just as you walk through the turnstiles. It's not rare to see 16 and even 15 year olds light a cigarette, and also lots of people vape here.

So that's all I've really got for differences between and New Zealand and France..I hope this post lived up to expectations!! Also sorry for being so missing on my blog these past couple of weeks. I'll hopefully be back with the weekly updates very very soon. Can you believe my time here is passing so quickly? It's been two months since I've been here, and they've gone so quick! This last month I bet will fly by and before I know it, I'll be travelling...

See you in the next post,

Mich xx