GPS requirement for school: SLO 9: “The narrative should address how the student 'crossed borders' - how the cultural differences impacted the study.”

While in Paris, I definitely did accustom to a few of the cultural differences and learned the local way to do things.  One thing that I found different and had to kind of adjust to was the time that people generally eat dinner.  Typically at home most people eat between 5-7, but in Paris, they tend to eat dinner a little later.  An example that portrays this is once again, Pizza 30 (where we often went for a quick dinner if we got out of class late), was closed everyday between 1 and 6 because people don't usually eat dinner until after 6.  I guess it wasn't really hard to adjust to this because we typically didn't get out of class until 6-8 anyway, but I did find that I would start getting hungry about 5-6 seeing as that is when I typically eat dinner at home.  I feel like people are up very late in Paris, which makes it easier to understand why they eat dinner later.  When I came home it was kind of weird adjusting back to eating dinner at the same time as my family did because I had gotten used to eating a little later from being in Paris for a month.  It took me a little while to get back on my normal schedule once I returned home.  One thing that I had to try to adjust to was the metro.  Taking the metro is the absolute worst, I don't know how people do it every single day of their lives.  I guess you could say taking the metro is one "cultural difference which was hard to resolve".  People pushed, shoved, ran, fell, leaned, and basically just invaded any personal space you had.  I honestly don't understand how people can be so extremely rude to other human beings.  Don't get me wrong, there were a few kind people who offered me their seat when they saw that I had crutches, but the majority of the people were just flat out rude.  At first I was just personally offended, but towards the end of the month I started to be a little pushy back to them, but not near as pushy as they were.  Overall I learned a lot on how much cultures differ and how difficult it is to adjust and accept other cultures, but I also learned how informative and amazing it is to travel and learn how other cultures work.  Although there were some tough times and things that were hard to accustom to, I wouldn't trade this experience for anything!