my country tis of thee

When I was eating lunch with a group of French people the other day I couldn't stop thinking about how different every little thing is. We were just having a spontaneous lunch, but someone had brought nice china and there were four courses. And every time someone heard I was living abroad for a year they said it sounded stupid, they didn't try and couch it in anything or lie to make me feel better.

I think it's funny that thousands of people who like being blunt and having really formal "informal" lunches all happen to live in the same place. It's like one guy named Francis loved long, fancy dinners and hated telling white lies, and he started his own country for people who felt the same way.

I know that isn't how it really happened. But if I could start my own country, here are some of the customs we would have:

The main food group in my culture is candy.

It's normal to hang out with your family all the time, and only your family.

When you fall on the ground everyone laughs to show it's ok and not embarrassing.

Mailmen have the celebrity status that actors have in America.

No one says "How's it going?" unless they really, really want to know.

If people have any free time in their day, even just 15 minutes, they go to the zoo.

We would obviously have a really sweet flag and our traditional meal would be a ham sandwich with cream cheese and barbeque sauce and when you ate one no one would say "That's disgusting Brooke, what's wrong with you?" Instead it they would be really excited and brag "Oh, this is a really traditional meal in this culture, how fun!"