Interpersonal relationships Paris (RLN)

• Individual versus group: Though individuality is still important in France it seems that there is a heavier importance placed on the welfare of the group in France than in the U.S. This can easily be seen through France's politics which provides many more workers rights, welfare programs and generally higher investment in public projects than the U.S. You can also see this with immigrants in France. Many French do not want the kind of pluralistic society that their is in the U.S., a mosaic or a melting pot, rather, they prefer for everyone to assimilate completely into their culture and values and sometimes are blind to the fact that simply having a different religion or color of skin does not make someone different in their beliefs or customs. 
• Gender and sexuality: France is a very open culture towards the concept of sexuality. There is little to no stigma placed on people of different sexualities and certainly none placed on those who have conservative or liberal sexual lives as one can easily see with the fact that several of their presidents have had two families at a time or several romantic partners at a time and this doesn't seem to affect their ratings. However, for women it is a different issue in France. Though there are many laws and traditions that mean to make them equal and respect them the reality is a bit different. In the work place women have been treated badly with sexual harassment extremely common up until at least relatively recently when there was a crack down on such occurrences. However, it still seems to be the norm on the streets in Paris though I cannot personally say if it is higher or lower than in some U.S. cities. Women are also poorly represented in the government and work force and the wage gap is generally higher than in most European countries and the U.S.

• Advice: For me it was rather easy being originally from Spain the culture is not tremendously different in many ways. However, for American students, particularly those who have not traveled outside of the country for extended amounts of time before, I would advise them in the way that most study abroad students are advised. Keep your minds open, try to practice the language as much as possible which will therefore allow you to experience more of the country once your proficiency improves, it may be hard to make friends with locals, which it certainly is in Paris at least if you're a guy, but don't let that dissuade you from continuing to attempt to make local contacts and certainly continue to speak to your fellow students in the local language. Other than that, I can only tell them that they should not stay locked in their rooms all of the time watching netflix and that they should try and get out and see as much of the area as possible even if the workload puts strict limits on that.