à la messe

I went to church this past Sunday in grand ornate cathedral dating back from the Middle Ages. As the small compact car my host mom owns pulled up in front of the cathédrale de Saint-Gatien, I was taken aback - the sheer intricacy and grandeur of the place is unbelievable.

To be sure there are very few churches in the United States that are built in a gothic style... I told my host mom, Monique, that Saint-Gatien was reminiscent of St. Patrick's in New York.

As I stood outside looking up at it in awe this French man around my dad's age walks past me and says "oooooh mignonne." I've heard that European men do express themselves in such an outward manner (or should I say creepy?) but here's to hoping he's a creepy outlier and not the norm.

During the service I encountered a bit of cultural misunderstanding. During one part of Catholic mass in America one shakes the people's hands who are by you and says "Peace be with you". In French mass you say something like "La paix de Christ" and in addition to shaking hands, "kiss the air" around the people's cheeks. I didn't know this and I felt bad for the boy in front of me who leaned in as I awkwardly paused and said nothing (because I wasn't sure what was being said - I was thinking they were saying "le corps de Christ"). I wonder what he thought about me! lol

The most interesting thing though was that my host mom told me that she doesn't go to this church like at all because most of the parishioners are the bourgeoisie. In French class professors always told us that the bourgeoisie was akin to America's middle class. However I'm confused because my host mom appears to fall within the scope of the middle class, according to American standards anyway.

She reads extensively, from what I can tell. The books that pack the shelves in her living room consist of books about Chopin's time in France and one entitled "Sexe et l'identité feminine". The poor classes in America are known to be less educated than other classes, so this also poses another question in terms of correlation between education and class in France.