Baby steps

One of my favorite comedies is the 1991 movie called "What About Bob." Bill Murray starred as Bob, a psych patient suffering from crippling panic attacks. His psychiatrist, played by Richard Dreyfuss, helped him cope with everyday life by challenging him to break down mundane tasks into "baby steps." Bob's anxiety was so severe that he had to break even the simplest routines into these tiny steps: "Baby step down the hall....baby step turn the doorknob....baby step walk out the door....baby step onto the sidewalk."

In France, I feel a lot like Bob. As a foreign newcomer, I'm in that awkward stage of having to learn where things are and how things operate, all in another language! Plus, France is famous for having a lot of bureaucratic red tape, even for natives. It's inevitable that the one piece of paper we don't have with us is the very one that's needed. This has happened with setting up banking, insurance, and utilities. Every time it's been a different document, but in all three cases it's meant that we have had to make multiple trips for the same task. Baby steps indeed!

Three pieces of advice I've received have helped me be patient in learning the "baby steps." First, someone wisely told me that if I could accomplish ONE task a day in the first few weeks, that equals success! So on many days I actually feel like an overachiever! The second nugget of wisdom came from some cross-cultural training we received a few months ago: Just because something is different doesn't make it "right" or "wrong." It's just different. That has become my mantra whenever I get frustrated. The last pearl came from my friend Terri. She likes to quote, "If it's not a good time, at least it makes a good story." In other words, we can look back on the little mistakes and inconveniences and laugh about them. Like Greg pantomiming to the garage attendant, desperately trying to communicate that he'd already moved our car before turning in the ticket. Or me almost getting plowed by a motorcycle looking the wrong way down a one-way street. Or the time when one of us (I won't name names) mixed up the words for "now" and "the same thing" when ordering (basically, he thought he was saying to the waiter "I want the same thing as she ordered" but he really said "I want it NOW!")

I'm sure I'll have lots of other funny stories to share in the weeks to come. But now it's time to baby step out the door to buy some groceries.