Whatever you do, don't smile

Being from the west coast, it only comes natural that if a car stops for me at a crosswalk, I wave and smile. If I make eye contact with someone it is my instinct to smile at them. After sitting through a grueling five or six hour orientation in a haze caused by the wine that we drank the night before, I learned that I am to NOT, I repeat, DO NOT smile and DO NOT go to the suburbs (that's a whole story and a half in itself). Then I realized going back to our apartment on the metro that I cannot stop smiling when I look at people. The French for some reason just aren't smiley people. Not that they're mean people because every person I've encountered thus far has been super nice! But to them when you smile at them, you might as well make a move because you're hitting on these people who you're smiling so innocently at.
While we're at it, the stereotype that the French are mean is simply preposterous. The first French person that I encountered was my cab driver. After we dropped off another student at his apartment, I got the courage to ask the chauffeur what he thought of politics since he was listening to a political radio show. First of all, politics in America can be the touchiest subject to talk about. People have such strong beliefs and feelings but we have a hard time accepting that we all feel a little different about diffficult topics and problems. In France, they're able to talk about such things, share their opinions and walk away without having a chip on their shoulder. Recently France elected a new president Francois Hollande instead of Nicolas Sarkozy. In the words of my super nice cab driver, "Sarkozy iz a crazy, crazy man. He not good for zee economy!" I had to giggle because I knew he was trying to speak English while I attempted to speak French to him.
That was the moment I realized I'm in the middle of living my dream. It couldn't be any more unreal, and it's only been a couple of days. I'm getting super excited to start school tomorrow, so I'm counting on that to be a crazy experience in itself.
Now all I need to do is figure out where my school is....