I am doing some short Writing tasks to familiarise myself again with using English.

It's very conventional and so are the topics at times, but I am very rusty and it's a perfect way to dive in.

Here is today's topic:

・What about your country? Please tell me about the stereotypes and the reality of your culture?

I was born and raised in a small French archipelaego named Nouvelle Caledonie (New Caledonia) located on the East of Cairns, in Australia. Although we are just as French as people born in La Reunion, our land, culture and people are still very unknown to people from mainland France.

The stereotype that I hear the most about New Caledonians, is that we supposedly have a paradisiac life; meaning that we do not work (because we do not need it?) and we just spend our days going to the beach, having long naps in the shades of some palm trees, and doing nothing all day!

I have heard that from both people from mainland France and from Japanese people. ("NC" used to be the number one destination for Japanese in the 80's-90's, so a fair number of them know of it.)

Well, sorry to break it to you, but in the city like in any other city in the world, people hurry to go to work after dropping their kids off at school, and we struggle with a fair amount of traffic jam every day. We are stressed about work and we try to exercise at the gym to relieve that stress, or we rant about work around a drink on the weekend with friends while we pay a sitter to keep our children off our skirts for a few hours. ;-)

Something else that I heard a lot from mainland French people is that New Caledonians probably aren't as educated or intelligent as the French raised in Europe. I think the literal phrase was that we "must have got our diplomas by shaking a coconut tree"? I guess in English it'd be that we "got our diplomas served on a silver plate"?

I guess this has to do with the first stereotype: if everybody's wasting their days away at the beach, they probably haven't studied much in their life as a consequence, and even if you did go through mandatory education, the teachers also probably don't care much about getting any results and just "gave" us our diplomas. These are actually comments that I have personally heard with my own ears.

Of course, both stereotypes are completely untrue.

I think this image is mostly the combined result of an old ideal of "lost paradise on Earth" (a place where you can enjoy the "sea-sex-and-sun" lifestyle) and a bit of envy.

To be fair, we do enjoy a priviledged environment in which to grow up. The climate is nice, we often live 15mn away to get from a nice sand beach for most residents, and a mere 1 hour drive can usually get you to gorgeous trekking trails and pictoresque waterfalls.

If if feel like spending a day at the museum or marvel at dramatic architectural pieces of art, this isn't the place though.

I think that in the end, all is fair: we all have different beauties to enjoy in our respective countries, do we not? We cannot have it all.

Do not hate us, dear compatriots from Metropolitan France! :)

Note: Today's topic is an assignment I got from the British English Podcast by Charlie Baxter.

There are some exercises included in the Academy package for learners, and this question was one of the extra practice suggested.

I believe that I ranted a tad long.

Sorry about that and thank you for reading me until the end and helping me with my English!