Or conduct your own experiments
I’ve been thinking a lot more about the questions & why things are the way they are (ask a usual Australian and they’d probably just tell you ‘that’s just the way things are’ but there’s more than that).
I’ve been able to figure out your whole post now and probably the easiest way I can think of to describe the difference is this:
Mostly Australians will kiss each other on the cheeks only through friend or family affection, so if you keep this in mind, you can then see how it could be difficult for an Australian to kiss you the first time they meet you - after all they don’t know you yet to feel affection for you! (unless they’re drunk but I won’t include this)
This affection thing could also be why it’s so much easier for us to kiss somebody goodbye than hello - after all, after an evening, you may have developed some friendship for the other person.
Also, about what you say about being uncomfortable shaking hands with girls - it’s something you’ll probably have to get used to, because really, I think girls really like to shake hands. It’s part of being very independent and less reserved than women of some other cultures
(“How to be normal in Australia” post has a good chapter about girls who chase guys instead of the other way around and it can be quite true.)
You’ll never offend a woman if you shake her hand: she’d be pleased, but if she knows you’re French, maybe being kissed on the cheeks instead is nicer.
I think there’s something beneath the surface that tells us that women are equal to men when we shake hands with them, even in a very social situation (girls and girls don’t shake hands as often as girls and guys - maybe because there’s no need for this ).
It’s also a lot safer just to shake hands if you happen to be out with your partner/boyfriend, etc!
If you discover that Australians don’t have much understanding of the latin temperament: later you’ll discover Aussie males often have no idea of it at all!
Not to worry you, but maybe you should know that what you see as politeness, they may misinterpret as flirtatiousness. (An American friend once wrote in an email to me that this is his opinion of almost all French guys, and I was quite shocked that he interpreted it this way. I mean, charming is one thing, flirtatious is another. )
Even I have trouble understanding sometimes when I see introduction posts on FDU and they are signed ‘Bisous’.
An Aussie would be likely to be confused and think “but you don’t even KNOW the people yet because they haven’t replied!!’
Where it seems so easy for French to write Bisous, once we passed the child/teenager stage (where it was ok to write ‘love’ on letters often) people I know would write ‘Love’ mostly to only good friends or on greeting cards to members of the same sex.
Mix the 2 cultures together and it can get a little tricky...I discovered this when a French male friend years ago put “xxx" "bisous” on the bottom of postcards to me and my husband saw one of them one day....even though he’s been to France and met my friend too, I still had some explaining to do....
Imagine how it may be for Aussie guys who’ve never visited a latin country to understand....I don’t think it’s possible to explain, they have to see it for themselves.
But like Celine says, when you’ve known people for a little while, they soon get used to your customs and all is cool, but it’s just getting past the first stages.
Here’s an example of a very close Oz family in operation (my large extended in-law family, par exemple).
If we haven’t seen each other for about a month, when we meet we’re likely to kiss each other hello, but probably not goodbye. I think I can usually tell by how enthusiastic the ‘hello’ is whether we're going to be kissing each other. (otherwise it must just be telepathic!)
If we haven’t seen each other for a month and one of us is going away somewhere, we’re likely to kiss hello AND goodbye.
(Same goes for good friends).
If it’s Christmas or Birthday, normal rules don’t apply - even if we saw each other yesterday, everybody will kiss everyone like we haven’t seen each other in 2 months!
The children will kiss us each time we visit, for hello and goodbye (though this is more frequent than my normal experience). The teenage girls will hug their uncle, but not kiss him any more (till they get into their 20’s and they don’t feel it’s embarrassing!). They’re in the difficult stage where if you mention the words ‘kissing’ and ‘boys’ in same sentence, they’ll just run away to their rooms.
The concept of kissing a boy at school, just to be polite, would be completely alien to them.
What always works well in our Alliance Francaise group, is how some of the men have got over their slight difficulty of kissing women in the group (even after years of practice kissing French speaking Aussie friends)
They shake hands with us and kiss on the cheeks simultaneously.
That way, it seems that the customs of their own culture have been fulfilled, and then it’s no longer difficult to continue by doing things the French way.
An advantage to trying this could also be that once you have hold of the girl’s hand, she’s less able to get away from you
Oops, sorry for the long explanation. As you can see, it’s one of my favorite subjects...
Bisous
Kate
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