In school you learn that the French say hello with the bises, the cheek to cheek kiss on each side. If they go into a bit more detail, they explain that it's for less formal circumstances, not in a business meeting with your boss for example, and that girls kiss girls, girls and boys kiss each other, but boys shake hands unless they are actually friends and close. Meaning, yes, as a girl, you do the bises with people who aren't close quite often; it's even how you introduce yourself to a person for the first time, instead of shaking hands.
At first, it took a bit to get used to it: sticking your hand out, seeing the other person lean in for a kiss, correcting yourself awkwardly, the cheek-bang. We all had an especially difficult time adjusting at school in the beginning, because it's the workplace, but teachers are all very informal with each other. "Are we offending them by not doing the bises?" we asked each other. "Would I offend the principal if I tried to give him a kiss?" "What if they ask you a question while you're doing the bise? Do you answer in between in their face?" The answer is, "It depends."Eventually I settled on, la bise is the equivalent of a hug (which the French don't do unless they're really close), but a little less intimate because it's pretty normal to give everyone a bise every day, when you first see them in the morning (Est-ce que je t'ai déjà fait la bise aujourd'hui? Non? Allez, on va faire la bise). As we shall see, that's not exactly correct, the equivalency, but it helps to approximate how close you have to be to a person to do the bise. Which means for me, teachers I talk to, who know my name, I kiss. But at first I really had to force myself to go for it, because sometimes you have to purposefully stand up, walk to the other side of the room, and greet them. Now I finally mostly know where I stand with the teachers of my classes. Sometimes though, I still don't know what to do, if half the people in the room I've never met before. Do I make rounds and kiss people even if I don't know their name? Do I not say hello to anyone? And sometimes I forget, if I have something on my mind, but then after it's too late because you've already seen them that day.
And now on the subject of real kissing, lips to lips, s'embrasser. Did you know, that in France, if you kiss (and you are sober) you are henceforth girlfriend and boyfriend? A lot of foreigners have gotten into trouble because of this. If you decide you don't like the person all that much, you can't just stop seeing them, you have to break up with them. I mean, it's a little bit the logic of Jane Austen novels, and is effectively what has been the case for me, so I get it. But I think in the States, even if you are not the type to see more than one person at once, you would make sure to check with the guy before applying the label "boyfriend," or even "dating". For instance, my roommate started seeing this French guy, they went on a few dates, and they kissed.
The next time she saw him she did the bises, and as she recounted to me, he was like, "What? Aren't you going to kiss me?"
C, in her head (according to they way she told it): "Huh? It's a public place! And what, I all of a sudden have to kiss you now?"
And the answer was kind of yes, because people who are boyfriend and girlfriend, defined as a couple in any way romantically involved, s'embrasse when they see each other. And the reason the bise is not the equivalent of a hug is because it is for people who are only friends, so doing the bise with someone you kissed on the lips previously is like saying, "I only see you as a friend," or "This is over." So C's boyfriend thought he was being dumped, while C thought she was just saying hello the French way. Luckily they had a long conversation about cultural differences afterwards.
Take home point though: in France, there is a way of saying hello that means, "I am dumping you." What nonsense this country is!
