Inundated by anguished inquiries from abroad to know if I'm surviving recent upheavals in France, I am almost embarrassed to say, yes. Definitely.

I mean, my concerned fans all have visions of me womaning the barricades, Chanel shoulder bag askew and silk Hermès chemisier possibly rent, revealing my delicately Perla-clad breasts, and bravely leading the entire Anglophone expatriate community to safety anywhere but in this beleaguered country. Wrong.

What can I tell you?  While the underlying problems in France are indeed major, the symptomatic social and political eruptions are so localized that many of us living in France just watch it all on the evening news along with the rest of you around the world.

Transportation strikes? Well, that's what tourist buses are for – to keep the really, really important people like you, Dear euro-bearing Tourists, happy and convinced you were right to come to the world's Number One Tourist Destination.  Student demonstrations?  Strictly hormonal, and nothing personal.

At ease, Dear Tourists! France is a spectator sport to make for memorable post cards home.

As we say tirelessly in France, "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose".  The more things change, the more we – well, we just love to keep preferably talking about to doing it.

Take the government, for instance.  Last month, after the flap about liberalizing youth employment (or should I say redundancy) laws and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's failed attempt to catch le peuple sleeping, a new proposal sprouted from the primal soup of discontent to require that any and all changes to the legal code be discussed for a minimum of at least three months before being passed into law.   Voilà, if we can't win by decree we can always rule by inertia. 

Plus ça change…

We who love to live here have cottoned onto the fact that, although we may occasionally make your governments lose their dignity in sophomoric francophobia, you, Dear Tourists, accord us papal patience for our prodigal politics. How else can you explain that you continue to visit us despite our confounding, confusing, contrarian orneriness?   

Well, hey, at least that's what the hospitality statistics-keepers keep telling us, n'est-ce pas?

In truth, France has found its popularity as world tourist Mecca a to be a double-edged sword.  We, in France, want you to visit because it makes us very rich and famous.  On the other hand, we don't want you to stay too long because your habits, necessities, and attitudes might force us to change.

Let's face it.  We, in France, are historically ambivalent to change.

Change?! If you mean that as in change for a 500 euro bill, forget it.  I am as second-hand French as they come, having lived here for 34 years.  But when a 4-star Paris hotel in the fashionable 16^th arrondissement refused to change my 500-euro note this past winter, and then two nearby French banks also balked, telling me to go across town to the Central Bank, I turned tourist on a dime and asked how they thought I, as a foreigner, was supposed to spend any money in this country if I couldn't get change readily. 

On that occasion, when I returned to my service-conscious hotel with my tale of woe, the concierge miraculously found change for my 500-euro note in the back office.   Bless his clefs d'or, because if he hadn't first shown his Gallic diffidence and refused change, I would never have experienced the exasperation that many foreign travelers must suffer in this, my adopted homeland.

Change, as in chameleon-esque espousal of the trend of the day? That can happen with disconcerting rapidity in France. (It's not for nothing that king François Premier's symbol was the chameleon's first cousin, the salamander.)  The French I know change clothes, cars, lovers and geraniums with about equal seasonal sentimentality. 

But if you're looking for change as in reform, well, Dear Tourists, let's not be in any haste…

How about a second episode on change in France, whenever I can get around to it?

Constance G. Konold teaches Strategic Human Resource Management in Eshotel's hospitality management MSc program in Paris and London. 

Professional experience on five continents informs her skills as executive coach and trainer in intercultural communications, creativity and releasing human potential.

An ardent traveler, educational consultant and freelance journalist, she is attached to her metaphorically evocative moniker as The Satellite Crew -  www.satcrew.com . She may be contacted at coach@satcrew.com if you need a new flight path.