A Friendly Encounter!

A few days ago, I encountered a man who is quite possibly one of the nicest I’ve ever come across. And believe it or not, he is Parisian! It all started when I was trying to find a university where language classes are offered. I had a general idea of where I was going, but I was definitely venturing out into new territory.


After wandering for a bit, I found the university. I didn’t realize it was going to be made up of many different buildings. I had no clue which building to go in to get information about the classes. Somehow, I managed to wander into a courtyard in the middle of several buildings. Feeling frustrated, I sat on a bench to try to figure out where to go next.

Not two seconds later, an old custodian came out of one of the buildings carrying a huge load of trash. He greeted me with, “Bonjour!” and then a stream of French followed. In halted French, I think I told him, “I am sorry. I don’t speak French.” He immediately switched to English and tried to find out how he could help me. It took awhile, but he finally started to understand that I was looking for information about French classes.

He told me to wait a minute and he would be back. I sat on the bench not knowing what I was about to get myself into. As I waited, he literally ran inside to drop off the trash he was holding, and then ran back out to where I was sitting. He told me to come with him. From the courtyard, he led me across the street to another building with a front desk inside. In French, he explained to the person behind the desk that I was an American looking for information. The lady told him that I needed to go to wing “B”. I thought the custodian would say goodbye there. Instead, he escorted me to wing “B” where I got all the information I needed. I thanked him over and over again. He kept responding with, “No problem!” I would never have found the right spot without his help! I just couldn’t believe that he would drop everything he was doing to help me. I am definitely thankful for that random encounter.

We had a less-friendly encounter on Saturday. Dustin realized that morning that he left a few things at work that we needed to get our year-long metro pass. So, we went to his office building to pick the things up on our way into the city. Since it was Saturday, the office was empty – or so we thought.

A man rounded a corner into Dustin’s office area and was speaking to us in French. He wasn’t exactly yelling, but we could tell he was not happy that I was there. He ended up personally escorting me out of the building. How crazy is that? I’m not exactly sure what happened. Oh well….I guess you win some and you lose some.

Our goal on Saturday was to buy a year-long metro pass. In order to buy it, you have to provide all sorts of identification, bank information, proof of address, etc. We knew that this could get pretty complicated. The lady behind the desk spoke absolutely zero English. Dustin had printed off exactly what we wanted, but it was still pretty tough. We relied on a few phrases we knew how to say….and the translator app on Dustin’s Iphone. We ended up having to type a few things in English, then press translate, then hand the phone to the lady. Luckily, she was very friendly and willing to try to help us. It is a pretty humbling experience to constantly feel like you don’t know what is going on.

To celebrate the purchase of our passes, we got a crepe Nutella. It was my very first crepe and VERY tasty. Whenever I get frustrated about my inability to communicate, I just remember all of the yummy food we can get here. :)