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I spent several weeks in France this summer, and it was amazing to get a taste of a different culture, especially through its language.  I’ve done a bit of traveling, but mostly in countries where English was spoken or in countries where I had not studied the language at all, so that expressive facial gestures and hand motions were the only way to communicate.  Thankfully, due to many, many…many years of French classes, I found myself able to understand a larger portion of conversations that I had imagined.  I even felt comfortable when out and about, conducting all my business transactions in French.  It was quite exciting!

So I had this on my mind as I was wandering around Paris one morning.  I happened to be in front of a major tourist destination, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, which is a very old church with beautiful gargoyles and stone arches, and a long interesting history. While admiring the building, a young boy came up to me and said, “ blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, photo?”  Clearly, my French wasn’t perfect.  He said it again, “blah, blah, blah, blah, photo?”

My thoughts took a few seconds to decide that I wanted to know what he was asking.  The easier route would have been to dismiss him with a shake of the head, or a “no, merci.”  And with good reason.

a)   Tourist areas are notorious for being places where people are scammed (I had already encountered a scam earlier in the week, where a woman said, “Oh, you dropped something!” and when I looked it was a big gold ring.  I had heard that if you take it, you are then asked to pay for it.  Good thing I had been warned about it in advance!)

b)   In the U.S., most families don’t encourage kids to go up to complete strangers by themselves, and typically parents keep a close eye on younger family members in crowded public places…

Despite this, I just really wanted to know what he was asking so that I could properly and honestly answer him. It took a few minutes of me asking, “You want me to take your photo?” “You want to take a photo of me?” “You want me to take a photo of Notre Dame?”  Finally, he gestured to an area where there were some other people.  I walked over, still slightly skeptical, where he pointed to a woman who clarified, in French (so I still think my language skills deserve some credit), that she was leading a group of kids on a scavenger hunt and that they needed to round up 50 people for a group photo!

OH!  Bien sûr!  Oh course I will be in your scavenger hunt photo!

As I looked out, I saw more kids all over the plaza asking people to participate.  Most of the time they would come back with a disappointed face saying, “No one will come, they all speak English!!”  Since the kids spoke French and most of the tourists did not, they were having a hard time rounding up enough volunteers!  I am sure that many of the tourists had skeptical thoughts like my initial ones, that made them give a quick “No” as an answer.

I tried to help by having them learn “Will you be in a photo with me? For a game?” But after some slow repetition, there was a lot of eye rolling, and exclamations of, “C’est dificile!” (That’s hard!)

Eventually they rounded up about fifteen or so people, including several backpackers, a french family, two italian men, and three police on bicycles, and called it a good effort.  After we took the group photo, I turned to the kids and asked, “Do you want to be in a photo with me?”  They laughed and as we all agreed to make “visage grimace”, which I assumed was a crazy face, but just in case asked for them to make “happy” visage grimace.  And this is the result!

They just about made my day, and if I hadn’t had enough patience that day, or if I doubted my language skills, I never would have met this fun group of kids or participated in this little adventure!

~Ms. Patterson

P.S. Thank you to all of my language teachers over the years!

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