By
Cory Spiller
Editor's Note: Cory Spiller is spending the summer in Paris as part of a UA program.
PARIS - Learning another language is frustrating and difficult, but it's necessary if you want to really see eye to eye with someone from another culture. I recently had an experience were I felt I honestly connected with someone in France. Although we come from two very different places, we connected, we were definitely on the same page.
His name was Locum, and he's a Brittany spaniel.
I'm living with a French family in Paris for the summer. Monsieur and Madame Lebatard head an ordinary - yet lively - Catholic family that leans to the right politically. The two, and their dog, seem to be a perfect match for this tree-hugging, spiritually-confused loudmouth from Arizona. We live in a wonderful flat near the Arc de Triomphe, walking distance from the Eiffel Tower and the Champs-lyses, in the center of Paris.
They are a wonderful family with several children, all grown and living elsewhere in Paris. Their absence leaves a few rooms open for ambitious students like myself to come to Paris and practice the skills we learn in class with our host families over dinner. As far as I can tell, the former resident of my room led a relatively similar life as myself. The bookshelves are full of poetry, old textbooks, and empty whiskey bottles.
While it's comforting to see so many familiar books on the shelves, I prefer to just look at the bindings. Opening them rudely reminds me how little French I actually know.
Dinner is a special time in the Lebatard household. It's a two-hour ordeal involving five to six courses, multiple carafes of red wine and - most importantly - spirited conversation. For me, it's a two-hour gauntlet of culinary amazement, linguistic desperation and an intense fear that my host family thinks I am a mute imbecile. When it comes to actually conversing with them, I struggle to form the most elementary statements. I sound something like this: It is·uh·that I find the·uh·cooked food·uh·good. And I smile broadly and shake my head like a dog that finally managed to bark on queue. If I had a tail, I'd shake it.
Sunday night, my host family and I were sitting around the table with our bellies full of some amazing eggplant tomato cheese concoction, wonderful morsels of lamb and the usual finishing touch of cheese and baguette when Madame Lebatard brought out a giant bowl of cherries. I was feeling good. And after sitting silently through a few hours of dinner conversation that I had completely missed, I decided I would say something in French. I said something along the lines of, "Cherries look·uh·as if they are little apples." They looked at me with confused expressions, wondering why when I finally decided to speak I would say something so utterly asinine. Monsieur Lebatard finally said, "C'est Vrai." This is true.
What started as an asinine yet observant comment from yours truly turned into a full length discourse on the importance of the symbol of cherries to occupied France during World War I - at least that's what I thought he said. He continued talking about France, war, and I believe I heard something about Bismark, then the word Vichy and suddenly we had jumped to Charles de Gaulle and the Third Republic. He paused to spit a few cherry pits into a bowl. I shook my head as if I understood every word and replied, "Oui, oui, trs intressant."
That was probably a mistake.
He began again, in full force, offering me his version of the brief political history of France. I was honestly eager to learn, but I had to concentrate or else I would miss everything. We were somewhere around the student uprisings of 1968 when I drifted into a mindless daze. I watched his lips move and I heard his deep monotone voice stop and start, but all I heard was, "blah blah blah·Sartre·blah blah·France·blah blah blah·Libert, Egalit, Fraternit."
It was just then that my eyes wondered from Monsieur Lebatard's lips and focused on the family dog sitting next to him.
He was looking directly at me. I stared into his large brown eyes and he didn't flinch. We connected. He offered his empathy and understanding. If he could speak, I'm sure he would have said, "It's okay man, I know how you feel. You think we're any different? I just want to get fed, just like you."
And if I could bark, I would have whimpered.
