"Ou est... ?"

It’s pretty interesting how real men don’t mind asking for directions here. And nobody else minds asking either. This morning as I was returning from the market, I saw a car that was sitting in the regular lane of traffic and talking to someone on the street who was obviously giving directions, with all the arm waving and pointing. The cars behind this lost soul were just sitting there patiently as though this was an everyday occurrence (and I guess it is).

I get asked for help pretty often but a few incidences stand out in my mind. Clearly I am of no help to most anyone who asks… I don’t speak French very well and I don’t know where many things are. When Kate was here, she came up with the idea of telling them that I don’t speak French well, but that I do in fact live in the city. So I try that…. seems all that does is make them have higher expectations and causes me more embarrassment.

The first time I got asked, it was by a Japanese girl and honestly, her French was no better than mine! The place that she was trying to find was on the very street where we were standing. She had a paper with the address printed, so we didn’t need to talk much. But I really didn’t help her. I later found out why nothing made sense and we couldn’t find the place. Here, unlike in the US, street numbers on one side of the street are TOTALLY UNRELATED to the numbers on the other side. OK, so if I’m driving in my old neighborhood and looking for 3606 and find a house with 3555, I can deduce a few things… first… that the house I’m looking for is on the other side of the street (because this number is odd) and second… that I just need to look a bit farther down the street. Not so here….on one side of the street we find 153 and on the other side directly across from 153 we find 475. Ok, so next time someone asks me, I will know.

Another time I got asked was just yesterday. A young woman asked me if I knew where the Leader Price grocery store was. (I must look like I don’t speak French)…. her French was worse than mine… if you can imagine… and she had a sort of German accent so I figured she would know English… so I asked her. She was relieved to know that I actually could speak to her and help her… and I did. I felt pretty good about it too.