Stories of Surveys and Students!

Bonsoir! It’s Sunday evening around 9:30 in Paris right now, and I thought I’d put up a post about the various and sundry happenings of our trip.

            Over the past few days, we’ve been rather busy. Between visiting the Louvre, going to an English club with Agape staff to hang out with French students, and more work on our team project—the survey about the French views on love and marriage—we haven’t had much time to relax. Until today, that is. Our schedule left room for a long Sabbath rest, filled with naps, journaling, and good food.

            But I want to tell you a little about our experiences meeting with French students all last week while working on the survey. We began Thursday afternoon, setting up just outside the Luxembourg Gardens near the French Senate. Several schools had dormitories and classrooms located around the park, so we expected lots of student traffic through the area. Spencer brought along his camera and mike for filming for our documentary, while the rest of us, armed with clipboards, pens, and multiple copies of the surveys, paired up and went in search of students!

            Needless to say, the language barrier was…well, a barrier. How’s that for a tautology! Amber Bergey and I received coaching from Sarah Ferrara, our student leader/resident French expert, on a few basic phrases. But still, we were on our own for the most part. Imagine walking up to a bunch of students chattering away in French, and jump right into their conversation with a few broken phrases, only to ask them to ‘take a few minutes and help us out with a survey’? Nerve-wracking, to say the least!

            Yet all went extremely well. In New York City, there’s enough random non profits and marketing promos wandering around that the people get rather irritated with them, to say the least. But over here, the students are so polite and interested and willing to help out! While it remained difficult to interact with them, we managed to get in a few interesting conversations. Spencer interviewed both a young French catholic and a Muslim student, both who had very interesting views on the topic of marriage (more to come in our documentary!!!). We also met one student who apparently believed in polygamy (?!?). I managed to get a quick conversation in with a student from Science-Po University who had spent a semester abroad at William and Mary College, visited D.C. a couple times, and knew of The King’s College!!!

            Our survey results are incomplete as of now, but I can say that some of the students’ answers definitely caught us by surprise! More to come on that later; we’ll be heading out to a couple more universities next week to get more surveys done. And then, of course, we’ll undoubtedly spend hours and hours analyzing, organizing, and presenting the data. Yayyyy!

            Well, that’s all for now! Thanks to all you back home for your prayers, support, and encouragement. Check back later for more updates on the IVParis team’s blog. A Bientot!

Greg