Personal Narrative: My Trip To The Metropolitan Museum Of France

When I was very young, France was an entire world away for me. It seemed like a place that I had only heard of in the travel ads describing “five-star vacations in the land of romance and culture - France,” it was a place that seemed so alien and remote to me. To me and my close-minded five year-old worldview, France was a land where people wore what my kindergartener self would call “painter hats” and ate stinky cheese with long, stiff bread. However, my myopic and narrow-minded view of other cultures and started to mellow when I took a life-changing trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. When I entered that monument to color, I was instantly captivated by the sheer beauty of all the art that surrounded me. Nonetheless, I was drawn toward one painting, Paul Cezanne’s “The Card Players.” I was transfixed
However, once he entered his French 1 class this all changed. The bored and disinterested student that I was before was no more. In French class, my hand shot up constantly, I studied meticulously for exams and quizzes. Before long, my passion for school became reignited, I always trotted onto my bus with a grin on my face, classes soon started to become fun. To me, French was not like any other class, it was like a daily vacation for me, the more I learned, the funner it was. Learning French felt like a daily vacation, mastering the accents and pronunciations was my escape from the dull, ugly world that I lived in. My French class set me free with its sheer beauty and soft sounds. By mastering French, I felt like I truly was opening a door to another world, only this time I could step through it and experience France’s language and culture firsthand. French has given me a connection with my academics and a people half a world away that no other subject