When doing something charitable goes completey wrong

Metro Ticket

Hello all. Do I have a story for you. Tuesday night, Leah and I, along with a few other students, participated in what is called a Midnight Run. A Midnight Run is when students make sandwiches and bag them with water and a snack, for the homeless. Students are broken into 5 groups of 5 and sent out to different destinations where the homeless are to distribute these meals. Just to set the record straight before I continue, the Midnight Run does not actually happen at midnight. We start at 8 pm to make the sandwiches and finish distributing them whenever we do. At any rate, Leah has to do an ASL- Academic service learning ( Community service) as a course requirement. When we headed out to the train stations to look for some homeless people we were excited. I was excited that I could give someone a meal just for one night. However, that excitement began to die down as we couldn't find any. I know right! Searching for homeless people and couldn't even find them. We followed the directions given to us by the organizer and it stated that the metro stop almost always had homeless people. Well the almost always must have been a disclaimer because there were only two homeless men and one of them didn't want the sandwich, can you say pride. So we're going all throughout the metro stops searching for people. At this point, we just want to get rid of our sandwiches and go home because it was well after 8 almost 9 p.m.  Subsequently, because we couldn't find anyone, we decided to head back to campus and search for hungry individuals around that area. I noticed that at one of the metro stops Montparnesse- Bienvenue, I saw some individuals in green uniforms and some women were yelling at one of them. As I paid close attention but not drawing attention to myself, they were stopping people who were walking up the stairs. I didn't know at the time what was happeneing. However, the group I was with were able to slip pass them without noticing. It wasn't that we were being sneaky but we were Americans and I didn't want to get caught up in anything that I didn't need to. Finally we're on the train and we get off the stop Sevres- Babylone- this is the stop Leah and I ride the 12 line to go to campus. Anyway, the other three students with us lived on campus, so Leah and I were walking with them so we could transfer to the 12 line. Just when we get upstairs, a man in a green jacket, with the words METRO on it stops us, requesting, in French, for our tickets. So Leah and Sam shows them theirs and he puts it through the machine to check it's validity. While this is happening, our friend Jenny says she lost her's, so I give her my ticket and show the man my NavigoPass ( Navigo's are weekly / montly metro passes). I showed him my navigo and he check it on this little hand held black box. Four of us are in the clear. HOWEVER, Monica, the 5th person in our group threw her's away. She checks throughout her bag and finds one that he puts through the machine. Unfortunately, it had expired.  Now, if you look at the picture above, you will see how small it is and how easy it is to be thrown away or lost.  As a consequence, if you lose that ticket, it's an automatic 45euro fine and 30 if you can prove you are a student. Oh Lawd! This girl is panicking because she doesn't speak French and I was nervous for her. So I commence trying to explain to him that we are students and that we were feeding the homeless and that she threw away her ticket and didn't know the consequences. This is going on for what seems to be 15-20 minutes. He's telling me and showing me his ticket book, I'm saying I understand that he is just doing his job but she can't pay the fine she has no euros and we didn't know. There's other people getting tickets around us and the Metro police man was telling me that other people are getting fines because they don't have proof that they paid. While I am communicating, or trying to communicate, our group remember are calling the emergency number the campus gave us but no one picked up. Finally after what seemed like forever, he lets her go with a warning. I guess I spoke French well enough and because we were American students( Yeah he asked us if we were American, with an attitude) I don't care because  he let us all go. I noticed he was getting a little upset because the other students didn't speak French. I kept speaking to him as calm as I could because I didn't want to give off a vibe that  I was scared, even though I was, nor did I want him to feel that I was going to attack, because we weren't. We just wanted to go home. Even Leah was using the French she learned from her classes to emphasize the point I was trying to make. Thank you Jesus. I won't be feeding the homeless no time soon. My group mates, on the way to the campus, so some workers, around 10 pm and we gave them the sandwiches.  Leah and I arrived home around 10:30 at night, meanwhile back at the ranch, I had a 8:30 class the next morning. -____-  What a night. I'm just happy I was able to talk to the man as clear enough for him to let us go. Praise the Lord. Until another post- Coacabelle.

Here are two pictures of the ticket- It's so easy to get lost.It's a little piece of Paper! If the French want people to keep it, maybe they should invest in some metro cards like in the States' just a suggestion.