Paris 1997

In the Fall of 1996, my Junior year in High School, a bunch of kids from the drama program at a French High School in Paris came on an exchange trip to visit us at Ramstein. They were there for a week. We were all paired up with a French student. My guy was Thomas. Really nice guy - very friendly and polite. I remember taking him to the rec center on base and playing pool with Joey, Dimitri, Chris, and everyone else. They also all attended the homecoming football game, which they seemed to enjoy quite a bit. I don't remember if they were there for the homecoming dance though.

Anyway, towards the end of the school year - sometime in March or April, I can't remember exactly when - we visited them in Paris. It was about a four hour train ride from Ramstein to Paris. The central train station in Paris was huge - the first big train station that I remember. (I'm sure I was in pretty big train stations in Japan too - I can't remember.)

I stayed with Thomas, which was nice. I remember one of our guys - Paul Thomas, had to stay with a girl. I can't remember why, but the guy who had stayed with Paul wasn't available. It turned out that Paul had to sleep on a couch in the girls bedroom. It was pretty awkward for him.

We spent the bulk of our time during the day going to Paris' touristy places - the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Champs-Elysee, Montmarte, Notre Damme, stuff like that. After about 10:00 or so in the evening, our teachers, Mrs. Fong and Mr. Nukula, would go back home with the French teacher, and we would all go out to experience the nightlife with our hosts. A lot of crazy memories from that - a guy hitting on me in a bar (first time that'd happend to me), crazy dance parties, a rave, a bunch of other stuff. I pretty much felt uncomfortable and out of place the entire time. Fortunately, there was another LDS kid there, a good friend of mine named Nick Reed. He and I spent a lot of time wandering around since we were tired of watching everyone else get drunk.

One of my favorite things to do in Paris was to go to the top of the Arc d'Triomphe and watch the traffic going through the circle at the base of the monument. There was literally no rhyme or reason to the traffic patterns that I could distinguish. Every car seemed to simply go where it wanted to. Considering that there was room for about 6 lanes or so of cars, it created quite the chaotic driving scene. But, miracle of miracles, I didn't see any accidents. This was my introduction to crazy driving.

A funny story about Nick at the Arc. The Arc is in the middle of a massive traffic circle. Underneath the Arc is a metro line. When you walk around the Arc, there are massive grates covering holes that go the 50 or 60 feet to the metro line. Nick is terrified of heights. Unfortunately, he didn't realize that these grates were there until he was stuck in the middle of one of them. Poor guy was petrified. It seemed to take him forever to be able to move to get off the grate.