Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Santé!

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Santé means cheers in French. It took us all week to remember that... I'll let you draw your own conclusions as to why. I've written a lot so far about the city and things we saw. What I haven't written about so much is what a great time we had spending the week with our friends.

Everyday was so fun, because in the morning we'd get up, and usually most people had decided what they wanted to do for the day, and then we'd take off. Every morning Karen and I made an appearance at this cafe down the street for a café au lait and croissant (if we'd gotten there early enough). After we were finished we'd meet the rest of our party and we'd start touring. If the six of us had split up, we met somewhere around lunch time and found a place to eat. I'm 99% sure we ate every lunch and dinner together, which I think is pretty impressive.

You also really get to know someone traveling together in a foreign country. We got to know the Kessels very well a few years ago in Italy, especially after all of our bags were lost for a few days. Nothing brings you closer then when you are all stuck wearing the same clothes for three days. They are on our "will fly international with" list. And now so are the Nicholsons and Cranes.

Within every group you need certain roles filled. You need a planner, to help people who like to let someone else lead the way. You need someone to get people out of bed in the morning and keep people to a schedule (10 pts if you guess who this was... there were two). You need people who can speak the language and help the group out of any tricky situations. You need people who don't mind asking for directions. You need people who can go with the flow and easily adapt to changing environments. And most of all you need people you can tolerate for long hours at a time! We had all of these people, and the week went by so fast.

We had so much fun at every meal. Most of the time the six of us were crowded at some small table in the corner somewhere, eating elbow to elbow. Plates would be passed as everyone tried the other person's meal. Glasses clinked and the conversation never stopped. Things were never boring, even when we were doing something boring.

The afternoon that we decided to spend on the bus, things got a little boring. But only because we were stuck in traffic for so long. It was at this point that we were all sitting upstairs, and it was getting cold. So some of us moved down below, and then promptly fell asleep. One by one everyone woke up, and then went upstairs with everyone else. Eventually everyone was up there except for Bekah. John had just come up, and Kyle asked him where Bekah was, John's reply-- "She's downstairs. Probably getting picked clean apart as speak." Luckily she woke up shortly and then everyone was back upstairs.

Great friends make so much tolerable. And they make an incredible trip to Paris even better -- Santé!

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