Memories Of France

July 14, 2022 - Happy Bastille Day !!!

I was in Paris, France, on Bastille Day with my parents in 1970, when I was nine years old. The top of the Eiffel Tower was closed, so we enjoyed lunch in a restaurant that was about halfway up the tower.

We were on a 28-day trip around the world. Several days earlier, I met my great-grandparents (for the first time) and several of my cousins on their small farm in the hills of Sturno, Italy, near Naples.

I would visit Paris two more times:

* ... for one week, as a high-school senior in 1979, when I was 18 years old, with my French teacher (Mrs. Boderick) and three female classmates. (I remember feeling like Bosley from the Charlie's Angels television series.) The trip was basically to learn about French history and French culture.

The day that we were to return home, I got lost in Galeries Lafayette (the huge, famous shopping mall in Paris), so I missed my flight home. My teacher remained in Paris to look for me, but she never found me. In an attempt to catch my fight, I had taken a taxi to the airport, but it was the wrong airport. Wow. She was so incredibly angry. In our high school classroom after we had returned home, I asked her for the bottles of wine that I was bringing home to my parents. She bluntly told me that she was keeping them as compensation for all of the aggravation I had caused her. I told her that she could keep them. LOL

* ... for three weeks, as a university senior in 1984, when I was 23 years old, with my French teacher (Mr. René Mongeau), another French teacher, and about 30 other students from Villanova University, where I was studying. We lived in a high-rise dormitory in Massy, France, (about a 30-minute train ride to Paris) with students from China and North Africa. A group of senior citizens were also with us. I would attend six hours of formal, classroom instruction of the French language ("Composition and Conversation: Parts 1 and 2") every weekday. We would only visit Paris on Saturdays and Sundays. I earned six (equivalent to two three-credit courses) of my 18 university credits in French. I graduated in December 1984 with a bachelor's degree in communications with a minor in the French language.

Here are three remembrances from this trip:

1. My cousin Vivian, who was living in London, spent a couple of weekend days with us. Many of the senior citizens thought that I had hooked up with her in a bar in Paris. LOL ... I assured them that she was my cousin.

2. One Saturday evening, a bunch of my classmates and I went to a nightclub in Paris. We danced and had fun, but we lost track of the time. We missed the last (2 a.m.) train back to Massy, so we all slept on the couches that were scattered all over the nightclub until 5 a.m., when the next train was available. I slept on a circular, red-velvet couch. I remember being awoken by the bartender who was shaking me by the shoulder. I felt like such a lush.

3. Another evening, we had a large, farewell party in the main room of our dormitory with all of the students attending. Several of the senior citizens were there, too. We danced to an entire album by a group called La Compagnie Créole. The link below is to a song from that album. Soon after, while in Paris, I purchased the album. I still sometimes listen to it to summon fond memories.

https://youtu.be/m4OV8__VA-c