Crazy Awesome Weekend!

I feel bad that I have been getting behind on the blog, but I have been very busy.

To put it succinctly, the reason that I enjoyed this weekend so much was that I got to meet a lot of new people. I had positive interactions with these people and my effort to make eye contact with people when I talk to them is seeming to increase the quality of my interactions with people.

Last Wednesday, I took the GRE. I did well enough so that the general GRE will not hurt my applications to any physics program.  I am pleased to have that done with. After the test was over, I went to the Gardens near the Louvre and explored a bit.

That evening, one of my friends, Steven, invited me to come hang out.  It was very spontaneous and I enjoyed it a lot. I met his sister, and a girl named Ippa, an awesome person from Finland. We went by the Eiffel tower at night and took touristy pictures. They were generally a lot of fun to hang out with.

The next day was Bastille day.  I went with the same group as the previous night and my roommate, Bakari, to the Eiffel tower.  There were a crazy amount of people there!   It was so busy that there were some people who staked out a seat in the bushes. We had a picnic with cheese, tomatoes, olives, and bread. Afterwards, Steven and I played some frisbee. It was dangerous because there were so many people. A random girl, who I later got to talk to more, joined our game. Victoria is a student from Texas who goes to Yale and she plays frisbee.  Later on that afternoon, we were playing ninja, and a group of American high school students joined in. So for the rest of the afternoon, in addition to our group of 5 people, we had another 8 or so new people that we just met. We did a lot of fun things including following people in a line. We also played the crowd-surfing game: we sit in a line, and then somebody jumps on the line and we use our hands to carry them to the end of the line.  When we did this, a lot of people were looking at us. Under the supervision of their parents, some little kids decided to go down our crowd-surfing line.  I had to leave early so I did not see the fireworks, but regardless it was quite an awesome day.

The next day, my friend Mike came to visit. He got here early and we had a very long day of fun touristy stuff.  Throughout the days, I had a lot of fun hanging out with Mike. He came to Paris with about 10 other people from his program.  I had a lot of fun meeting all of them.  We started with a 3 hour walking tour of Paris. It was free, but we had to pay a tip at the end.  The guide was very quirky and funny. She made a lot of pop-culture references and cheesy jokes, which I enjoyed.  She had a lot of cool stories to tell about the landmarks that we saw. One particular one is that there is a bridge that has the faces of drunk noblemen that amused King Henry the 4th.

Afterwards, she brought us to a place to eat. I got to talk to one of Mike's friends here for a while so that was pretty fun for me as I got a chance to practice my eye contact and conversation skills.  In the evening, we went to the Louvre. I got to see more new things and some old things.  Even later that day, we decided to go to the Eiffel tower and climb up it. 

It is a bit of a long story, but some of Mike's friends were 'couch-surfing'. This is where you sleep in the house of some person that you do not know that volunteers their home. It is free but obviously there is some risk involved. Anyways, so since we were also with part of Mike's group, they were trying to find their host. So it turned out that their host also happened to be going up the Eiffel tower that night.  Johann was a very cool guy. At first, I was unsure why somebody would have random people come to his house, but he said that he got to practice his English and Spanish and he got to meet a lot of cool people. There were also three girls from the Czech Republic that just graduated from high school and one of Johann's friends from France came along. 

Again, I had a lot of fun meeting these people. At first it was a bit awkward because I seemed like an idiot since I did not know where the Czech Republic was and I also got that country confused with Czechoslovakia. But after those initial bumps, I was able to start up conversation with them.  It is really a ton of fun to talk to foreigners because you can talk about cultural differences forever. They were very cool to hang out with.

It was fun to climb up the eiffel tower.  You can take the stairs 2/3 of the way and then you have to pay more to take a lift to the top. We got a really beautiful view of the city from up there!  I did not have my camera, but some other people took a bunch of pictures.  I am considering going up again. After a long and awesome day, Mike and I went back to sleep.

We slept in, but then we resumed an exciting day of touristy stuff.  We saw the Arc de Triomphe. Then Mike and I decided to go to the Montmartre area.  The basilique du sacre coeur stands atop the highest place in Paris.  There is an unbelievably beautiful view of the city from up there. It was cool to see the city in the day time and to contrast that with the night time view that we had seen the previous evening from the top of the Eiffel tower.

The area is famed for having many of the great French artists and thinkers. Although the area has become somewhat overrun with tourism, there is still a nice, old feeling to the area.  It is a fun area because there are a lot of artists (who are now pandering to tourists) and a lot of people who will make caricatures of you. We walked down to the more gaudy part of Montmartre. Next to the Moulin Rouge, there are a lot of sex shops and strip clubs. I did not get to explore this area, but randomly, we ran into some of Mike's friends. It was a really strange coincidence.

After this, Mike and I headed back to make some pasta. Again, it was cool to hang out with Mike and do all of these touristy things.  The host of the couch-surfers was hosting a party so we planned to go. It ended up being pretty hard to get to because we had to take a train and then a bus to get there.  The party was pretty cool. There were a number of other people to meet including another two people from Poland. They were doing some drinking games that were okay but I really didn't drink much.  But I have gotten to the point where I will have a little bit just since that is what is polite in the situation.   It was a lot of fun to talk to these people. One particularly good conversation was with the Czech girls where we talked about the holidays in our countries.   One oddity was that these girls had taken an American culture class so they knew the stories behind Thanksgiving and Martin Luther King day better than I do!   Mike and I stayed out pretty late and so the bus had stopped. We took a taxi back which ended up costing us 25 euros each.  It was pretty expensive, but it was late and I just wanted to get back.  It was worth it because it was really fun to hang out with these people.

Mike headed out on Sunday, and I just took it easy. It was such a fun weekend for me!   The main thing that I saw is that I really enjoyed meeting new people.  It felt good that people were responsive and it seemed that they were interested in talking to me. Also there is just something about making eye contact with people that makes the conversations more enjoyable - somehow I feel more of a connection when I do that. I liked how spontaneous the weekend was and a lot of the most fun aspects of the trip were not really planned way in advance.  Also I was glad that I went out on a limb and spent two hours somewhat late at night in order to go to a party where I didn't really know the host. 

Another aspect is that I felt like I got to meet a different sort of subculture - that is to say the people who couch surf.  It seems that you have to be trusting of others and generally laid-back and able to handle a lot of bumps along the way. The polish girls were saying that they had done a lot of couch surfing where most of their experiences were good but one was really, really bad.  Their host played music late in the night and even watched porn while they were around.   I feel like I have meet other people who seem like they belong to this subculture- some college students from the AMSP camp come to mind.  I wonder if I will be able to connect with people like this when I get back to college.   I feel like most of use at WashU are very locked into our friend group and that most people do not do things along these lines...   There is something about these people who go around on very little money, touring and meeting lots of new people that is attractive to me.  However, I doubt that I will find myself in that type of situation in the future where I can be such a person.

Anyways, I took it easy for the next few days and dealt with some issues.  It just occurred to me that I do not have that many more nights left so I really need to take advantage of my evenings.  However that is for another post...