My mom is somebody whom I always knew to take midday naps and conserve her energy. Until, that is, we arrived in Paris after 32 hours of traveling. We had left Ohio the night before, speeding across the Atlantic east toward the sun. We had seen the sun rise and set in a short time. I was exhausted sprawled out on a hotel bed. We finally made it. We were spending the winter holidays in Paris.

I felt I could barely move. Yet she convinced me to move my sore body and we went to get some tea at a nearby coffee shop.

At the coffee shop I got my first impression of Parisian girls. There was a group of five young women, each about 20 years old, sitting at a table close to ours. They had textbooks with them but they were talking and giggling among themselves. Something about them intrigued me. They were different in composure from American women. They looked smart and had an unassuming nature to them. In that moment, if for no other reason I wanted to learn to speak French so I could ask them what they did, what they liked, and what life was like for them growing up.

There is something about the language that attracts me. When speaking English we mainly talk lazily from our mouths. Speaking French requires more use of the lips and the throat in pronouncing sounds, which makes it a more expressive language.

Winter is a great time to visit Paris. We got cheap plane tickets in the off-season, and found an apartment which we rented by the week. With fewer tourists there we got a more personable view of the people and their culture.

People are nice in France; I don’t care what people say. When asking for directions, people would spend 10 minuets helping us out. One group visiting Paris from southern France, I remember, was especially nice. Before I could tell what’s going on, two women on either side of me took the map of Paris from me, and helped us look for where we were trying to go. Each of their faces was pressed up against the side of my face as they examined the map. It was as if they had no sense of personal space. They were totally serious and focused and I was dumbfounded. I can’t say I had a problem with it, but such closeness with complete strangers, especially of the opposite sex, was foreign to me.

Americans swarm France during the summer asking questions in English, expecting a reply, or they ask “Parlez-vous anglais?” (Do you speak English?) I once asked that question to a woman in a travel agency because I wanted directions to the train station. She got mad. She started waving her arms, pointing at the door, and speaking loud and fast in French. Then I asked her my question in broken French. All of a sudden she totally changed. She seemed to say, “Oh, now, look at that. You do know how to speak French. Oh yes, the train station is straight past such and such and then on the right.” As I left she looked pleased and happy. She waved a friendly goodbye.

Somebody told my mom and me that for New Year’s there would be fireworks on the Eiffel Tower. On our way to find a place we passed under the Eiffel Tower. It was dark by then and at the base of the tower it was a war zone between locals with large dynamite sticks that could almost pass for firecrackers, and the tourists. We had to duck a few times as dynamite sticks flew over our heads. Other times we had to step to the side 20 feet because a stick of dynamite would role up to our feet. But eventually we got to the other side unscathed.

We found our place along the other side of the river and waited for a few hours until midnight. Thousands of people collected. People counted down and then… two fireworks on either side of the tower exploded. That was it. No grand finale. Nothing exciting. Two fireworks. There were so many disappointed people trying to leave that nobody could go anywhere for a while.

When we got to the subway it was so congested that people were pushing each other like sardines trying to cram down into the tunnel. We decided to check out the entrance across the street. Not a single person was coming or going from that entrance so we proceeded down the stairs. Right before we reached the bottom of the stairs we looked behind us just in time to see a flood of people coming down the stairs toward us. We had no choice but to keep moving. So we kept moving in the direction everybody was going and we ended up coming out the entrance we originally decided not to go down. People where still trying to come down that entrance. We were caught in a clash of young children, elderly people and drunken fools. To top it all off a man from above the subway entrance, desperate to get home, dangled and then dropped a young boy, who appeared to be his son, into the mess of people. The crowed pushed and swayed until finally like a jug dumping out water, after a few glugs, we were spit out the subway entrance.

We decided to walk a few blocks over to the Champs Elysées, the famous street with the Arc de Triomphe, before trying the subway again. The Champs Elysées was packed with people pounding shots of liquor and downing bottles of beer. Without a heavy puritanical influence, as is the case in the United States, there are virtually no public intoxication laws. When we reached the subway it was closed for the night. The police were blocking the tunnel and keeping people from pushing each other onto the tracks.

We befriended a brother and a sister who lived near us, and we walked two miles with them to our apartment. At one point along the walk a drunk, who could barely stand, seemed to be following the woman we were with. At another time the woman had a drunken guy come up to her and put his face inches from her cleavage, shake his head, and growl.

Interestingly though, most people we talked to said there was very little crime in the city itself. Most of the crime was in the suburbs. Every woman we talked to told us she didn’t feel scared going out at night by themselves. However a few women told us they preferred to stay home, or be in a group, because the men were annoying and might childishly harass them late at night.

As crazy a night as I had, I would not trade it for spending New Year’s in the United States in a thousand years. Maybe some year soon I will go back without my mom and will have learned the language.