"Celine?!"

"Yes?"

"Hello! It's Lee!"

"Oh my God! Lee, how are you girl?"

"Just turn on the TV on MTV. Right now! I cannot talk anymore, my dad will kill me!"

"I'll call you back!"

I was watching the TV screen and I wasn't able to believe my eyes. The TV was on MTV and I was writing something for school when the news began and I thought I deserved a break. Kicki was the host and she began telling us about this amazing new group called Westlife coming from Ireland and managed by Boyzone's own Ronan Keating. That's when I dropped my pencil. It just couldn't be true! Shane hadn't been kidding me. This was for real, the group he and Kian and Mark were talking about was for real. We had always thought they had been making all the stuff up just for us, so they would not disappoint us. When we had met them for the first time they were having a dream: to have a band and to make it big into the charts. We knew they had a small band back home in Sligo. When they first told us that the group had Louis Walsh, Boyzone's manager, and Ronan Keating as their managers we just didn't believe them. They told us they were first called 6 on 1 and then it changed to IOU and they were six - Shane, Kian and Mark and some other three guys, Dereck, Graham and Michael, and they performed as opening act for the Backstreet Boys. Then they had to drop the other three and pick up other two and change their name into Westside and then they were the opening act for Boyzone. But we didn't believe them… Nobody had heard of them. We didn't want to upset them so we pretended we believed 'em. But they were actually telling the truth. And now they were on MTV… Shane was missing but Kian and Mark were there with the other two called Nicky and Bryan and they were looking so well… They talked about how they met and they mentioned Shane so he was also in this band that was now called Westlife…

"Hey young lady! Do you know what time it is?!"

"Sure mum! It's 15 minutes to 10 in the evening! So what?"

"You'll have to wake up at 6 tomorrow morning and your bags aren't even packed! When do you plan to do all that?"

"Relax mum, it's not the first tour for me and you know that very well… Packing is one thing I do best. I'll be ready in 20 minutes."

"This is something I wanna see."

But I knew what I was saying… The next morning I was supposed to leave to Paris together with my choir. We were going to have so much fun. Paris was the town I had always loved, even more than Venice, but that's another story. We usually travelled by bus, but this time the French paid for all the expenses. So we went by plane. We were looking at one amazing, but tiresome month in Paris. We were supposed to have 22 concerts in 31 days. We had never done that before, so we didn't know how would all turn out. We only prayed for the better. I packed my bags in less than 20 minutes surprising my mother and then I went to bed hoping to get a good night sleep and recharge my batteries for a long time.

I woke up around 6 the next day and I went straight to the shower. That made me feel a lot better. Afterwards I got dressed and added some more things to my luggage. I wanted to take so many things, I am very fond of all my stuff and that's why I want everything close to me. Obviously I didn't forget to take Boyzone's Said and Done and A Different Beat albums which were so closed to my heart. At 8 I left together with my mum and dad to the airport. This was definitely going to be the best tour of 1997 and maybe of our lives.

We got to the airport at 8:40 and I met a few of my friends. We were so excited about this whole thing. We started planning which seat will everyone have and stuff. The plane was supposed to take off at 10. When everybody came we said good-bye to our families and walked to the passports check and then to the plane.

We landed in Paris at 12:15, local hour, and we were welcomed immediately by the team that organized everything. They were really nice. They told us we were going to live in a hotel a few miles outside Paris, a kind of hotel very familiar to us, called Formula 1. We knew that type of hotels and we liked it, nothing fancy, but nice, and very cheap compared to the hotels' prices inside Paris. We had a bus and two drivers only for ourselves that were supposed to take us wherever we wanted, but especially to the rehearsals and the concerts. I went to pick up my bags, I spotted them and I bent to take them. They were pretty heavy, I picked them up and when I turned around I hit a guy real hard. That made me drop the bags on the floor and start swearing. But it was my fault so I began to apologize in French.

"Excusez-moi! Je ne vous ai pas vu! Vous etes bien?"

"Sorry! I don't speak French… Do you speak English?" said the handsome guy with a very lovely accent.

"Yes! I was apologizing for hitting you that bad. Are you OK? I didn't see you."

"Yeah, I'm OK. But you should be more careful, you might hurt someone or yourself."

"Sure! I'm just a little bit tired. I'm sorry once again."

That's when I heard:

"Com'on mate! We gotta go! We need to get to the hotel in time!" yelled a blonde fellow to the one I was talking to.

"Yeah, I'm coming! Take care! Bye!"

"You too. Bye!" I said and I went to join our group.

We got on the bus and it took us to the hotel. We decided to meet in an hour and visit Paris. As usual we parked in the back of Notre-Dame, the beautiful cathedral, and we decided to meet back there at 9:30pm. We were free to go anywhere we wanted. We formed little groups coz everybody wanted something else and my group went to the Eiffel Tower. It is a real tradition for me to see that every time I am passing through Paris and that time was no exception. We were feeling like home and we got there pretty fast. I loved to stay under it, right in the middle, on the gravel and watch up. It was so impressive! I realized that all my mates were long gone and I went up on the Trocadero. I stood there for ages watching the roller skaters doing their crazy things. It was so dangerous, but unbelievably wonderful. They were all so good, but this girl caught my eye: she was the best, everything turned out so well for her and she was very appreciated by her mates, she seemed like the leader of the group. She seemed very strong. I don't know how but she noticed me looking at her and she asked me in French:

"Do you skate?"

"Erm… no, not at all, I mean not like you! And I would look like an eight-wheel truck, so…"

She smiled and gave me her hand to shake:

"Hi, my name is Celine Lachmann! What's yours?"

"Hello Celine! I'm Livia Vaduva, but you can call me Lee! It's a pleasure to meet you!"

"You're not French, are you?"

"No, I'm from Bucharest, Romania"

"Are you a tourist like everybody else?"

"Well, yes and no. I came here on a tour with my choir and on my free time I like to visit everything I can."

"Your French is very well. How did you learn it so well?"

"I've studied it at school, but I've come to France for a few times and that helped a lot. I improved my French in that way."

"Is this your first time in Paris?"

"No, it's my second one. So I kind of know it."

"I can show you around if you want. And in return you can take me to your shows."

"Thanks! That's a deal! Have you been doing this for long?"

"What? Showing tourists around?"

"No! Rollerblading!"

"Oh! I've been doing this for two years. Since I was twelve."

"Wait a second. You want to tell me that you're only 14?"

"Yes. Why? Do I look older?"

"Yeah, you do. I'm 17 and I thought you were older than me."

"Hehe! That happens to me frequently."

We talked a lot that afternoon. We had many things in common. But the most of all was our addiction to Boyzone. That was incredible. She was as passionate as I was. She had already met them in Paris! Can you believe that? She told me so many things about them. She had lots of lovely memories with them and I was pretty jealous. I also discovered she was a very good singer that loved good music, we had the same tastes in music and it was real easy for us to become friends. She told me a lot of things, she was very sensitive even if she tried to look tough and she was very mature for her age. She had some troubles with her parents and that made her discover the real face of life sooner than the others. At the end of the day she walked me to the bus and she gave me her mobile phone number and told me to call her when I had some spare time. We said goodbye and I got into the bus.

The next two days we had four concerts and no spare time, but I called Celine and invited her to the shows. She came followed by her best friend, Amy. She was also very nice. They enjoyed our concerts a lot and they promised to come as often as they could. On the third day we met in front of Notre-Dame and we decided to go to La Defense. I had never been there so I accepted immediately. The arch was huge. We went on the top of it and inside there was this exhibition of Russian icons. We visited it and then we got down and sat on the steps below the arch. That's when we noticed these gorgeous three lads who were speaking English and they were turning this map of Paris on both sides and swearing a lot. They were pretty funny and we burst into laugh. They noticed us and one of them came to us and said with a lousy French accent:

"Erm… Bonjour! Excusez-moi… erm…" and he continued in English "ah, shit, do you speak English?"

"Yes", I answered.

"Thank God! Nobody speaks English around here!"

"Well, if you didn't know by now, you're in France and we speak French down here", said Celine.

"Sure, but some of you should learn to speak other languages too."

"Why don't you learn French?" asked Amy.

"Erm… nah, not my type of language. But I know you, you're the girl from the airport, the one that hit me with the bags!", he said to me.

"Yeah, that's me. I didn't recognize you. Didn't you need to be hospitalized?" and we both laughed.

"Hey, what are you guys talking about?" asked Celine.

"Well, when I picked up my baggage at the airport I accidentally hit him."

"You sure that was an accident?" she said with a naughty smile on her face.

"YES! Will you stop?"

"Mais il est tres mignon… Mmmm…"

"What's that?" the guy asked.

"Erm… she said that she'll keep her mouth shut from now on" I answered translating Celine's <> in a completely different way. "We were talking about languages. What is the type you prefer mister?", I asked with a smile on my face.

"Gaelic, my native tongue, and English."

"Gaelic? Where are you from?" I said.

"Ireland. You speak English too well to be French, so are you?"

"No I'm not, but they are. I'm Romanian. You said you were from Ireland? Our favourite band is an Irish one."

"Wait! Don't tell me! It's Boyzone isn't it?"

"Sure! How did you guess?"

"They are well-known all over the world and you're girls for God's sake!"

I don't see what's that got to do with it, but I have to admit that they are very well-known."

"Yes, and we're really proud of them. We wanna become as huge as they are in a few years. But we'll have a different style than them."

"Who's we?"

"Me and me mates here. We are working on a band right now together with other three friends. Hey lads come and meet these pretty nice ladies. I'm Shane, by the way, and the blonde fellow is Kian and the other is Mark. "

"Hello!" said the two at the same time.

"Hi! So it's Shane, Kian and Mark. Right? Nice name Kian, I've never heard it before."

"Thank you! What are you names?" said the blonde one.

"I'm Lee and these are Celine and Amy."

Celine's green eyes stopped on Kian and she looked so in love. Amy was trying to impress Mark and I was really happy everybody chose a different one, so the handsome Shane was mine! We took them with us, they were looking so lost in a big city like Paris. We just didn't have the hearts to let them there. He, he!