Dear friends and family,
Most of you know of the great home exchange adventure we are doing this summer with our wonderful new French friends Clelia, Paolina and Léon. They arrived in San Francisco July 2, and we had that evening and the next day to get to know eachother and exchange information and tourist advice. They are an amazing family and it feels like we have known eachother forever. We have so much in common, I want to wait and write another entry about them and sing the praises of home exchanges, which is a fantastic cultural exchange and a terrific way to travel. But on to the beginning of our adventure…
We made it!! It’s been quite a journey just getting to France. Our trip was full of interesting delays and amazing good luck. A little over an hour into the trip the flight attendent got on the intercom and said “is there a doctor on board?” Not a good sign when you have connections to make. Unfortunately a poor guy had what appeared to be a heart attack, or some kind of heart incident that required our making an emergency medical landing in Salt Lake City. While all of this was happening, a passenger sitting near Teal and Uriah started cursing at his girlfriend and then became belligerent towards the flight attendents. They really mean it when they say you have to be on your best behavior on planes because after the EMT’s took the patient off the plane the police came in for Mr. Jerkhead. They escorted him off the plane with no incident (except clapping by the other passengers). Oh, to have the power to do that to any jerk that misbehaves like that!
Anyway, this all made our plane 2 hours late and made us completely miss our connection from JFK. Lucky for us though, there were enough Paris bound passengers on our plane that American Airlines decided to holdover the outgoing Paris flight for us. And on top of that they even got our luggage on the plane!! This is a total plug for visualizing the best in a difficult situation.
Nous arrivons!!
Clelia’s daughter and good friend, Amalie and Pascal, very graciously offered to pick us up and take us to Chatou. They are wonderful, kind people and it’s a comfort to know we can call on them for help. We are certainly Americans in Paris. Everyone is counting on my translation skills from 30 years ago high school french. I should have paid attention better back then… It’s frightening to think I’m the one who can best communicate in our group.
This place is even better than we dreamed of. It is perfect!!! We were all very very tired. Navigating to the little village of Chatou and foraging dinner was difficult and hilarious. We all came home and fell into a stupor before dinner. Woke up, ate and went to bed. I stayed up to set up this blog.
The keyboard on a french MAC (I’m using her computer) is completely different and my head is going to explode from having to concentrate in such a fog of fatigue. More tomorrow, I’m going to see if staying up 30 hours helps my insomnia!
