Whoopie, I made it to France!

Well hello there!

I’m finally back in Internet land after an awesome week spent at the beach on vacation!  I thought it was time for an update, but it’s going to come in parts so it’s not super long!  Since it’s been a while, I’m going to break this down into sections and bullet my thoughts rather than write them all out in paragraph form.

Getting Here:

• I didn’t have to check a second bag because the lady at the American Airlines terminal said that the flights weren’t super full, so I could bring my enormous duffel bag on as my carry on and my huge backpack as my personal item.  WIN!
• I went to my gate immediately upon arriving in Chicago for my connecting flight just to make sure I knew where it was.  There was a huge group of people there who were going to be boarding an Air Iberia flight to Madrid.  This meant lots of Spanish speaking Spaniards.  OMG, HOT STUFF.  I was sitting there husband shopping… so much eye candy!
• Boarded my half empty flight to Paris and I almost had my own seat.  Then my seatmate got there.  She was late, she was crying, and they held the plane 10 minutes for her.  She was 20 and was so excited to be going abroad for a year in France and London.  The thing she was most excited for: the drinking age is 18.  Really, that’s all you’re excited about?  As the French would say: « Ça m’énerve! » which is a strong way of saying that something annoys the crap out of you.
• Got to Paris just fine, then had to sit and wait for 3 hours for my train.  It was the longest 3 hours ever!  Then I got on my train and all I could hear in my head was Caroline saying “Sarah, you moost not fall ahhh-slip on ze tren!” (Sarah, you must not fall asleep on the train!) because apparently they’ll just leave you on there and then make you pay for the difference between where your stop was and where you woke up.  I head bobbed like a champ, but I stayed awake.  Turns out my stop was the end of the line, so they would have made me get off anyways.  Oh well… good intentions and all.
• We arrived 10 minutes late because there was an accident de personne, which I thought meant that someone got something stuck in the door or something.  Nope, Caroline informed me that it means that someone jumped in front of the train and committed suicide.  Only 10 minutes late after that happened?  Not sure how I feel about that… She was very nonchalant about telling me what happened – apparently it happens a lot.  

More on what's been happening here later!  Now, I'm going to go sit on the couch and melt because while it's only 82 here today, it's disgustingly humid.  We're looking at 100+ on Friday.  And no pool, air conditioning, or fans.  Wish me luck!

Much love,

Sarah