I made it!

So, after a million reluctant goodbyes to friends and family, the time finally came to get on my plane to France. I chose an Icelandair flight because they were basically paying people to fly with them after all of the volcanic activity they had this summer. Such a goofy airline. Everything down to the pillows is an extreme demonstration of Icelandic culture. All of the flight attendants are perfectly blonde and blue-eyed, they blast Sigur Rós and the interior is covered with Icelandic translations of every phrase you could ever want to know. As I was boarding, I noticed that the airplane was named Hekla, after a volcano that experts are expecting to erupt imminently. Couldn't help but take that as a bad omen, but it might have actually been a good one? I managed to sleep like a rock the entire flight. I think I discovered the trick for beating jetlag: you have to sleep at really irregular hours for about a week and build up a big sleep deficit. By the time you board the plane you'll be so tired that you're asleep before take-off. Works like magic.

By the time we arrived at Charles de Gaulle I was well-rested and wide awake. All the same, arriving in a foreign country, in a very different time zone, after hours and hours of travel, is kind of like getting plastered and trying to thread a needle. There are numerous obstacles to navigate and even the most basic ones require intense focus. Getting baggage, getting cash, getting anywhere at all, can be a huge hassle. I wasn't too concerned about all of this because I had some good luck (or divine intervention), I recently reconnected with Clare Longendyke, a friend of mine from high school that has been living and studying in Paris for about 3 years. She offered to pick me up from the aiport and is letting me crash at her place until I sort out my housing situation. 

She's got a big, bouncy head of curly hair, so I expected to spot her right away. Not there. I waited for a while by the exit and then walked around getting a closer look at every curly-haired woman I could see. No Clare. Maybe this WAS all too good to be true after all? I had her cell phone number, but the phones wouldn't take my credit card and I didn't have euros. So, I had to find an ATM (which was a hassle) and get cash, but the phones didn't take bills so I had to get change. Blah blah blah hassle hassle hassle. Several hassles later, I was connected with Clare and she managed to tell me that they had closed the train route to the airport for the day and she had to take a bus detour that was going to make her about an hour  late. At that point I had already killed about 45 minutes trying to figure out the phone call, so I didn't have to wait long before she showed up and whisked me back to her place. 

I got to shower and change into real people clothes and we walked around for a long time and got caught up and ate some bread and cheese and drank a glass of red wine. So, I'm easing into the Paris thing. I've had a handful of awkward french interactions, but I know they're just the tip of the iceberg. My immersion has yet to begin. 

Today is Sunday, so France is closed and I can't really accomplish that much. I'm trying to prep myself for all of the hoops I'll be jumping through in the next couple days. The to-do list is getting long. I'm glad I figured out blogging. I will go check that off my list.