arrival

I am exhausted. It says on my computer that it’s 11:45 AM back in Minnesota, which makes it 6:45 here. My goal was to stay awake until at least seven (the best way to fight jet lag is to assume the new sleeping schedule). Good things about the trip—we made it here… I had a group of people to walk back and forth through terminals at Charles de Gaulle (lugging luggage up escalators, down escalators, and up again)… and I wasn’t one of the people whose luggage didn’t make it. And the girls in one line while boarding for AirFrance had to pay over a hundred dollars for their second piece of luggage, but in my line I didn’t have to pay anything for having two. Drowsiness is swooping over me, soon I’ll put a movie from home on and fall asleep. And my body still doesn’t quite know which way is up. We had turbulences all the way here. On AmericanAirlines (a flight that gave as much room as the charters to Mexico and only had communal TVs—my last trip to France was MUCH nicer) we bumped to the left, and then we went bump de bump to the right. In the last hour of our flight before landing we experienced real turbulence. I was really impressed with the children who kept sleeping (there were about ten within a couple seats of me, which was fun because French children have sing-songy voices that I like listening to). I knew that there were at least four other people on the group flight, but I didn’t get to sit next to any of them. After, when we were checking luggage, we found about 10 more. On the flight from Paris to Montpellier most of the passengers were study abroad students. This flight was a common bonding experience because on the way down, after experiencing some bad turbulence, the pilot announced that we’d be experiencing “des turbulences fortes!” (they got stronger). It was like a huge roller coaster ride all of the way to landing and a lot of people had trouble standing afterwards. There were a lot of white faces. We were met at the gate by our program director who came to give us a schedule for the weekend and told us to take a taxi to the hotel, “Which hotel!” some of us shouted at her back. We arrived in Montpellier to see the rainy wind blowing palm trees and the faint smell of salt water. Our taxi driver told us that the three days of rain this winter are yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Anyway, we made it here; I’ve spent the afternoon in a drowsy bubble walking around Montpellier with new friends. For the moment, I just want to be home relaxing (after those hectic travel days), but I’m sure once I get some sleep and especially in a couple of days when we get to go to our apartments (I hate hotel life), I’ll have recuperated. Then I'll get to move into my apartement and the weather will be nice, I'm really looking forward to settling in.