Exhaustion, and contentment.

I woke up this morning at 6 CDT, and sort of dragged my feet to the shower and through the end of packing. We put my stuff in the car and went to Blue Moon, where I ate a delicious granola parfait. Mom and Dad drove me to the airport, where I waited for two hours to get on my plane to Houston.

The flight to Houston was uneventful. When I got there I ate a Chicago-style mini-pizza for lunch and found it to be way, way less than impressive. I waited for three hours, and then got on my plane to Paris.

I had the best flight experience ever -- I had a window seat near the middle of the plane, with no one seated next to me. I got a lot more room than I otherwise would have had to stretch out in, and I could have gotten out of my seat any time I wanted! It was a miracle. I even managed to fall asleep for about ten minutes, until the airplane started beeping relentlessly and I couldn't get there again.

I landed in Paris and-- you guessed it -- did another few hours of waiting. I wandered around looking for my gate, with the sinking feeling that my bags would never make it to Bordeaux -- after all, how could it possibly be true that I didn't need to pick them up in Paris, take them through customs, and then re-check them? That was the case, however. Customs was about the easiest thing ever. No forms and no questions at all -- not even "how are you". He didn't look at my visa, just gave me an entry stamp. I hope that's not a bad thing.

So then I had three hours to wait. Charles de Gaulle is fascinating on a couple of levels. I find it bizarre architecturally, but probably more interesting is that it has very little semblance of organization. I mean, for an airport of that size, it has completely inadequate seating, staff, and routine. The employees that, in the US, are waiting at each gate for as long as you are, seem just to flit between gates at CDG, only appearing five minutes before boarding time, with an angry line of customers on cell phones trying to upgrade their seats or catch a later flight or any number of other things. And while the staff is busy trying to handle those people, the rest of the passengers are at least thirty minutes late boarding. Which is exactly what happened to me today. So, exhausted and more irritated by the second, I stood in front of gate D54, with so many people packed so closely that when she finally DID call rows 15-36, I couldn't even GET to the gate. Boarding took 45 minutes after it started 30 minutes late.

As you can imagine, as is probably everyone's reaction when he or she doesn't have the phone number of the person picking him or her up, and has no idea what she looks like, and no way to communicate how very, very late they're going to be to the first meeting, I was getting pretty anxious.

I got on the plane next to a French woman with a very young son who wouldn't stop hitting or kicking me all during the flight, especially when I was trying to sleep. His mother didn't seem to care. She made sort of vague admonitions about how he shouldn't, but it wasn't very effective. Miraculously, I fell asleep seconds after takeoff. Wheels-up was the absolute last thing I remember, before I was kicked awake to see the flight attendants picking up trash and preparing the cabin for landing. And that's when the anxiety kicked back in again.

I got my bags, was was both surprising and a relief, since I really didn't want to have left them in Paris. Bernadette was waiting right at the exit from the baggage carousel, and when she saw me she instantly asked if I was me. We loaded my stuff into her Peugeot and drove straight to her hours, to have lunch with her kids. We spoke French on the way, and she was complimentary of both my speaking and my writing, and told me I shouldn't even worry about taking the DEFLE test and just take classes.

Anyway, there are three kids, probably the youngest is 15 or 16 and the oldest is somewhere around 20. We had lunch out in the garden, which is pretty much the exact image you would conjure in your head if I told you to picture the scene. The house was two stories with red shutters and grape vines growing up the walls -- complete with grapes, some of which we ate with our meal. We also had homegrown tomatoes with olive oil, slices of cantaloupe, some zucchini and eggplant, and while all of that was going on, Bernadette's son was grilling mackerel on a table next to us. Like, whole mackerel.

Those of you who know me might recognize the problem with this, since I typically draw the line at eating anything that still has recognizable body parts -- in particular, eyes. However, I figured it was my first five minutes in France, and sort of adopted a "do as the Romans do" idea. I'm not sure the Romans eat whole mackerel, but there it is. It wasn't bad, either.

After lunch we ate some grapes from the garden and drank some coffee (they offered to make me "weak American coffee" and I declined rather adamantly -- because French coffee is delicious) and talked about the apartment and various other things. We switched back and forth between French and English a lot. Mostly they spoke among themselves in French and about half the time to me in English. Sometimes the kids would ask for clarification on what an English word meant, or which to use, and I would do the same with a French one. It was a really pleasant afternoon.

Afther that, Pauline, Augustin, Bernadette and I drove to the apartment, pointing out landmarks and resources along the way, and Bernadette walked me around explaining about things. I have a rommate until tomorrow. She's a French woman who was part of the round of tenants before me. She's not home yet, so I haven't met her, but hopefully things will go smoothly. We need to talk about changing the electricity and internet to my name, and hopefully other things.

I called my mom after Bernadette left, to assure them that I wasn't dead or anything. The apartment is 18th century construction, with a stone staircase worn dangerously smooth over generations. It has these 10 foot glass doors that open onto a wrought iron railing over the street, looking straight at the Hotel des Archives, which is a 17th century building with wisteria blooming on the second story across from my window.

I hung up with my mother and went on a search for euros and groceries, in case when the weekend happens tomorrow, I can't find anything. I succeeded in finding an ATM several times, as well as a post office near my flat and my tram stops and the cathedral and any number of interesting things. The grocery store was pretty elusive, for all that Bernadette had pointed me in its direction. I walked to where I thought it would be and didn't find it, so I sort of made a circle back to the cathedral near my place. I expanded the circle and found nothing. By this time I was getting pretty discouraged. I'd been up, by this time, for 27 hours, and not really in the mood for walking long distances, or failure. Still, I kept on.

The third time I expanded the circle, thinking that if I failed I would at least be on my way home again, I found a supermarket called "MarchéPlus!". I started laughing. Hard. It's really funny if you consider that "Marché" can either mean "market" or be the past participle of "to walk". It seemed to me that the store's very name was applauding me for having walked so very much more than necessary to find it.

Exhausted and not really sure how much stuff I wanted to carry home, my grocery buying came to this: milk, cereal, butter, pasta, three bananas, some yogurt, a corkscrew, a three-euro bottle of Bordeaux, and a baguette.

Now I'm home, with the windows open and the sounds drifting up from the street. I am content, and exhausted. Trying to stay awake until bedtime, to avoid awakward jet lag...wish me luck.