Virtually Home

These two are not really related, it's just that I remain sick while all around me, people are falling victim to the plague. Erin and Andria were feeling bad when they moved out on Monday, and Maria and Alex are both sick. I've relapsed. However, Amber arrived on a train yesterday afternoon. She got stuck in the middle of Auvergne due to snow, and they all had to sit tight while people got out and poked at the wheels to dislodge ice from them. She finally did make it on time, since they held her connecting train, and I picked her up at St. Jean. We went out to an Italian restaurant, where I had a pizza with apples and olives and honey and onion jam. It was pretty fantabulous. Afterward we took a kind of epic walk, down to Place de la Bourse and along the river, then across Pont de Pierre and farther than I've ever walked on that side of the river, to a church that turns out to be called Eglise St. Marie. We walked in a circle around it, and found that while the front wa...

"Disaster" is about the only word that can describe the beginning of my trip. About midnight before my train was going to leave from Bordeaux, I got news from my mom that the Eurostar might not be running the next day. Confirmation came around 2:30, when I began scrambling to book a last minute plane ticket from Bordeaux to London Gatwick, where I figured I'd catch my previously-scheduled train from Waterloo to Poole. Little did I know that Gatwick had been closed the two previous days, or that British Airways was planning a 12 day holiday strike. Luckily for me, the plane did make it to Gatwick, though it was delayed an hour and a half. Customs in London turned out to be a hassle. I didn't think to write down Tom's address before leaving, since he was going to pick me up at the airport. This fact did not make the customs agents feel comfortable about my being in the country. They seemed to think I would just decide to disappear somewhere in England and just...