I’m too tired to think up a good post title

Well, as Gretchen informed everyone, we made it to France!  I survived my first transatlantic flight.  Though I must say, it did not go as I had planned.  Then again, what does?  I will admit that I was somewhat nervous about this flight, and for the past few months Gretchen has been calming me down by telling me she’d be right there next to me and I could hold her hand and it would be fine.  WELL, ladies and gentlemen, that is not what happened.  You see, instead of being able to switch around with others in our group so that we could sit near each other, I ended up being the sole person in our group in a row with complete strangers.  At first I was not excited about this, as I did not think the man sitting next to me would be too thrilled if I grabbed his arm in fear during take off, landing, or any other point of the flight for that matter.  However, other than his initial question of “So, are you nervous to fly all the way over the Atlantic ocean?”  (yesbuti’mtryingnottothinkaboutitthankyouverymuch.) he was quite pleasant.  Turns out he was a pastor from Arkansas on his way to Mumbai for a mission trip.  And it also turns out that he was good friends with a professor from our school.  Such good friends in fact, that the professor apparently played the violin at this mans wedding.  HA.  What a small world.  For real though… how weird is that connection?

So anyway, eventually we made it to Paris and then to Nantes.  I am running on about 5.5 hours of sleep over the past nearly 55 hours (so forgive me for any errors in this post) so it’s been an interesting afternoon to be sure.  I don’t really remember much of what I’ve done, beyond going to the park, which Gretchen already told you about.  Here are a few other pictures from there:

One last thing I want to add before I completely crash, today we had a really light lunch of bread with jams and nutella.  As I sat down to eat my bread and nutella our professor (the same one who is referring to Gretch and I as ‘the pair’) came over and said “If I wanted to get fat, this is what I would eat.”  Um…what does one say to that?  He then said “Wow, that joke sounded so much less bad in my head.” Good to know, haha.  I have a feeling there will not be many dull moments on this trip.

‘The Pair’ has arrived!

It certainly has been a bon voyage thus far! Although MG was a little nervous with flying,(Example: MG-  “Gretch, the plane is tilting”… Me- “MG, they’re just turning.”) she quickly became a pro by the end. She even sat by a complete stranger on the way to Paris. She’ll have to tell you more about that… I was pressured by a flight attendant to order my food in French, but as I mentioned previously, food is one thing I feel confident talking about. We’re off to a good start. Here in France, we’ve been labeled by a professor as ‘the pair’. We’re not sure that this is a compliment, but we’re running with it.  This afternoon, we took a walk to a park and resisted the urge to lay down in the street and sleep due to jet lag. I’d say we’re doing pretty well! After settling in today, we will hopefully be up to continuing the adventure tomorrow!

Clearly exhausted, but loving the French park!