Je arrive à Paris et je suis très fatiguée!

Overall, the trip to Paris was a success!  Once we actually arrived in Paris was the issue…dun dun dun! (nothing too too terrible, just crankiness and jetlag)

My father and I did make a wrong turn trying to find the terminals and ended up on the road for cargo shipments.  After a bit of an argument with the GPS, we ended up on the right track and I quickly got my luggage, gave daddy a kiss, and was off on my own.  The airport was pretty empty, so I checked my bag rather quick and waited in the security line.  Following in the footsteps of daddy-o, I beeped going through the metal detector and they had to pull me aside to check my hands…but it was fine and I was on my way to find Danielle! 

My surprise attack on Danielle wasn’t too successful, but I found her anyways! We sat and chatted for a while and then headed over to our terminal to meet Maria, another fellow stag!  While we were there, the topic of fanny packs came up and Danielle happened to say how ridiculous the thought of wearing one was.  A lady sitting close by happened to overhear, and of course had to mention to us that she was wearing one for her trip. Awkward moment number 1.  Danielle apologized numerous times, but we tried to pretend it didn’t happen.

 

Next was boarding.  I happened to get stuck in the isle next to where Mrs. Fanny Pack was seated.  She asked me if I was sure I didn’t want a fanny pack, so I laughed…awkwardly of course.  Then she told me to have a nice trip to Paris and I asked her where her final destination was.  She replied with “Nigeria” so I tried to be friendly and said “Oh, wow. That’s nice.”  Awkward moment number 2 snuck up on me when she reassured me that no, it actually wasn’t nice.  I scurried to my seat. 

Once we took off, nothing too important happened.  Our lights were flickering on and off by themselves which was pretty strange...They served us dinner at about 7pm (EST) and then just three and a half hours later, we were served breakfast.  Blew my mind.  The movies on board were horrible, but somehow the flight went fast!  It was a breeze once we got to Charles De Gaulle as well.  My passport got stamped, picked up my bag (which ripped a bit….oops—please bring some duct tape when you come, momma!).  

So anyways, we sat in these seats until about 9:45, and got up to stand by door 6.  Time goes by and it was after 10….there was still no sign of our coordinators.  Little did we know, we were at the wrong door 6. GREAT!  We walked to the right one, and of course missed the early buses.. So we had to wait until about 12!  What a long day already and it just began.  We arrived at the hotel and I got to move into my room.  It is very tiny, but cute.  I will post pictures when I can.  Then we had a spaghetti lunch (yes, spaghetti for the first meal in Paris...makes complete sense).  It was fine but knowing we have a whole day of activities scheduled was draining! 

Our first meeting went well.  We broke into our “learning track” groups and all of us stags are on the English/French track, which is great.  Exactly what I wanted.  Our group seems to be a good group, as well!  Jean Philippe went through all of our welcoming activities up until Friday.  Hopefully we have time to sleep somewhere in there! Oh goodness!  Tonight (aka in 30 minutes) we THINK we are taking our first walking tour of Paris (not too sure of the French phrase on our schedule).  Then, we are going to a restaurant down the street from our hotel for dinner and can finally rest and relax!  Hope this blog post isn’t all over the place like my mind is right now. OH BOY! Missing everyone already…

A bientôt!