Arrivée

Bonjour!
I've had a very pleasant and lazy day in Rungis (in the suburbs of Paris). Both of my flights went well. For my first flight I had the pleasant surprise of being moved from my original seat and placed next to one of the emergency exits. It was still a window seat (yay!) but now I had much more leg room. Taking off at night showed off the lights of Washington DC at their best as they became a sparkling array of intricate patterns beneath me. Over the ocean, all was dark, and we parted with the North American Coast with the farewell of the never sleeping New York City. I dozed off and on, but for the most part found it difficult to sleep. I can't say it was all for the worst, though, as I was awake to see the sun slowly light up the clouds, first with spots of red that melded into a landscape of orange and pink at the horizon of a mirror smooth blue-gray sky. Watching the texture of the clouds emerge filled my last hour or so of flight. The landscape became more and more varied in terrain, resembling first the slight wind ripples on the surface of the water. Then the wind-blown surface of a desert. Now an endless series of waves waiting to crash on the shore, frozen in place just as they began to break. Lastly, the hills and knobs covered in rippling prairie grass. We finally plunged through the surface of the clouds and were emersed in a grey, gloomy, blind world for far longer than I expected, to emerge into a still grey, still gloomy, but no longer blind reality of Iceland. Granted, it was 6:15 AM their time, so we'll give them a pass on the lack of sunshine ;)

My layover was fairly short and uneventful. I passed through customs, as Iceland is part of the European Common Market, and walked to my gate. We boarded, and I must admit, I slept through most of this flight. Well, slept may be a bit of an exageration. It was more a series of light dozes, interspersed with offers of water from flight attendants and thoughts of aching knees. Once at Charles De Gaulle airport, I only had to wait for my luggage to be unloaded and then I walked through the exit to see Mimi waiting for me.

She drove me back to her place where we ate a breakfast/lunch (depending on how you want to look at it). I showered, took a short nap, had tea and cookies, and met Nicole, whom I will be living with for the next several weeks. She is a quite lovely woman and I anticipate learning much from her about the language and culture. I was very excited to note that though I could not fully follow Mimi and Nicole's conversation, I could pick out words I knew and distinguish words and phrases, even if I wasn't entirely sure what those words meant. Not too bad for my first day, and an exhausting one at that. Let's hope it holds true and I make progress in leaps and bounds these next few weeks. I will be quite proud of myself if I can hold my own in a conversation by the end of the first session of classes.

One can be ambitious, no?...

After nap, drinking tea

Tea and cookies