As some of you already know, we had a rough time of getting to France. Our flight was canceled and we took a detour through London which essentially took 12 hours longer. Given that we spent so much time in the Miami airport, I went to as many stores as possible looking for a kindle case. After I had dropped it a few times, I decided it needed protection. I did not spend an entire day negotiating with UPS and bugging the Yale Summer Office and finally chasing down a UPS truck all the way across downtown New Haven to lose my kindle because it got squished in my backpack. No inky screens for me. So when we were switching terminals (the result of switching our flight to British Airways) I would stop at every store asking if they had kindle covers. One did but it was for Kindle 2 so my wee bitty kindle would fall out. BUT, London is really spiffing up its airport for the summer Olympics. London-Heathrow is essentially one giant shopping mall. The only downside to this place is that each terminal in itself is fairly small so there aren’t too many gates per terminal. This means that you have to wait in a common waiting area until 30 minutes before your flight when a gate will finally be assigned for your flight. Luckily, the first store I went into had an entire collection of M-Edge Kindle covers of varying sizes and pocket quantities. I bought a simple one with just a cover, no straps or buckles or pockets, which is hot pink and matches my bag. It really was one of the two colors that was available for that style, but I might have chosen that color anyway. I think I’ll get an amazon one with an integrated light later on, but for now this is good. I said it was lucky that the first store had covers because at that point I was running on something like less than four hours of sleep over a weird 30 hour period and having slept very little before that (curse you late night packing!). We sat down in the common area and all proceeded to slump forward and fall asleep on our backpacks. I think that weird nap was what got me through the six+ hour drive to La Rochelle.
Last time I was in France, which was six years ago, it was one of the hottest summers of my life. When Europe gets hot, it’s dusty and stuffy and smelly. I don’t mean to group all Europeans under one stereotype, but it is very true that a larger population of Europeans do not wear deodorant/antiperspirant which leads them to smell. Luckily I have my Burt’s Bees lip balm so whenever I get an unfortunate whiff of someone’s BO, I pull out my lip balm and smell it. The mint smell is so strong that it has an astringent effect.
Well this time around, the people are likewise as smelly (although maybe fewer than last time) but it’s freezing. It’s been in the fifties at times! What is this? Ceci n’est-ce pas été? I don’t even know if I wrote that right but the point is that it is summer and I should not be wearing long jeans every day (I don't want to hear about me writing things here in French. It's just a few words and by now browsers are pretty good at translating. I'm looking at someone in specific here). Especially since I brought two pairs and I refuse to wear the other one because I wore it all through our 24+ hours of travel to get here. Those other jeans are basically falling off and smell like plane, probably. The problem is that these other jeans, although dark, will get dirty and I’ve already spilled some chocolate on them. I tried to wash it off but instead the towel came out blue. I don’t know if I got the chocolate or not. It’s also been raining a lot. La plui, the rain, it follows me everywhere. I feel like the rain god in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Next time: Pictures of La Rochelle and maybe some anecdotes!
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