*Note: it took me 3 days to write what you have below.  Apologies in advance if some of it doesn't make much sense.  I'm (just a tad) sleep deprived.  Note the sarcasm.

4 June 2015

Notes from 10,000 feet up

From 10,000 feet up on the flight to Detroit, Michigan from Nashville, Tennessee

Seeing the world from this height never gets old.  It’s amazing how SMALL everything looks!  That Nashville airport isn’t small but from the air, totally looks dinky.  Houses?  Forget about trying to find anything distinctive.  People and cars?  Yeah, good luck. You need a pair of binoculars.  Granted, I’ve flown quite a few times.  I always remember that stomach sinking feeling you get when the plane goes from touching pavement to being totally airborne.  I absolutely love that feeling!  I remember the ear popping and the attendant’s speech at the beginning of every flight.  But I always forget just how BIG the earth is and how far away places are from each other.  Looking out the window, it’s just you, clouds, and wide open expanse.  That’s definitely something to be in awe of.  The human race thinks it’s such a big deal but there are bigger things out there than people.  We forget that a lot as a race. 

Just looking out the window my mind also wanders to the great beyond – like how far away other planets are from Earth.  I can’t fathom taking 3 days to get somewhere going 500 miles an hour – or taking 10 years to reach the closest planet (or whatever those figures actually are).  We are so LITTLE!  Creation is just so awesome. 

On a slightly different note – I’m sitting on a plane right now flying to Detroit.  From there, it will be off to Paris and a fast-paced city/country-hopping trip that I know I won’t soon forget.  Like I’ve said before, I’ve been to many of the places we’re going to, but they’re all worth a second (or third or fourth) visit.  I absolutely can’t wait to see some of these things again.  It’s still not quite real that I’m going back but it will be soon enough. 

10,000 feet up and we’re so close to being there!  Different culture, different people, different food, different time zone, different everything! 

I wish my own students would be able to experience the world but the demographics of where they come from would impede many of their efforts, especially the financial aspect.  Ha!  If only I could afford to send kids away for a while just to see the world and simply get out of our small town.  I’d give the world to be able to do that.  My kids are lacking in culture and many of them have never been out of our town.  They all think I’m crazy when I tell them I’m getting on a plane and going to a different country.  That’s such a foreign concept to them.  I actually had someone ask me, “You can do that?  Just go and visit?”  Yes, little one.  You are free to explore the world at your own leisure.  I just wish they all could get in touch with reality – a different reality than the one they are used to. 

That’s part of the reason this trip (and trips like this) is so important to me; because if THEY cannot experience the world, I will, and bring that world back to them.  The only goal I have when I travel is to learn and see as much as I can so I can bring it back to them and to my family who also cannot travel as I do. 

Goals for this trip:

Try a very French food

Drink German beer

Take a picture from the bridge at Neuschwanstein castle

NOT cry when visiting Dachau

Take a crap ton of pictures, with me in them this time!

Blog as least once every other day about my experiences

I was SUPER bad about the last two items on my previous trip.  I took about 10,000 pictures my first go-round but was NOT in most of them.  Gotta get better at that J Also, I was so busy that I barely wrote about what I did.  As a result, I forgot a lot of stuff which doesn’t make me very happy when I want to go back and read about my previous travels and then some stuff is missing.  At this point, though, I wouldn’t be able to remember what I left out because it’s been so long.   It’s enough for me to know that I left a lot out, though, and can’t re-experience it.

Anyway, enough rambling about that…

The group I met up with in the Nashville airport is really cool!

Here they are:

Aren't we cute?!  Bon voyage!

Haha, aren't selfies great?

Agghhh!!  We’re about to land in Detroit so I have to pause this.  We’ll see each other again soon.

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Aaannnndddd, I’m back. And WOW did we have a packed day and a half.  It all started when we got on the plane for Paris.  I sat in the middle row (and anyone who knows me knows that that just doesn’t fly very well with me…) next to a young French man who was on his way home.  He didn’t speak much English, nor I much French, so we didn’t talk much.  I did notice how different airline entertainment was and how much of it was available.  Ok, so the seats in front of you (at least on Delta) have these screens on the back of the headrest that have a touch screen.  Passengers can choose to watch, listen, play, follow flight, and many more things.  They even had parental controls and a kids tab for the young ‘uns.  I watched The Maze Runner, which by comparison standards was a terrible movie.  There wasn’t much character development and it seemed like they sort of assumed you had already read the book.  Plus, like always, they left a lot of great parts out, added some others, and changed the ending.  All very typical of Hollywood these days.   After that, I played games and then tried to sleep.  My poor body – it was 9:30 my regular time and 6 am on European time.  I just could not get to sleep.  So I resorted to more games and to watching the sun come up at 35,000 feet.

Still an awesome sight to behold. 

The flight food was actually decent – which was good because I filled up on it which made me not want to eat as much once we landed in Paris. 

So, once we landed it took us about an hour to find baggage claim, get our checked bags, use the bathroom, and find our large group and tour guide.  That’s a long story that I will have to finish for another time because I haven’t slept in two days at this point and I’m so tired I could sleep for three!  But I have to be up at 7:15 am so… signing off.

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And, I’m back!  But I have to be up in about 3 hours sooo, I’ll have to be short on this one.

Ok, so we got off the plane and could not for the life of us figure out where we were supposed to meet up with our bags.  Oh, we followed the signs, but there were different doors to go through which led to different parts of baggage claim and we weren’t sure which doors to go through, so we just picked one.  That was fine because we ended up at customs, stood in line for about 15 minutes (HUGE line, btw, and it moved fast), and a nice man in the custom’s office stamped my passport.  We shared a few words in French and were welcomed into the country.  Yay!  After that, we found the carousel where we could meet our bags, picked them up quickly, and then headed for a bathroom.  When we found one, the dudes could go right in and be done in just a couple of minutes.  The ladies, however, always had a line!  Every single WC we passed had a stinkin’ line that took the better part of 15 minutes to get through.  And that is no exaggeration.  The one we found had 3 stalls, but most of the women had been traveling all night long and needed to freshen up or change clothes, which they did in the stalls.  Don’t get me wrong: I would have done the same thing, too, if I had wanted to do that.  I did brush my teeth, though, which made me feel better.  Anyway, it took about 20 minutes to get through that line.  And there were only about 10 people in front of me.  It’s been that way with all of the restrooms we’ve seen.  The gentlemen is always quick and the women always have to wait.  You’d think they would just put more stalls in the women’s bathroom so it wouldn’t be congested, but they obviously have not thought of that yet.  Maybe in 10 years it will be different, yeah?  Or maybe not, I don’t know.  After the bathroom break, we met our tour guide and our tour group (3 other groups are traveling with us-picture to come) and made our way to the bus, where our adventure begins in the next paragraph.

5 June 2015

Jet lag is the pits...

Right, so we found the tour guide and went straight to the hotel in Parisian traffic.  Which, if you’ve never been to Paris, NO American in their right mind would even attempt to drive in.  I swear I would crash into someone in less than 5 minutes.  They only have 1 rule – give way to those coming in on your right side.  There are lanes on some streets, but those lines get ignored.  Other streets are large enough for 3 lanes but don’t have the lines to designate because they don’t need them.  By contrast, driving in the US is so orderly – here (in France) it’s knock-your-socks-off lawless.

Arriving at the hotel, all we did was put our bags in a locked room to hold them until we could check in later that day (3:00 pm).  Then, we got right back out and the students took the Metro for the first time!  Super fabulous – except the kids don’t know how to ride on a subway.  They’re loud and don’t make room for people very well.  They’re also not used to how close everyone gets over here so they leave lots of space between them (thinking they’re close together), which makes us take up more room.  Ugh…  But, you can’t blame them for not knowing.  So, where were we taking the Metro to?  Only the most famous cathedral in all of Paris!  It has been the inspiration for stories and it’s shown in many movies that are filmed in Paris.  I’m sure you’re not lost and have already guessed Notre Dame.  It’s worth seeing.  The first time I came to Paris, I literally walked across the Seine River, took a picture, and left.  This time, we had lunch by the Cathedral and then went in and looked around.  Beautiful – and my pictures definitely don’t do it justice.  I love the Gothic architecture in Europe.  Every building is unique and every square inch of these pieces of history is different and all have a different meaning.  Like, you can have 50 gargoyles on the top of your cathedral to scare away the bad spirits, but each of those gargoyles will look different or have a bit of a different pose or whatever the artist imagined.  I can’t fathom how long it must have taken to carve those things.  BTW, it took nearly 800 years for Notre Dame to be completed.  800 years.  Like, 4 times the age of America.  One building!!  It’s just so carefully laid out and planned – even the stained glass windows have a specific purpose (to let in light and tell a story).  You know, because electricity wasn’t invented until just a few years ago (relatively speaking).

I should say this before I forget.  I always forget how much I hate the summer.  Not the break from school, because what teacher doesn’t enjoy some time away from their students.  But the heat.  Paris being a more northern city, we all anticipated to be cooler than where we came from.  Silly Americans…

NEVER ASSUME!

It was hotter in Paris than in any of the cities we came from.  Something like 90°.  That was with very low humidity, too, and it was killer.  You stepped outside for 2 minutes and you were sweating within 30 seconds.  Also, we spent the ENTIRE day outside.  We fit right in with the rest of Europe by the end of the day.  We smelled just rosy!    I’m pretty sure I have never wanted a shower more than the one I had that night.  I think I spent 30 minutes cleaning Paris and two flight off of me, which doesn’t sound like much time but when it’s midnight and you haven’t slept since 5:30 the previous morning, that’s a lot of sleep time to lose.

Moving on.  We saw Notre Dame cathedral, had a baguette, drank Parisian tap water (which they say tastes good but is probably one of the worst tasting waters I’ve drunk – spoiled American), and walked a lot.  Around the cathedral, around the rue and the avenue near there, and people watched, one of my favorite pastimes.  After lunch, we (and we shouldn’t have) walked to the Louvre, which only took 15 minutes in hell burning heat.  No big deal.  I don’t know how dudes can stand for their shirt to stick to them.  That there is NASTY.  Once we got to the Louvre, we kept walking around outside before we go to the correct entrance.  Now, I will say, that on the way there we passed flower shoppes (where a bee almost flew up my nose – I disturbed his flower.  It was too pretty not to smell!), pet stores (with hundreds of adorable puppies and kittens), cafés, and countless souvenir shops.  Oh, and get this: it smelled pretty good!  On our way to the appropriate entrance to the Louvre, we passed what we think was a backed up sewer because the rank and vomit-inducing smell followed us for a few blocks, during which time we learned that there is a sewer tour that you can take in Paris that is supposed to be extremely fascinating if the smell doesn’t turn you away.  We didn’t take part.  Our noses couldn’t handle it.

Once inside the Louvre, we actually sat down and drank water for about 15 minutes and rested since we had been on-the-go for over 24 hours.  Then we got shooed away by a cranky lady and decided to take in the Louvre, specifically the Mona Lisa.  I was pleasantly surprised at how much she had grown in 7 years!  And by that I mean, she seemed much smaller the first time – probably because I was so far away – than she did this time.  She’s not big by any stretch of the imagination but compared to 99% of the paintings in the Louvre (i.e. thousands of them), she’s a dwarf planet that doesn’t deserve her own room.  I mean really, what IS the big deal about the Mona Lisa?  She’s just a woman whom we know nothing about that stood for an artist’s picture and now she’s famous?  Who comes up with this stuff?  I mean, really.  I was able to get closer to the paining this time because there weren’t as many people in the room this second round.  But that was the only thing we got to enjoy because one of our group had to pee and so we spent the better part of 45 minutes hunting down a water closet for him to use, which is very difficult when your map is difficult to read and the signs are not clearly labeled.  We literally got lost trying to a) find the Mona Lisa and, b) find a stinkin’ bathroom!  Not in that order, mind you.  But there’s so much to see that it would be impossible to see it all in the 30ish minutes we were in there to look around.  We learned that if you walked into every room in the Louvre palace you would walk 5 miles.  That’s a TON of art!  Paintings and sculptures mostly, and thousands of them at that.  450, 000 (give or take).  Yeah, we had no time.  IF I ever come back to Paris, I’m bringing my hubby and we’re going to put a love lock on the bridge (yes, there are some still there!  They didn’t take them all down), see the Louvre, and the Opera House, which I’ll get to later.

But once our meeting time came around (and we were finished bathing our feet in the cool fountain water), we met to walk back to the metro and take it to dinner at Jordins Cotini, an Italian restaurant somewhere in Paris.  Since we were underground a great portion of that metro trip, I couldn’t point anyone in the right direction.  The food was fabulous but we were all too tired to really enjoy it.  I had a wonderful salad, beef and potatoes, and cream pastry for dessert.  It even had a chocolate swirl on the top that melted when you held it in your hands.  It was absolutely delicious!  By this point it was about 6:30 or 7:00 pm and many of the students had fallen asleep on the tables.  Silly students – many of them didn’t sleep on their flights and they were paying for it ALL day.  Secretly, we all hoped we were finished because we all needed a shower and a pillow.  Alas, that was not going to be a reality until a few hours later.  Our tour guide, Michela (who is German but is also fluent in French and English), told us to get up because we still had at least one more event to do.  Groaning (in our heads, mostly), we dragged our feeble bodies out of the restaurant where we made our way to the Montparnasse building – the tallest building in Paris (but not as tall as the Eiffel tower, but there is still a great view).  Before we went up, since our group is mostly girls, we went to a strip mall (Galleries Lafayette) to go shopping, but we were all so tired, we found a bathroom and sat down until our meeting time.  And a couple of us fell asleep.  Present company excluded.  I’d rather not a) get in trouble and b) get arrested because someone thinks I’m a homeless person because I definitely looked and smelled like one.

Once our meeting time came around, the group went up together to the top of the Montparnasse building.  It really was a very nice view.  Unfortunately, it was very cloudy.  And by cloudy, I mean there was a TON of pollution in the air that it was difficult to see very far.  I tried to find landmarks I knew but I don’t think I found a single one L  Well, except for the Eiffel Tower, but that’s hard to miss.  I also went on the roof which I really liked, except that it started raining so I didn’t stay very long.  After 30 minutes of skyline, we went back to the metro and took it to the hotel where we eventually went to sleep.

It was hard to adjust to the time difference.  I’m not talking about jet lag.  I’m talking about the sun still being up until 10:30 or 11:00 at night and coming up again by 5:30 in the morning.  It’s disorienting to be out at 9:00 pm and the sun is just starting to go down.  It reminded me of Scotland and how I could never get over the sun not setting until 12:30 am and rising by 5:30 that morning.  It’s like my body doesn’t want to feel tired until it’s dark, but by then it won’t get much sleep.  Poor time clock – it’s so confused!  We’ll all get used to it by the time we leave, though, where we will have to readjust to our own time zones and movements of the sun. 

Overall, I think everyone is having a pretty good time. The kids are in good spirits even though they’re tired, but they’re all willing to take on even more activities.  They want to see as much as they can before they leave and I don’t blame them.  The hard part for me is to not run off and find my own activities to do.  Traveling in a group is SLOW, which frustrates me because I’ve only ever traveled on my own and all the things they are telling the kids to do or not do is already something I’m familiar with.  Honestly we spend a LOT of our time standing around and waiting.  If I were alone, I could have done twice the activities the group did and have done it just as well.  But, I’m trying to be a team player and be patient, which is SUPER hard for me to do when I’m tired.  It’ll just take some more adjusting on my part because they really don’t know what to do so they follow blindly and do what they’re told.  At least that’s good – we haven’t had any issues out of any of the students as far as misbehavior was concerned.  We do have a really great group of kids.  Yay!

So, as soon as we arrived at our hotel room, I took a COLD shower because my clothes were sticking to me and I smelled like I hadn’t showered in a week even though I exercised every day.  Rank.  Then I fell asleep and got up the next morning, fresh and ready for our last day in Paris, which I’ll write about in the next post as this one is already quite lengthy.

See you next time!

P.S. I'm not sure when I'll get to post pictures.  We're pretty strapped for time here and don't get much time to sit and relax.  They have us going all the time.  I will try and get some posted in the blogs but can't promise when.