I'm Here!

Well, I made it here and I can gladly say it is the smoothest travel I have had in a long time. Both flights were on time, my baggage was one of the first to come through the carousel, and Mme. Nanquette and her son Aurelien were there waiting to pick me up - and I recognized them!

I just woke up from a 13 hour slumber (I didn't manage to sleep much on the plane, but I did keep myself awake until about 10 pm last night, which I thought was pretty amazing until I virtually fell asleep at the dinner table), but maybe that will be all I need to get on track.

Yesterday was a great day - the Nanquette family has a nice home and I got to meet everyone. Aurelien, who lives in Toulouse, is actually home for two weeks with a broken hand. Emeliene moved out recently, but stopped by to enjoy some galette with us in the afternoon (basically an apple tart with a flaky pastry crust). Ophelie (17 year-old) even invited two friends over to join us for dinner and speak some English with me.  I definitely understood more than I had hoped (probably about 20 - 25%) and everyone was really nice about saying that my French was pretty good, and, I didn't even have a headache. Let's see what today brings.

I think the most interesting part of the day yesterday was venturing out to "Les Soldes" with Marie-Christine and Ophelie. The sales happen only twice a year (January and July) and they started last Wednesday, so this was the first weekend of the sales (the run through February 14). It was complete madness! First, the traffic just to get to the shopping center was absolutely crazy and we had to jockey for a parking spot (Marie-Christine drives a van and she's awesome at maneuvering it into really small spaces - all of the roads here are really really narrow)!

Once we got inside, some of the names of the stores came back to me from my time in Strasbourg - but it was literally wall-to-wall with people. Yes, there were some great deals - one store we went into was virtually 50% off everything - but I was just too tired and overwhelmed to really get into the shopping part of it. So, I browsed, tried on a couple of things, but mainly just tried to enjoy the experience while not sweating to death. But, the trip was worth it because Marie-Christine and Ophelie got a few things. And, there's still almost a month left for me to get back to the stores, which I'm sure I will!