Heading Home

Thursday, I got to the airport pretty early. I had a jar of lavender honey from Aix, and I had to throw it out because it was a glass jar and I usually never carry glass jars so I forgot that was even a thing :( I was planning on eating it before my flight, so I was very, very sad when I had to throw it out. I took one final swipe of it with my finger, but I was still so sad. I mean I had already eaten more than half of it, but still… lavender honey from Aix…

Anyway, I’m pretty excited to be home! I know there are a lot of little stories and cultural differences that I haven’t had time to explain, so hopefully I’ll continue posting about France for a while after I return.

So after I got to the airport, I called Marie-Claude, and it was nice to talk to her before my flight. It was really hot in Aix, like 37 degrees Celsius! In Paris, it was only 28 or so, and that still felt pretty warm. 

While I was waiting, I found a piano right by my gate! Also a cool French drinking fountain. Remember when I first got to Paris at the beginning, and I was saying how there were no drinking fountains? Turns out, everything is on the port side. All the lounge chairs and eateries and nice bathrooms and drinking fountains. Voilà. 

My flight kind of sucked. I was supposed to sit next to this person, but he told me that he was an assistant for someone and asked if I'd be willing to switch, so I was like Yeah of course! I ended up getting a window seat, which was pretty neat. I got the best view of Toronto, with the CN Tower plain in sight! Although this picture is really hard to tell. 

Okay my flight was really bad because the new seat I got was first of all, pretty dirty. We left like a full hour after we were supposed to board the plane, so we were supposed to get to Toronto around 4:33 (it was originally supposed to arrive at 4:10). And also, this 8 hour and 15 minute flight, we had nothing to do! We were supposed to have interactive screens to watch personal movies and stuff, but for some reason the system broke down so only like, 2 people on the entire plane could watch movies. So literally I had an 8h15 minute plane ride with NOTHING TO DO. It was so terrible. I was planning on watching so many movies. 

And then once we got to Toronto YYZ airport, someone on the plane had a seizure! Which is so terrible. But then we waited another hour for the paramedics to finally take the kid away and then we were finally allowed to descend the plane. It was so horrible and then the baggage pick up took forever and it was just a mess. I almost cried of happiness after getting off that plane because I had honestly had enough.  

Anyway, I'm back safe and sound now in the US! It is still very strange to me. Everything is bigger than I remembered. Like I walked into a bunch of rooms and was thrown off because it seemed like everything had gotten bigger. 

Alright, I'm going to go now. There's so much work I have to do now that I'm back in this country. I will miss walking more than 10 miles a day because of course we drive everywhere here. Ciao for now!

-Cindy