The Final Stretch

So there are only three more days until I depart for France. In the three days that I have until then, I'm going to be doing a lot to prepare for my whole journey. From what I hear, the flight won't be so bad, because there will be in-flight movies, food, and I'll have my iPod and a bottle of sleep medication to help combat the jetlag that will no doubt ensue. It's the entire process of getting on and off these flights that really worries me.

First off, I have to wake up at about 6 in the morning to get on a flight to NYC that takes off at about 7:15. Okay, maybe I'll have to wake up a bit earlier, but you catch my drift. After that, I'll have a 6 hour layover, where I'll be free to do whatever for about 4 hours before I check in for the flight to Paris. We would have had a direct flight, but since the darn terrorists knocked down the World Trade Center, the Saint-Louis-based TWA went out of business in 2001, and it's been connecting flights ever since. I realize that I'm definitely not qualified to gripe and moan about the 9/11 atrocity, but it is a real hassle.

Anyways, after I've checked in 2 hours early as per some weird international law, I wait. A lot. And then I get on a plane for 15 hours and wait a lot some more. Once I'm in France, I'll have to go through customs, all alone, and wait for about an hour, when all of my classmates arrive for the official school French trip. The reason why I can't go on the same flight with them is because they all needed round-trip tickets, and, because I definitely wasn't leaving with them, I got a one-way ticket. So basically I'll be all by myself waiting while they're on the plane actually having some entertainment with one another. All I can do is pray that I won't be stuck between two fat or flatulent people. That'll be the kicker.

While the flight definitely won't be fun, I hope my family will be pretty cool. Apparently my "brother" is a kid named Nicolas, and it will take all of my willpower to keep myself from calling him Petit Nicolas. Because he may kick me out of his house. And that won't be fun.

If anyone's reading this, ask me for a few pictures! I'll be there during the Tour de France, so I can take cycling pictures as well, in case anyone's interested. All photos will be published to my Flickr page, which, if I remember correctly, has a widget feature that'll let me post a slideshow. I just hope I'll be able to blog while I'm with my family...