3/9/12
Et comme moi
j’ai passé DEUX JOURS à L’ENFER, j’ai fait témoignage à un vrai miracle.
*Avertissement: Beaucoup de self-pity and pathetic moments.
Don’t worry, you’ll laugh, j’espère*
You see, I was supposed to leave for France Friday
afternoon. Nope. Too foggy in San Francisco, flight delayed, would miss other
flights.. so I had to wait until Saturday. I didn’t mind waiting for the sake
of getting one more night with my family. But the emotional whiplash was
crappy. I was so ready to leave Saturday, and so excited. But, my flight from
Washington DC to Frankfurt was late and I then missed my flight from Frankfurt
to Marseille. They had me booked on the next flight for.. THE NEXT DAY. Hellll
nahhh I was not about to spend the night in Germany, alone, with not a word of
German in my vocabulary (Except for ‘zwei bier, bitte.’ Thanks Dad), so
naturally I started crying. A lot. When I’m stressed, I cry. When I’m mad, I
cry. When I’m happy, I cry. I just cry. It’s how I express my emotions and I
can’t help it! But in this situation I really felt helpless. The Frankfurt
airport is a CF and that’s all I have to say about that. Luckily the lady at
the United Airlines kiosk was so helpful (The others in Frankfurt airport, not
so much, one woman literally scolded me for crying. Okay, maybe I was
overreacting. In any normal situation I would understand, but I was a foreigner
who was tired and emotionally on edge, she didn’t know that of course). She
booked me the next possible flight, which was Frankfurt>Berlin>Marseille.
I almost decided to stay in Frankfurt overnight, because I
only had 45 minutes to catch my flight to Marseille in Berlin. But the mean
ladies said that I had to go to Berlin because the tickets were already printed
and my baggage was already on its way. Fine. So I did, and guess what
happened? I missed my flight. (I was
cursing the mean Frankfurt ladies in my mind). At this point, I was delirious
from travel and so tired that I couldn’t even cry, I was just pissed. Calm but
pissed haha. Heureusement the
woman at Lufthansa kiosk in Berlin was really nice and booked me a flight from
Berlin>Lyon>Marseille. (Her boyfriend even shared a little snack with me.
They were so friendly there! I now have a bad taste in my mouth of
Frankfurtians and much better sentiments of Berlinians :P) I had a four hour
layover, so I had a chance to change my clothes from what I had in my carry on
bag (Thanks mom for making me bring a change of clothes!) and I got to grab a
drink, buy some postcards and write a bit.
When we were landing in Lyon (C’est votre pays M. Durand! Super beau, je comprends pourquoi vous
êtes fier que vous venez de cette region!), we passed a rainbow amongst the
lofty clouds. I laughed to myself. How symbolic is that?! In the Bible,
a rainbow was God’s covenant, promise, that the worst was over and that (the
flood) would never happen again. Now, I’m not very religious, but this moment
held a ton of meaning for me. It was a higher power’s promise to me that I had
made it through the worst and I was finally in paradise, France that is. When I
got to Lyon, I automatically felt x1000000000000000000000000000000000000 times
better. I could understand people, I could communicate with them, and I’m more
familiar with French culture in general so I just felt more at ease. My flight,
however, was late (all my freaking flights were late!) and so the lovely people
of Air France put me en priorité
to go to straight through security and
then my gate but because I was running late.
So, I literally had to run what felt like a mile through the
airport because what do you know, my gate was at the very very end of other
side of the airport. Voilà ma vie. I was THAT GIRL who ran like Quasimodo
down the center of the corridor with hundreds of people staring at her from
each side while she struggled to hold all her bags at once without dropping
things left and right, panting loudly and mentally telling herself, “Just keep
going you’re almost there and you CAN’T miss this flight and DON’T LOOK AT
ANYONE the embarrassment is bad enough.” Yepp just picture it now. It was a
cinematic moment for sure. When I got to the desk the very nice man who was
luckily for me not obviously judging my awkward and ridiculous
appearance/arrival, said, “A Marseille?” “Oui, monsieur.” “Bon vous n’allez pas le rater,
ne vous inquiétez pas. Vous avez de la chance ». He took my
ticket and said, « Bon voyage ! » “Merci beaucoup, monsieur.”
Even the baggage men who took my carry-on and put it under the plane wished me
Bon Voyage. How nice!
As I walked up the stairs to the plane, I almost started
crying. L’ENFER of the past two days was coming to an end, I made it,
after plenty of bêtises, embarrassing and sad moments, scary and lonely
moments, and the fear that maybe I wasn’t going to make it at all (Dramatic, I
know), I was on my way to Marseille. You cannot imagine, or maybe you can, the
relief I felt. I sat down on that plane and for the first time in two days I
felt not anxiety, fear, or anger, but excitement. It was a good feeling.
Moreover, the woman I was sitting next to had seen my
American passport, and saw the look on
my face when I saw the nighttime lights of Marseille (ecstasy I imagine)
and said, “C’est ta première fois à Marseille?” “Oui! En fait, je vais mes études cette année à Marseille. Je suis des
Etats-Unis. » « Ah bon, je me demandais ça, j’ai vu ton passeport et
c’est pour ça que j’ai demandé. » « Ah. Oui.. » And thus
continued our lovely and amical conversation. It was a good way to enter
Marseille.
I then met my host mom, I was looking for my baggage when a
woman came up to me and said, “Est-ce que vous avez vu une jeune fille
américaine très chargée?” “Bah..
je suis une américaine.” “Ah! Tu es Katherine?! Je suis Marie-Paule!” « Ah
oui ! Enfin on se retrouve ! » It was a cute moment, how we
met. We drove back to the apartment which is the most ADORABLE apartment I’ve
ever seen. I will upload pictures, because describing it just doesn’t do it
justice. But imagine the most typically French apartment you can think of. A
tiny street surrounded by close-together, tall buildings, with tall, thin
windows and shutters en façade. A large, heavy wooden door that opens to
a foyer with cute, encircling stairs, no elevator. On the 4th floor,
the door leads to my apartment. In my room I have my own salle de bain ,
which is awesome, but les toilettes are down the hall. I have two
windows that open to the street. The kitchen and living room windows have
spectacular views of the sunset in the evening and the orange and red tiled
rooftops of the city. It’s a dream. Every night I sleep with my window open and
fall asleep to the sound of people socializing into the late hours of the
night. It’s wonderful.
Bises,
Katherine
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