Made it!

Well, after two days of doubt about whether I would actually get here or not, I hopped on a flight out of London Stansted this afternoon and landed in Marseilles just before 8pm local time (one hour ahead of England). It was cloudy most of the way here so I couldn't see anything, but it cleared up for the last 20 minutes or so of the flight. The first thing I noticed was how much more France looks like the US from the air than it does England. Lots of lights everywhere, more developed, big lighted buildings and parking lots, bright neon signs, etc. I'm not sure I really expected that, since Germany was more like England in the feeling that you walked into a storybook instead of a modern city. Obviously, London is the exception in England, but I am almost as far as you can get from Paris here and it still looks like sprawling cities instead of cozy little towns.

My mom suggested that I get a French phrase book to help brush the cobwebs off my four years of high school French, so I picked one up in the airport and started reading it on the plane. It really surprised me how much of it was familiar, and how much I could come up with on my own when I started thinking about various topics. I also could read (or at least get the general idea) of a lot of the signs and advertisements in the airport. By the time our four-person team got checked into the hotel and thought about dinner, it was almost 10pm... so guess where we ended up? McDonald's. Yeah... what is it with me and getting stuck at American restaurants on my first night in foreign countries? Popeye's my first night in England, McDonald's my first night in France... Germany was the exception, dinner in the German restaurant near Edelweiss that first night was the best food I had all week there. Okay, I digress, back to French. So anyway, we go to McDonalds, and none of the staff spoke English. My other team members resorted to pointing at pictures, but I was actually able to order in French and even succeeded in asking to switch my ranch sauce for mustard. So that was kind of cool. :)

I wish I had an interesting picture or two to post for you, but to be completely honest, I haven't really seen anything too exciting yet. The drive from Marseilles to Istres was all in the dark. The view from my hotel room is of a parking lot. The room is nice, I suppose I could take a picture of that. But tomorrow's plan is to go over to the base in the morning to make sure our equipment is all set up and that we all know how to use it, then spend the rest of the day exploring. We don't start 24-hour ops until Saturday afternoon. The other observer and I will be trading 12-hour shifts, and I'm kind of hoping he will let me volunteer for mids so I can explore during the day (with some sleep in there somewhere). Tomorrow morning, I am going running with our team leader, since I opened my big mouth and said I should go and he jumped in and wanted to go with me. So now I have to go. Haha. Serves me right.

That reminds me of one important thing I learned earlier today. After my last minute reservations were made this morning, our site commander called to make sure everything was set. While talking about return trip arrangements, he mentioned that 19 Nov is the latest they will push the launch before they will just scrub it until Dec so it doesn't run into the Thanksgiving holiday. I thought that was very nice to let everyone go back to their families, and I will get to run the 5K with my weather flight! So that was good news.

Okay, I need to get to bed since it is actually 11:30pm here though my computer thinks it is 10:30. Should have pictures after tomorrow!