Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Back in the USA

I know, I know, no post for 3 days, but I've just been so busy!

Quick summary? Busy relaxing, eating, watching movies, and visiting Virginia tourist attractions. In fact, I multitask--I can relax, eat, and watch a movie all at the same time! On Saturday, Jube and I arrived after an epic plane trip to a warm house with baked potatoes and broiled steaks. On Sunday we toured Luray Caverns, where we got to hear "real rock music," played by an organ with mallets that strike stalactites. On Monday we saw King Kong, and today we went to Border's. In depth? See below.

Epic Plane Trip: About six weeks ago, our travel company called to tell us that our flight was cancelled. Refund? 3-4 months. In fact, all itineraries leaving from Montpellier were cancelled. Could we leave from another city? Oh well, I suppose that we could swing things so that you can leave from Marseille. At 6:00 in the morning. That means you have to wake up at 3:30am? Well, you'd better choose this way or your whole trip is cancelled. We accepted this without (much) complaint and showed up at 5:30am at the train station of Marseille the day of the trip--only to find that the SNCF had no record of our ticket. We had to buy last-second tickets up to Paris to catch our flight, then wait in line for an hour to get boarding passes, then wait for 20 minutes in a security line. Then we waited for another half an hour to take off, since the ticket counters were so backed up. (And a female security officer patted me down, randomly, I suppose: Je vais vous controller, mademoiselle.) Arrival in the US was much better than expected, since Jube came through immigration almost as fast as I did. When we got home, we ate good food and went to bed soon after.

On Sunday, we woke up and my mom decided that we would visit Luray Caverns. When I was young, I adored visiting the caverns! The magic had worn off slightly this time, but we still had a good time listening to our guide's southern accent (he called the caverns "cavruns" for the entire hour). That evening we ate barbecue and watched French Kiss. I was really disappointed this time around because I noticed easily that Kevin Kline has an accent when he speaks French!

Yesterday we spent the morning deciding which movie we wanted to see. My mother and I wanted to see Pride and Prejudice, while my brothers favored King Kong--and Jube wasn't enthusiastic about anything, besides enthusiastically against Pride and Prejudice. We ate Mexican food for lunch and then went to see King Kong. Boy oh boy was that a long movie! For dinner we ate sushi and lobster bisque. Yum.

Today has been even more low-key than the others. We went to Border's in the morning where I read Glamour; then we went grocery shopping. Jube and I are going to cook dinner tonight--rougail saucisse. Yum. If anything interesting happens this week, I'll be sure to let you know!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The rougail saucesse was WONDERFUL!! Gem and Jube may need to cook every night they are home!!

Antipodeesse said...

It's always good to be home, isn't it? Happy Christmas to you!