Pseudo First Day

Monday morning, Muriel gave me two options: I could come with her to school and sit in the staff room all day until they could move me into my apartment, or I could stay at her house all day by myself.  Two factors influenced my decision.

Big City to Small Town

Somehow I knew my contact before she introduced herself.  I’d been looking for a younger-than-middle-aged woman with possibly two kids in tow, and when a young boy with a slightly Bieber cut and a girl that could melt steel with a smile skipped across the tram tracks, I just knew the couple behind them were my contacts.

Again, I don’t know what gave our little group away as the Americans she searched for, but she and her husband approached us, and I introduced myself and everyone else before they suggested having a drink.  As a rule, one never says no to a drink, so while we’d just finished one café experience, our giant group of eight sat down together.

Insert awkward silence here.

Angers . . . I’m Ba-ack!

This flight was the first time I’d ever laughed freely in a security line.  One of the TSA guys was telling jokes while giving us safety instructions.  He would pace back and forth in front of the new image scanners, and he said to no one in particular, “How many of you smoke?”  Silence.  “Well some of you are lying, because studies say at least one in five of you do, and after this checkpoint, you can’t just step outside to light up.  So if you’re jonesing, too bad for you.”  After surviving the scanners (I really wanted to opt for the pat-down instead, but I thought I’d better not make a scene), we sat in O’Hare for a couple hours before boarding the flight.  This waiting period was the most extensive amount of time we spent together without having a preplanned topic of conversation in place.  Let’s just say we definitely earned our merit badges in Small Talk that day.  We also tested our oral comprehension, as we happened to choose seats next to a French couple.