January 1st Tuesday

I had gotten a call from the airport the day before telling me my flight was cancelled and replaced with another one. So instead of arriving at the probably less crowded hour of 6:30am, I walked into a line a quarter of a mile long at 10:30am. It actually moved pretty fast. I was done checking out at 11:00. I just got scared for a moment.

I said goodbye to my parents just outside of the security line. It’s always hard to say goodbye to them but strangely, it was easier this time than it was before going to Chapel Hill. It could be because I got more sleep the previous night.

I was able to reach my gate without problem and enjoy a Four Cheese Pizza from Wolfgang Puck. It was complete with goat cheese to prepare my taste buds for my final destination.

My plane landed in Chicago where it was lightly snowing. We had a slight delay in pulling into our gate. I was wondering if it would have been better to go through Washington Dulles as originally scheduled. On a whim I decided to give myself an American sendoff and have a Big Mac at the McDonalds right near my gate. Then I sat down across from a French family. I don’t know if it was my imagination, but I could feel them judging me and my convenient meal.

We finally piled on the plane headed for Paris. The plane was much older and smaller than the previous one, but being in a seat with more leg room made up for it. Our dinner was a choice of pasta or beef. I ordered pasta and it turned out to be like manicotti. During the flight I made conversation with my seatmates, Camille and Kristie. Camille was headed to Sri Lanka with a Church group. Kristie was headed to Paris to study French in order to move to Djibouti. Eventually, fatigue overcame us all and conversation died down and I managed to get some sleep for four hours. Quite amazing really. When I wasn’t sleeping I was reading my book. I didn’t watch any movies.