Sunday, February 12, 2012

My First Successful All Nighter

In college, I was a night owl, which meant that among my friends, I was usually the last to go to bed.  Maybe 2am would be the latest.  But I was never one of those people who could pull off an all-nighter.  I never needed to because I actually did my stuff on time. 

The one time I tried to stay up all night was the night before I left France to go home after my semester in Aix-en-Provence.  We had to get a taxi at like 4am, so I just decided to stay up all night and figured I'd sleep on the plane.  Instead, I was miserable for the entire day because I was exhausted and had a headache and felt like d-e-a-t-h.

Generally, in my life now, I have no reason to stay up all night because I never have THAT much homework to correct.

I go up at about 5:30am on Friday because that's what I've been doing every day for a few weeks because the trip was on my mind.  I went to school and then we left for the airport around 2:30pm on Friday.  I am not a good sleeper on planes, but I expected maybe I'd sleep for an hour or so.  I was really careful not to have any caffeine after my morning tea.

That made no difference.

I was up from 5:30am Friday until 3:30am FRANCE time on Sunday, which by my calculations was 40 hours with no sleep.  And it was weird.  I wasn't a zombie.  I wasn't shaky.  I wasn't giddy.  I just didn't have the ability to sleep.  We intentionally took 2 long walks once we got situated and I was tired a few times but figured I would just crash once I went to bed.  No such luck.

Once I went to sleep, it was great and the room we are staying in has metal shutters that make it dark enough that we slept until 9:30am France time.  I hope I'll be more on track by tomorrow because I am not good without enough sleep.

We arrived a little late into Paris but by the time we got our bags and took the bus to the school to drop off the kids, we were actually there at the time we had asked parents to arrive, so someone had the good sense to know how late we'd be.

J-ster and I went back to e-ster's apartment, where j-ster lived for the year she did the Fulbright Exchange and got settled.  HAving lived there for a year, she felt very much at home.  It has GREAT light and it had a big enough living/dining room that we can put 2 twin air mattresses on the floor and still move around.

This was the view when we were "allowed" to open our shades on the plane.  They told us so firmly to shut them after they served dinner that I don't think anyone dared keep them open.   Once they served breakfast, I felt like I wouldn't get my hand cut off if I opened the blind and this is what I saw.


At Charles de Gaulle airport, you do the old fashioned walk down the staircase to the tarmac and to a bus. That's a story for another post, but here are some of the kids and j-ster getting off the staricase.  It was exceptionally cold yesterday and I actually enjoyed my too warm jacket for the first time this winter!


The Concorde no longer flies, but one is stationed at Charles de Gaulle airport, so the bus driver drove by it so we could take pictures.


This is the school where e-ster works, where we dropped the kids off to meet their families.


This is the Seine river in e-ster's town, Melun.  Yes, it's the same Seine that goes through Paris.


I like to see produce stands with all of their fruits and vegetables out front.


I always look at the bakery goods,  but I never buy them.  They seem so complicated to buy and eat.  Too pretty.


We managed to eat 1 of these for lunch and then another for supper.  This is what it looks like when you buy it.  They don't wear gloves, they wrap the middle in this waxed paper and then you carry it around and put it directly on the table.  When in France...


The new Fiat.  If you watched the Superbowl, you saw this little baby introduced.  IT's cute! This was like a light powder blue but the sun was going down, so the color isn't quite right.  By the way, it was a 7pm sunset!!  7pm in FEBRUARY!!


I have no intentions of eating snails while I am here, but I couldn't resist this cute little sign.  It pretty much means Snail Alley.  It was a cute little paved path between some streets.


More pictures to come, stayed tuned!!

1 comment:

  1. Good pictures! You seem to be off to a good start. Hope it continues.
    L, Mom

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