Thursday, March 01, 2007

Nous Sommes Ici!

That's "we're here!" in French. ; ) Unfortunately, we do not have internet in our home yet which is why I haven't updated till now. I have been on serious internet and blogging withdrawal... At least now I'll get to write some (I'm using Zach's laptop at his work).

So, sunday we got to SFO airport with our 5 bags, plus the cat and we walk up to the Air France ticket counter and... they can't find our reservation. Apparently the travel agency that booke dour ticket didn't go through some crucial step and the whole thing got cancelled. You bet we were panicking slightly. We bought new tickets right then and there, and were able to board our flight after all. Phew!

Sierra was a total trooper, she barely let out a beep the whole time. She just sat, curled up in her carrier, looking kind of catatonic. She was pretty freaked. But she did great. So, after 11 hours of a fairly easy flight (Zach actually slept, I didn't really, but after only trying for an hour I just gave up and read my book and watched The Illusionist and the flight seemed to go by quickly after that) we get to Paris and go through security again (we had to take Sierra out of her carrier each time we went through security) and then went to find our gate for the short jaunt to Geneva. We found a gate that had our destination and time listed- perfect, right? So we waited, and then they started boarding and this was the slowest boarding process we have ever seen. They had 1 lady seeing everyone through, it was a mad crowd, and she was taking forever. Anyway, she takes my ticket and scans it through, then says "Oh, you're not on this flight, you're on the next one, just wait at this gate." Confused, I stepped out of line, and Zach out of curiousity went to check the screen again to see what's going on.

Here's what had happened-- the flight we thought was ours was a flight from 1 hour earlier that had been delayed until the exact same time as our flight. As we sat there waiting for the wrong flight, ours was boarding downstairs. We realized this just in time to see the bus taking passengers to the flight drive off. We wound up having to wait 2 more hours to take the next flight. I was pissed, but the rest of the flight went well, and we got home.

BTW, in Geneva no oine evcen asked about the cat, or seeing papers for her. Woot!

At the Geneva airport we got our rental car, luckily it was big enough to fit our 5 bags. It's a manual, so I was set to drive us home (with Zach's directions). I went into automatic mode and put the car in what I thought was reverse-- far right, and down position. Except the car then went forward. I then took a took at the gear shift and noticed that apparently this car has 6 gears, and reverse is next to the 1st gear position... somehow. After a few more attempts, and slowly inching dangerously closer to the car parked in front of me, a guardian angel magically appeared and offered to back the car out for me. After that we were on our way...

Until we took what we thought was a wrong turn (found out later we were going the right way, but oh well) and I pulled into a parking lot to turn around, and had to try going in reverse again. This was just a comical moment... for thos ewatching from afar. I tried again to put it in reverse (apparently there's a little lever just under the gear shift that you have to pull up on to put it in reverse). Zach, somehow, had this mastered-- each time he tried to put it in reverse, the car actually went backwards. But each time I tried to do the exact same thing, it wouldn't work. We went back and forth 3 times like this, before I finally threw my hands up and decided it was time to go home (thanks to Zach's magical touch, we had been able to back out properly).

After all that... we got to our new home, at about 5pm on monday evening. And this house... is amazing. It is gorgeous. It is so much cuter than I even remembered it. I love love love love love this house. And the neighorhood? I went walking around the next day, and the best way I can describe it all is "painfully adorable." THere's houses that block the view from our house, but if you walk around a bit you can see what I think are the Jura mountains. There's snow on them. And there's pretty fields all over the place. And when we drove around on tuesday we saw several people walking around on horses. Heck, I even saw a group of people on horseback walk in front of our house. I took a bunch of pictures, I'll get them up hopefully once we have internet at home.

Ok, I should get off the computer now... I have some more stories, such as when I tried to buy milk at the grocery store, but I'll have to recount them some other time.

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