September 19, 2009

Yes it is September and we left for Spain one year ago August. I have been crazy and panicing that I won’t get my blog done before a year has passed. Good thing that I had detailed lists on my calendar to keep up.

Sunday, November 9 - Brent was busy getting Lee Brown, his wife and another professor at the airport and getting them situated. Dr. Brown was coming in to host a Strength and Conditioning Conference for the week at the UEM. Dr. Brown was Steve’s mentor when he got his Masters at UC Fullerton. Dr. Brown is in remission from cancer, and then recently this summer (2009) his son was killed in a hiking accident. Very genuine guy and very sad story. While Brent was dealing with this, I left him with mom to go to Paris for a long weekend.

Originally we were going to take the overnight train with Ana and Alfonso, but Alfonso ended up getting a job interview. So we decided to go anyway, fly, and stay at a discounted Marriott due to friends and family. Mom and I had to take the bus, train, subway to get to the airport. Then when we landed in Paris we took the subway and got lost. The confidence that I had for subways in Greece, London, and Spain completely dissolved in Paris. Their subway runs with the train and I couldn’t understand it. We arrived soooo late in the evening that the subway was beginning to support the scary looking people. Mom and I were exhausted from walking everywhere – that we were done. We did manage to find a taxi to get us where we were going.

Staying with my mom is always interesting. She has her own time zone and the rules are always according to her. Forget compromise, more like I need a brown paper bag to breathe in. Needless to say, we are both still alive to talk about it.

I was very impressed with France. The people were very nice, we only had a few negative interactions, and most of them were because they were impatient with Mom, so was I. It could have been because we were there during the off season. It was the off season, because the weather truly was horrible. It rained, was cold and had huge gusts of wind the whole time. We toughed it out and got great use out of our rain coats and umbrellas.

Every morning while Mom was getting ready, I went downstairs to check email. The keyboards in France/French are completely messed up. I sent myself an email with the keyboard line design. I did take a long time to use the computer because I had to hunt and peck my typing.

We stayed in La Defense. We were able to take the bus to the actual building. La Defense is a huge commercial building in the shape of picture frame. If you are in La Defense, you can stand look down Champ de Elyse framed by this 13 story building. It was quite impressive. The buildings in this area were so cool and there were statues, art, and fountains everywhere that were so hip.