I must apologize for the delay in writing this post, but I've been busy and travelling and stuff. So, here's what happened in less than 24 hours in Paris.
We arrived at Beauvais airport late-ish Saturday, and had to take a bus into the city. Andrea and I played the see-who-can-find-the-Eiffel-Tower game. She won, but only because she's been there before. Anyways, we had to take the metro to our hostel. I am not a fan of the Paris metro. Yes, it's fast and efficient and whatnot, but it was dirty and really crowded and full of homeless people. Not really my thing.
After checking in, we decided to check out the Eiffel Tower while it was lit up. Most of break I wasn't super impressed by landmarks because I've seen them so many times on tv and in movies, but the Tower was absolutely breathtaking. It was simply lit up at first, and we took pictures, then it started sparkling! It was one of the prettiest things I've ever seen. We had to leave after a while to catch the metro home, but it was still amazing.
Sunday we basically did a run through of Paris tourist attractions: Notre Dame, the Palais Garnier, and the Louvre. We walked along the Seine for a while and ended up just going back to the hostel and eating, because all this travel was exhausting. We gave ourselves half an hour to get to the airport, and we planned on arriving there between an hour and two early. However, our hostel people lied to us and it took us an hour and a half to make it to the airport. Then, Charles de Gaulle airport was huge. We literally ran across the airport (probably about half a mile to our check in gate, then ran some more to our actual gate. Total. Fail. Luckily we made our flight on time, and the watercolor Casey had left at the check-in counter was returned to her by some friendly easyJet people.
All was fine and dandy and we were ready to go home. We got into Luton airport, and Christina, Sarah and I went through immigration. Casey was next, and when she went up to the agent she was told that her visa was expiring that day. Andrea got through ok after that, but they Casey just had to sit there until all the other passengers got through.
Because she had a visa, Casey didn't get a student visitor letter from the ICLC. Andrea and I had ours, so we waited diligently on our side of the border with them. An agent came over and told us that Casey probably wasn't going to be landed and that it would be at least a few hours. We had to call our program director. He wasn't home; his wife took my number and said he would call once he was off the Tube. So, we called Sarah, another ICLC employee. She called Bill (the director) and they helped us as much as they could. Andrea and I showed the immigration officers our letters, and she said they might help, as they took Casey into a room where we could no longer see nor communicate with her.
About half an hour later she came back and told us that Casey was being landed and it would be a few minutes. When we got our buddy back, we all hugged and celebrated. We grabbed our bags, got on a bus and went home. Thus ended spring break. I was sad that it was over, but so glad to sleep in my own bed.
You're still so far behind Lizzy!
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