Back in the US

Susie and I are back in the US of A, in the Continental Airlines President's Club in Houston, actually. The eleven-hour flight was actually pleasant, and I was able to get some work done on the plane.

I was expecting some degree of culture shock, but so far nothing to report. Maybe it's because, across the world, airports are such artificial environments that there's not much left to shock, culturally speaking.

As I wrote the other day, I'll continue to blog about our travels until I'm caught up. This will probably take a couple of weeks.

Nearly on Our Way Home

Our plane leaves from Paris on Saturday morning, so we're starting our way home on Friday. It's been a great few months, full of professional growth thanks to Georgia Tech-Lorraine, of satisfaction of teaching thanks to the students here, of discovering and learning about Metz and Lorraine, and of exploring much of northern France.

Susie and I have spent the last two days here in Metz, repacking and saying goodbyes. As you can tell from the blog postings over the last few days, we had worked our way east from Brittany. We spent two nights in Rouen and two nights in Rheims. I was able to post the blog entries for Rouen, and I hope to get some of the blog entries on Rheims posted before we leave. However, that will still leave a lot left unblogged, and I'm planning to post these items after we get back to El Paso. The remaining material includes villages in the Champagne region, our trip to Malta for the LREC 2010 conference, our visit here in Metz to the Robert Schumann museum (the father of the European Union, not the composer), more details of Paris, much more on Rheims, and some reflections on contrasts of daily life in Metz and El Paso.

So please check back over the course of the next few weeks for these postings.

Visas in Hand

On Saturday, we're headed back to Metz. After months of process, a lot of work by the GTL staff, and in-person appointments last Thursday at the French consulate in Houston, our visas arrived this morning. The doorbell rung by the Fedex driver was the most welcome sound I've heard in a long while. Susie and I both breathed big sighs of relief.

Our appointments Thursday morning were conducted through a large window, like that of bank teller, with a speaker system and a slot for passing documents. The person with whom we spoke was at first rather formal. But as we conversed in French and she learned a little about us and why we were going to France, the formality disappeared. We gave her our documents, filled out a fedex delivery form, paid some fees, and had our fingerprints taken electronically. And that was it--about 40 minutes in all. The consular staff ended up being very helpful.

The visas, glued into our passports, look highly official. With their printed photos, fancy reflective text and such, they resemble the main page of a US passport.

So, after a month of teaching remotely, I'll get to work with my students in person. And instead of describing El Paso hikes I'll start blogging again about France.

Home for a While

As I post this, I'm back home in El Paso after the preparation trip in anticipation of our longer stay later this spring. I'll resume posting more fully when Susie and I return to Metz in several weeks (I hope). In the meantime, here are few pictures of the trip.

The TGV station with direct service to the Paris CDG airport is about 30 minutes south of town, roughly midway between Metz and Nancy. On the way out of town, the shuttle from the central train station to the Lorraine TGV station crosses the Seille River, which joins the Moselle in Metz. The city really grew up around the Seille rather than the Moselle, in fact.





Many of the trees throughout the region carry a lot of mistletoe.







The countryside is largely open and agricultural, with fields that, I imagine, supply the big grain towers line that the Moselle just downstream from Metz.



As the road to the station passes through villages, you can see old farm buildings. I can't tell if this was a fortification or a dovecote.




The station sits pretty much in the middle of nowhere. It's not even as big as the grain towers and other agricultural buildings in the area that define the skyline as the road reaches the station.

The TGV Est from Strasbourg pulls into the Lorraine TGV station.

And at the TGV station at Paris CDG airport, the train leaves the station to continue its journey toward Lille.

A highlight of the flight home: a view of Greenland's rugged coastal mountain ranges lit by the morning sun (with thanks to fellow passenger Craig Massey for taking the picture).

Arriving in Metz

We took the newest and fastest of the French TGVs, the TGV Est, which goes from Paris to Strasbourg. We--and all our bags--got on the train at the Paris CDG airport rail terminal. The train quickly accelerated out of the station; cruising speed, so to speak, is about 200 mph. As we headed into the countryside east of Paris, the landscape developed into a rural patchwork of green and brown fields that followed the contours of rolling hills occasionally topped by an old windmill. Evidence of recent snowfalls edged the fields and glinted between furrows. In 80 minutes, traversing Champagne and Moselle regions, we arrived at the Lorraine TGV station.

A smallish shuttle bus carried us and the luggage to the Metz central train station. We passed the Metz-Nancy regional airport, which is not the largest in the world. Planes go to places like Lyon and Toulouse; if you go to Paris you take the train.The bus drivers suggested that the airport existed mainly as a subsidized point of regional pride. When we reached the Metz central station we met Nicolas, our hugely helpful GTL staff person, and rented a car. Fifteen minutes later we arrived at our home in Metz.