On Friday, May 11th,
ten of the twelve student participants set out from Cleveland
together on the first leg of their trip to Europe; sixteen hours
later, they arrived in Geneva's Cointrin Airport where Prof. Jeantet
was waiting for them with a chartered bus.
As they collected
their bags at the carousel, Kendra and Jeannette came forward
to the window to exclaim something frantically but inaudibly through
the bullet-proof glass. After some entertaining pantomime from
both sides of the window, Jeannette finally pulled out pencil
and paper and wrote the mysterious symbols " Bianca ??? "
from which Prof. Jeantet surmised that Bianca had somehow not
shown up. More about this later...
Jeannette came
out of the customs area, rapidly followed by Jennifer, Emil, Glenn,
and the six others. They pulled their luggage a few hundred feet
to the parking area where our bus was waiting, the driver ready
and eager to load the bags into the bus' vast luggage hold...
By this time
it was a mere half-hour since landing,the students had already
successfully cleared passport control and collected their bags.
So the bus set out and we headed for the French border in the
bright sunshine; the students admired the mountains and colorful
countryside as we all wondered where Bianca might be... After
about 75 minutes' travel we reached Faverges, right on schedule,
and found the host parents waiting for us at the agreed-upon rendez-vous
point behind the town hall.
Now came what
is usually recalled as the "scariest moment" of the
entire trip: the introduction to the host families. Parents and
students lunged at each other in a first and generally clumsy
but entertaining attempt to give each other the traditional French
kiss-kiss greeting on both cheeks. The students' skills at this
activity is sure to improve over the coming days, as they will
be doing this morning, noon and night with dozens of people every
day!
The pictures
above and below show several of the students with members of their
French host families.
We gathered for
a group picture for the local press and were joined by the new
Mayor of Faverges, Mr. Pierre Losserand (2nd from left), who just
last month was elected to a six-year term. (We will be officially
received in a Town Hall ceremony next week.)
But where was
Bianca? No one knew.
About two hours
later, as Prof. Jeantet was having coffee with Bianca's presumed
host family, we received a phone call from Geneva: it was an airport
official asking us whether we knew this very agitated and tired
young
woman, whom he proceeded to put on the phone. It was indeed Bianca,
she had missed the flight in Cleveland by mere minutes, had watched
the plane take off and had had to be sent on a later flight. So,
though tired and jet-lagged himself, Prof. Jeantet raced back
to Geneva (an hour's drive away) and found a very tired but very
relieved Bianca, who was still waiting for her suitcase, which
arrived just a few minutes later on yet another flight. "Oh
no! Don't take my picture, not with my hair looking like this!"
cried Bianca. "Let this be your penalty for not showing
up to the airport on time" replied her prof, not at all
sympathetic to her plea; he then shot the photo above.
On
the drive to Faverges, Bianca admitted that despite her worries
and exhaustion, she'd had a good time, had met many interesting
people, from Egypt, Tanzania, Holland, Switzerland, France ...
and that everyone had been most sympathetic and helpful. We drove
through the beautiful countryside and finally arrived at her host
family's house, where she sat down for a tasty snack in the kitchen;
life all of a sudden seemed a lot better than just a few hours
before!
The twelfth member
of the group, Tony Rett, arrived on his own a few hours later.
An experienced traveler, he flew independently to Paris, took
the TGV train to Annecy, caught a bus for the ride to Faverges,
and then walked to his host family's house well in time for dinner.
On Sunday, we
will all meet for a walking tour of Faverges; the weather is supposed
to be quite beautiful, and we will take advantage of it. On Monday,
we will begin our classes, just in time for the rain to arrive...but
there's plenty of reading and writing to do, so the rain should
not be a problem ... au contraire! It should be quite a
help in keeping the students focused on their work.
The next report
will be filed on Wednesday evening.
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