Welcome back

Welcome back to Pangolin Watch! The blog is back up and running, which means that I, too, am back on the road. The month at home went so quickly, simply because it was filled with seeing wonderful people and doing fun things. And now it’s over, and here I am.

The plane left late out of Minneapolis, giving me over an hour to sit in the Minneapolis airport and already feel like I was out of the country, there were so many French people. It’s always funny in those situations, because no one is quite sure what language one should speak in when saying “excuse me” or “is this seat taken?” I just sat there being linguistically ambiguous, without any all-revealing books open, people watching.

I had the good fortune of having a little row of two seats to myself. I still didn’t end up sleeping at all, but I was able to stretch out and read and listen to music. It was a quick flight—7 hours and 25 minutes—considering it was direct MSP – CDG. I feel like that’s often how long it is to fly from the East Coast.

Somehow I always manage to be on the right side of the plane, facing westward on the approach south into Paris. I look out my window and see night, then glance across the aisle and see dawn bursting through. Pretty quickly, our side of the aircraft gets the memo, and the sky lights up. It wasn’t particularly clear flying in, but I could make out a hazy river, probably the Seine, winding below through the mist. As we dropped further there appeared little steeples and pine trees poking through the fog. When the airplane finally plunged into what I assumed to be the clouds, I was surprised (if not alarmed) to find our wheels on the ground.

Visibility was almost none, and I swear we landed 3 miles away from our final gate between all the taxiing and the fairly lengthy bus ride from the tarmac to the gate. But we made it, and here I am, one 2-hour chair nap later. Just another 4 hours to kill with the likes of duty free browsing and solitaire.

Tonight, it’s back to Mali, back to mosquito nets and my old Nokia phone, but back to friends and adventure. Stay tuned—I’d say the best is yet to come.