so like we did for our Charleston trip, for our France trip we’re going to continue to put up journals of our traveling adventures. they may come sporadically (as this is already day 4 of our trip and i’m just now posting this) because we only get about five minutes of internet time per day (the hotel internet is not the best system in the world), but there will be accounts of each day posted eventually.

our first day of traveling started as we awoke from an Atlanta hotel on Tuesday, December 27. we got up about 8am (EST) so that we could make the airport shuttle around 9. we arrived at the airport around 9:15am and quickly checked in and checked our bags. then we got to security. a long, snaking line of people that were waiting to go to their various destinations. it took us about an hour to get through security and we got to our gate at about 10:45am. our plane was scheduled to depart for Toronto at 12:15pm, so we had a little over an hour to wait before we would begin boarding. sarah found a Quizno’s and i found a Burger King and we had a nice lunch and then boarded our plane. the plane we were passengers of was a true puddle hopper. it’s probably the smallest commercial jet that’s allowed, as anything smaller would be a private or charter plane. it was so small that sarah’s small carry-on bag had to be checked because it would not fit in the tiny overhead compartments. however, it was still a plane and would help us get to France. the flight to Toronto was only about a two hour flight, which surprised me at first. after looking at a map, however, i could see that this made sense.

we landed in Toronto about 2:15pm, 15 minutes late, and began our 4 hour wait until our plane to Paris would take off around 6:45pm. we spent the first hour reading and then i got restless. so i decided to go exploring. Toronto’s airport is quite nice. it’s very modern, and they’re adding a huge terminal to it that will be open in 2007 and will handle 90% (so the sign said) of all Canadian trans-Atlantic travel. there were many nice restaurants and shops in the airport, but nothing that really interested me. i was asked by a shoeshine if i wanted my shoes to be shined before my trip. apparently he hadn’t noticed that i was wearing tennis shoes and even after i had alerted him to this fact, he insisted that there are still bits of leather on my tennis shoes that could be shined. he must have been really desperate. after politely refusing, i decided that i had had enough exploring in this airport. with about two hours to go until our flight left i returned to the gate where sarah was still reading. 20 minutes later, our mood for our upcoming flight would drastically change.

we had expected a nice, mostly quiet 8 hour flight to France. what we had not considered was that there would be a large Canadian high school group that would also be going to France with us. there was about 40 of them, with maybe two chaperones, and they were probably 9th or 10th graders. they were annoying immediately. It was quite funny to watch them as they quickly broke into cliques. you had the popular girls group, the not-so-popular girls group, the un-popular girls group with the one girl who was trying to make it in the popular girls group thus forsaking her rightful group, the “we’re cool because we’re not cool” group, the dorky group, and then the one popular guy who spent his time fraternizing with the girls group. he was funny to watch because you could tell he was annoyed with squealing and giggling of the popular girls group, yet he was definitely flaunting his colors. he had rolled up his sweatshirt sleeves and spent most of his time among the popular girls with his arms crossed, clearly over-flexing his forearms trying to impress the girls that were more interested in taking pictures of the plane on the runway rather than him. this trip, hopeful relationship-wise, was not boding well for our lone popular guy.

now, greatly annoyed at the circumstances that had come about, we decided that it was time to go eat. we did not want to eat a full meal, however, because we were told that we would be getting a meal on the plane. we found the cheaper-looking restaurant and sarah had French toast while i had some onion rings. after our meal, we went back to the gate where we had about a half an hour before they would begin boarding. the half an hour went by fairly quickly as time always flies by while you’re watching people, especially teenagers at that….awkward time of life. we then boarded our plane and would soon be on our way to Paris. the plane was smaller than we had expected, but it was still nice. we had a nice meal of salad, roast chicken, and vegetables, and then settled in for the rest of the flight. the two movies that would be shown (Must Love Dogs and Ocean’s 11) did not interest me, so i spent a good amount of time reading. sarah watched the first movie, said it was ok, and then we decided it was time to sleep.