what country is this again?

As I write this I am sitting by the pool at the condo in Florida. It’s the only place I can borrow a wireless internet signal. Sorry for the delay in updating the blog, but we are on our “repat” vacation…. we get one per year and so we are joining the rest of the family in Florida.

The trip across the pond was pretty uneventful, but upon arriving at the airport in Houston, we began to feel the “reverse culture shock” that I had read about. Paul commented first .. as we were standing in line at customs, he noted that everyone seemed to have a really heavy Texas accent. Well duh, we ARE in Texas I thought… but then I began to listen more closely (not too hard to do since it also seemed that everyone talked SO LOUD!) Suddenly I realized just how much we weren’t in France anymore.

As we drove along the freeway from the airport Paul remarked about the wide-open spaces and the aggressive drivers. I was shocked at how much pollution I saw in the air. A few times we had a brain lapse as we had to stop to think how to get around the city. It had been over a year since we had been in Houston and over a year since I had been behind the wheel of a car.

After a good Tex-Mex meal with Jack, his girlfriend, and her parents, we crashed as we worked to get our internal clocks adjusted to Houston Standard Time. We awoke pretty early and headed out 1-10 to Florida. A ride that typically takes 10 hours was unusually long – 14 hours - longer than the flight from Paris to Houston!

The sun is bright and very hot and feels really really good!