I left the US six days ago, embarking on my first international trip in seven years to Charles De Galle Airport outside of Paris. The purpose: to visit my brother, who is doing research as part of a Howard Hughes Fellowship in Lille, France, which is located in the north. After a seven hour flight and a seven hour time change, I arrive at CDG to this:
I took off in Washington and arrived on the set of the "The Jetsons: the Film".
After a brief wander through the terminal and passport control (which is also Customs, by the way), I took a metro and a train (tickets bought all en Francais, mind you) and arrived in Lille following an hour-long train ride through the French countryside. I sat there wondering how many people could immediately tell I wasn't French, and how many people were also trying to blend in as I was.
The whole experience was, oddly, far less terrifying than I thought it would be. The days leading up to this trip were racked with sleepless nights and foodless days; I was too anxious to do much of anything, even worry. Yet here I was, in the Europe I left ten years ago and missed so much, surrounded by the same green exit/sortie signs I remember so fondly. I'd finally made it back!
Then it started to set in: I was in France, alone, going to visit my brother who's doing genetics labwork at L'Institute Pasteur/The Pasteur Institute in Lille on my way to a nine month fellowship in Tel Aviv, Israel. I'm travelling in a country where I can butcher the language, at best, and get my point across after a lot of failed attempts and guessing (and drawing pictures) and then continuing on to a country where even the alphabet is different and I only kind of barely speak the language. When did this become my life?
The weather in Lille is England, but always. A sunny day in Lille means you can see a 10% blue sky at any point in the day. Direct sunlight is daily, but breaks in the clouds are few and far between. It seems that Lille is on the edges of the same jet stream that keeps England temperate throughout the year; however, it seems that Lille gets dumped with all the rain and clouds before crossing the channel. Cal says it's not uncommon to look at a weather map on the news and see little sun icons in every city in France but Lille. In fact, he says that he can bike out 15 or 20 minutes into sunlight. Something about Lille, though, attracts clouds.
The photo gallery of Lille can be viewed by clicking here.
I spent my first full day in Lille with my brother, shadowing him around at his job. He genotypes. He analyzes SNPs. He's figuring out how to better diagnose diabetes through genetics. He's very good at it, and he's only 21 years old. While he's doing this, he's also training to ride 400 miles next week in order to raise money for diabetes. It's madness. Here he is looking studious:
Well, I think that's enough for one post. Check out the gallery for pictures of downtown Lille. Next post (which may very well be later this morning depending on how tired I am before my flight to Tel Aviv) I'll regale you with Brugge, Belgium, sporadic tangoing, and dinner in a porn theatre. It's always an adventure.
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