The Beginning of Something Wonderful

The Icelandic plane (Klafka) departed ontime with all 6 Avensons aboard; settled, comfortable and eager. Upon landing in Iceland, we realize our luggage tickets indicate that the 'Sorenson luggage' is on it's way to Amsterdam. With all intent and commitment, Icelandic Air desperatly tries to stop this from happening. To no avail, our luggage is gone, flying the unintended skies, marking its destination.

Arriving at the apartment, the sleepless family goes down for a nap while Lucy and I take foot to the Parisian streets. We are able to navigate both to a market and a patissere. With limited knowledge and abibility to communicate, we pay our first euros and purchase provisions for the family.

Back at the apartment, john is now up and embarking on his own (unknown at the time) exhausted journey - dealing with the airlines. The apartment has a phone to use for local calls. We are with one cell phone, that will be out of power by evenings end. The phone calls made are futile; offices are now closed, automated systems have no record of our luggage. We put in our first load of laundry and call it a night.

Thursday morning

John talks to a human being who informs him that our luggage is in Copenhagen. It will make a flight to Paris, but will not be here until evening. The directions are clear: a French and non speaking driver will pick up your luggage and call you locally on a french phone. Translation: If we dont want to be trapped in our apartment all day, we will have to purchase a French Cell Phone.

My sister Erin calls and says that she and her girls will have breakfast and then she and i will depart for a morning of 'not on our itinerary' errands. I, therefore, take the kids out to the small patissere just outside our apartment and order (in French...although, comically find that when answering yes, I say 'Si' instead of 'Qui.' Thankfully the owner thinks this is cute and plays along) our morning faire: chocolate crossaints, brioche, and almond pan.

Erin arrives and we hit the streets. Underware, hats, t-shirts, toothbrushes and a cute little wallet for moi and two new pairs of sandals- hee hee.

The day is lovely. Truly idealic. The cousins reconnect, laugh, joke, play, hold hands and share stories. this makes my sister and I mimic in action for we are truly happy watching our children together. Holding Sidney the entire time (remember, stroller is in Copenhagen) the day arms get tired, but it is rewarding just the same. it is a day in Paris and all company is in good spirits. The evening with family closes with a delicious dinner.

BUT -- all good beginnings need an end. And this story, fortunately, has a terrific ending. However, the journey there was nothing short of a living nightmare.

LUGGAGE

We arrive home last night. My cell phone was dead. My computer was dead. There was a message on the home machine from the driver. He is French and hence, his message was in French...and it was very quick. So, while john attemps to call my sister on his new "all in French" cell phone, I am putting all four kids to bed. The first three are easy. They are whipped. The 4th (baby), not so much. He held it together amazingly well during the day. He never even flinched as we boarded the busting at the seams metro (he got a bit sweaty standing shoulder to shoulder with a multitude of strangers, but he never flinched). He ate a perfect dinner and now home, when we needed him to do one last thing -go to sleep - he wasnt having it. All those times he felt like crying during the day, all came out that evening.

So, to recap - cell phone in french. cant make calls out. Message from driver all in French. Baby crying.

Not being able to get erin, john begins to decipher message, playing it over and over again. phonetically writing what he (and i when i can) hears. Erin calls. he plays message for her, but she can't understand it through the cell phone line. John records it on blackberry. calls his work and talks to the General Manager (who knows French). He can't decipher it All he can say in French is "Tough Luck."

John takes to the streets. Goes into a restaurant and a waiter helps him with the number. Even if we *were* able to call, we would be talking to a French man who wouldn't understand us. Also, as an aside, our cell phone only had 10 minutes of air time, we were instructed to call a particular number later in the day to receive the credits we had purchased in the store. So, with each phone call on the cell, the minutes were ticking away...tick, tick, tick...beep - time is up.

john calls the number he received from the waiter's translation, leaves a message (in english) and at 10pm, the baby falls asleep. In the meantime, john is trying to use his online translator to help with any type of translation.

10:30 FRENCH brother in law calls on his way home from his very long day at a conference. Yeah!!! FRENCH brother in law calls. He tells us he will be at the apartment shortly to help us out. FRENCH brother in law!!

Shortly after 10:30, Gilles arrives. HUGE HUG for Gilles! He not only translates the message and writes down the CORRECT number, he also fixes our cell phone and gets our needed credits and switches our 'French' cell phone into the understandable english language. He also calls the driver and although the driver was making his last couple of deliveries and preferred to call us in the morning, Gilles pressed on and arranged for a 2am drop off.

Long story short: our luggage arrived last night at 1:50 am. We are now currently dressed and ready for the day.