A note and another promise.

Still don't have a scanner here--but I will get to it! It is Monday morning and the students will arrive tomorrow. We ran into two early-comers yesterday at church, Anna and Brie, who seemed a bit shell-shocked. It was all I could do not to take over their day and do everything for them. ...but I resisted the urge because part of being here is supposed to be about learning how to do things yourself.

I almost turned around to catch them a half-dozen times and the guilt was with me all evening as I was with my family in my apartment, secure and happy. We will have the students over on occasion and hope that they will feel welcome here, but rescuing them too early would make this trip all about me rescuing and not about them discovering. As much as I like to be the center of attention, I try to resist my overly protective urge to meddle. As I type this it still feels wrong in my gut to have left those two girls--women--standing there unsure of where to go for the day...on the other hand, they were standing next to the Pompidou Center..so pure bliss wasn't too far away.

So the women arrive tomorrow. They are staying on a pedestrian street very near our apartment(Rue Cler for all of you google mappers, ) and as soon as they set up there they will come here and pick up their Navigo passes, cell phones, information packet. Daryl will assign them tasks to accomplish before later that evening when we will meet at the Institute for a meeting. After that, it is dinner at a restaurant called "Le Trumilou" (a suggestion from Bruce Hayes--thank you Bruce!)

They will be up early Wednesday morning so that we can make a train to the South of France--we will be on the road for 10 days and I hope to keep you posted on our travels, but I am not sure about the WiFi possibilities along the way. We will be exploring Basque country, jumping over the border into Spain, spending some time on the coast. Then we will go back to France inland for some visits to prehistoric caves, some canoeing, hiking.We will be visiting farms, a chocolate factory,museums and castles, medieval cities. Of course we will be shopping, eating, and lounging--I mean learning along the way.

So there it is. That is what I have time for now. Hope to get back to you later today.