Mosbach

So, I finally made it to Germany, and I wasn't ever lost for any substantial amount of time. But now, I'm here and safe and extremely tired.
I boarded the plane from Indianapolis to Boston, and I sat next to this guy from Canada. He was about 28 years old, and when we took off, he kept mumbling, "Blissfully unaware," and I thought, "He's a little strange..." Anyway, so we started talking, and I learned that he works as a technical writer at Lilly and was headed to Boston on business. I started telling him how I hated to fly, and I said, "Every time I get on a plane, I look around and think 'These are the people I'll die with...'" and he said, "Oh yeah, I think the same thing." He said that when they read off the flight number in the airport when the plane is boarding, he thinks, "Soon that number will be all over the news." After a while, the stewardess was headed down the aisle, handing out pretzels, and the guy beside me leaned over and said, "This is the part of the movie where they zoom in on the stewardess' face. Everything is normal. She's blissfully unaware." I laughed and said, "And then, the camera focuses on a bolt on the plane wing and how it's only beginning to loosen itself?" It was so strange meeting someone quite as morbid as me. But he was nice, and he gave me a John Grisham book he'd read during the flight, so I could have something to read when I got to France. Nice gesture. I did fine during this flight, probably because I had someone to distract me, but the other two were a little harder. I got to Boston, and it occured to me how I wasn't going home for a long time. About the time I boarded my flight for Dublin, Ireland, there was another flight boarding for Indianapolis, and I kept thinking, "This is it. I can't go home." I thought about trying to run to the Indianapolis plane and just fly right back home, because people board flights last minute all the time in the movies, but I knew I'd regret trying that, so I didn't. I can't really remember much of any other flights...during the other two, I sat alone, which was actually very nice considering the extra leg room. I listened to that Mayday Parade song that starts with "Katie, don't cry..." over and over again. I don't think it helped me to stop crying, because I sat there for a few hours with my blanket pulled over my head sobbing my eyes out.
But I'm in Germany now and things are morphing into some new kind of normal. I'm living in a youth hostel that's a 25 minute walk away from the OM Germany headquarters in Mosbach. I have three roommates--one from Holland, one from Switzerland and one from Germany. They speak German to each other all the time, and I've considered asking if any of them know any French so I could be inclued in the conversations, but I never have. Maybe later. They seem like they're nice, though.
We have conferences pretty much one after the other all day every day for the next 10 days. And speaking of that, I'd better go. Our first meeting of the day is "Why are we here," and that starts in about 15 minutes, so I'll get going.
I miss you all at home.