Well, if you don't know me, I'm the type of person who doesn't go out often. If I am dragged to some party or the other, I will be in the corner playing with the host's pet(s). This has all changed in the past month or so, and now I find myself with some social event or another almost every day!
          It all started with an ending. Jeremy's company decided that I have had enough tutor lessons for French. I don't blame them, it was very generous of them to pay for someone who doesn't even work for them anyway. I couldn't afford to continue lessons on my own so I started seeking an alternative. France is great in that it has tons of places for like-minded people to gather. There are tons of locations that can be rented out for very cheap for "loisirs" (hobbies) as well as numerous youth and culture centers that offer courses in things as serious as finance to things as lighthearted as dance and music. In France no matter how odd your hobby, you will find a group to do it with. As an added bonus, fees for such events and courses are very cheap - I assume because they don't have to charge you out the wazoo because unlike the US they don't have to worry about insurance fees and getting sued if someone gets hurt.
          So while I was trying to find a substitute for my tutoring, Jeremy's coworker told him about dance classes being held at MJC - a youth and culture center. We decided to sign up and when Jeremy went to the center to pay, he saw a flyer for French as a second language course! Perfect! He tried to sign me up then and there, but the woman said I have to contact the woman on the flyer first and courses were in less than 2 weeks, so act quickly.
          I call on a Friday and there's no answer. I hadn't mentally prepared myself to try and leave a voicemail and I don't even know my own phone number without looking anyway so I have to hang up. By the time I translated what I wanted to say it was too late to call. Monday comes and I call twice, leaving a voicemail the second time (I just don't like leaving voicemails, okay?!). She called back two days later and I was immediately intimidated because of how fast she was speaking. I asked her to please speak more slowly to no avail. I had told her on the voicemail I don't speak well, asked her on the phone to slow down, why is a woman who is teaching French as a second language not getting the hint? It didn't matter anyway because our call got disconnected. I waited a bit for her to call back but she didn't. Over the course of the day I called back a few times and they all were just dial tone noise. I kept calling each day and then two days before the class was to start I found her e-mail address on the MJC website and sent her an e-mail. You probably don't have to guess, I got not response from that either.
          I could't find any more courses similar. Now with the tutor cancelled, I've lost my one reason to get out of the house and I'm starting to go stir crazy. Dance lessons are okay but it's only one hour a week and since you're being active, it feels like it's over so quickly. And while it works me physically, it doesn't work me mentally since there is no talking besides the teacher teaching dance steps.
         Jeremy decided to check out onvasortir.com, a website dedicated to people meeting up and hanging out, typically in large groups. For instance this Friday, there are currently 35 events on onvasortir for Besançon. There are quite a few for dancing and swimming, billiards, zumba, football (soccer), a drink before dinner, some concerts and plays, a documentary about the origin of the apple, a girl who is looking for other girls to go clothes shopping with, karaoke, qi cong, bowling, and a couple dinners. A person creates an event, a time, how many people they are looking for, and some paragraphs about the event and if you're interested you sign up. Jeremy found an event were people go to practice their English and decided we should go.
          It ended up being really fun although I don't get to practice my French as it's a group for practicing English and they want to hear us speak it. But now we go to that every Friday night and the woman who organizes it, upon hearing I crochet, invited me to her knitting group that meets up on Saturdays. Then three other people gave me their numbers to meet up outside of the English meet up so they can practice English and I can practice French. I also got a hold of my old tutor so we could meet up from time to time for lunch and one thing turned to another and now I am occasionally babysitting her kids!
          All of a sudden I went from doing absolutely nothing to being busy almost every day. So Friday I met up with my tutor, Marie, for lunch and then had the English meet up that night and then 7 of us decided to go out for dinner together afterwards, Saturday was knitting, Monday was a meet-up with two people from the English group, Séverine and Benoit, Tuesday was a meet-up with Benoit and then babysitting Marie's kids, today is a classical music concert with a couple other people from the English meet-up, Marion and Loz, and then dinner at Marion's house, tomorrow is dancing, and then we're back to Friday with the English meet-up! I am a busy girl, but it's giving me more experiences to write about, so stay tuned!

          There was a weekend I'm dubbing "European Heritage Weekend" because that's what Jeremy called it. I don't know what it was actually called. The problem with a lot of events in Besançon is that they're not very well publicized. For instance, a couple weeks ago I was walking around center city only to find about a quarter of it blocked off from vehicles and a huge market filling every street. No banners, no ads, nothing on the Besançon facebook page or tourist website. Another example would be the city-wide music festival from this blog post. I suppose if it happens the same time every year, they assume word of mouth is good enough.
          On this weekend, every government owned or maintained property is open to the public. Every church, military building, school, government building, museum, and so on, opens their doors and is free admittance. This is country wide, even Le Louvre is free! We took the opportunity to see three churches, a military building, and some Roman architecture. If we had known about it earlier, we could have fit in a bunch more.
          The Roman architecture was in the underground parking lot of a government building. When digging the parking lot, they unearthed Roman aqueducts from way back when Besançon was part of the Holy Roman Empire. Instead of destroying history, they decided to forego a section of parking spaces and preserve the aqueduct.
          The military building we just happened upon while walking to a church and decided to wander in. They had some old jeeps and motorcycles on display in the courtyard and inside were mannequins wearing uniforms from each each war. There was also a holding cell where prisoners of war were temporarily held during WWI and they had preserved the one wall where prisoners had etched in drawings, names, etc. with their aiglets (the hard tip of the shoelace). Of course, this is what I picked up on during a tour given in French, so some of my info may be slightly off. I didn't take any pictures because it was super intimidating. There were on-duty soldiers posted in every room, in the courtyard, even on the staircase. This place looked fancy. Like, just the rug in one room probably costs more than everything in my living room fancy. So I just kept my hands to my sides.
          We mainly used this opportunity to see the churches. Churches here are gorgeous, but most are usually only open for services and we felt uncomfortable just walking in to gawk at the architecture and art. We saw three, though one was admittedly not impressive and no pictures were taken, so I won't cover that one.
          First we saw St. Maurice. When we went in there were no members or visitors. It was gorgeous but it seemed as if it was no longer used for services and looked to be more like a giant storage room for religious art. I unfortunately don't have many pictures as it was dark.

          The second church was St. Magdeleine. This church was amazing. It doubles as a tiny museum for religious art and history. Downstairs was paintings and statues and upstairs was old artifacts and robes. The upstairs was too small and crowded to take pictures but I have most of the downstairs. There was also an ancient old man who played the church's two century old pipe organ and we were allowed to go up and see him, which was just absolutely amazing.

          My next blog post will be all about why this blog post took so long to write! I accidentally became a social butterfly and have different events almost every day now!

          Wow, almost a month later and I'm finally getting back to my blog! Sorry everybody! So, the food festival, les instants gourmands, was amazing! Les instants gourmands means 'the gourmet moments' and in French, since the subject is plural, everything is plural! It's one thing that still gets me. Like if we are talking about a bunch of cats who are white, we would say 'the white cats' whereas in French it would be 'these whites cats'. If the noun is plural, the article and the adjectives will be plural too.
          Anywho, the festival was amazing. They had booths selling all kinds of meals but also product booths with wines, breads, cheeses, dried meats, honey, seafood, you name it! The meal booths had these huuuge skillets, like four feet in diameter! It went on for 4 days and I went twice. If I had enough room in my stomach for more, I would have been there more often but alas my stomach has shrunk since moving to France. The first day Jeremy and I went with Louis and Marianne (the Canadians that threw the Quebec party in this post) and Marianne's friend. Jeremy got some shaved glazed pork and fried potatoes and I got ratatouille with tagliatelle. We also saw our first ever soft pretzels so we got one of those too. Oh and then there was this delicious apple pastry thing that was to die for. It tasted like an apple cider donut - and not just any apple cider donut. Picture the best apple cider donut you've ever had (and if you don't live in south Jersey and therefore get your apple ciders from a farm, multiply by 3) if it had just come out of the oven, fresh and warm, and instead of a donut, it's rolled like a cinnamon bun. So good. We also had wine and beer because you can do that in the middle of the day here and at festivals it's often cheaper than water!
          The second day I met up with Marianne, her friend, and Louis by myself. Jeremy had to wait at the apartment for the plumber so I straight up ditched him for food. It's okay though, I brought him home a snack. That day I had flammekueche. Flammekueche is an Alsacian and southern German dish that's basically super thin crust pizza with onions, cheese, and lardons over white sauce. I don't remember if I went over lardons. If not, lardons are like thick bacon but diced instead of in strips. Alsace is the French region just north of us and home of many wonderful wines. I also had some concoillotte (cahn-coy-aht), a regional cheese so runny it's like a dip, with some fresh oat bread. For dessert I had some kind of berry tart. They use a lot of different berries here than in the US. For instance Jeremy's coworker's wife made a mulberry pie. Like monkey-chase-the-weasel mulberry! I've also seen currants in the markets, especially blackcurrant. This tart had a slightly bitter, tart, dark blue berry so maybe it was blackcurrant? I don't know many berries besides the normal ones put in American yogurts.
          I also brought home a shredded coconut muffin type thing covered in honey. A guy at a booth had given me a free sample and next thing you know I'm pulling out my wallet. I just can't help myself. I try to stay a respectful distance from booths so the people running them can't talk to me because once they start talking I feel almost obliged to buy something! But this was a very delicious decision and pretty cheap too.

          I also promised to tell you about the spectacle I witnessed called a "silent party". So I'm walking down the street at around 7:30 pm and there is a fenced off area full of people. I take a look to see what's going on and see a DJ up on a stage and all these people milling about and everyone's kinda bobbing their heads. I realize everyone is wearing headphones and silently listening to the DJ play! It was totally bizarre. No one is talking since they are wearing headphones and occasionally everyone would throw their hands up in the air in unison and cheer. It was actually kinda creepy cause it would be dead quiet with tons of people just slowly meandering around and bopping their heads up and down and then all of a sudden hands up and "Yeahhhh!!!" and then back to zombie status.

          Weird. Anywho unless something spectacular occurs in the meantime, my next post will be about European Heritage weekend. I just have to get all the photos off the camera which is currently with Jeremy in Ireland. Please leave comments, I really enjoy knowing that people read my blog! You can even make it anonymous. Also, don't forget to do all your Amazon shopping through my affiliate link!

          Last night we went to a special night-time show at the Citadelle. We walked all the way there because they cancelled the buses due to the expected traffic; boy howdy was that hard! It started at 9 pm but we went there at around 8 as it was encouraged to arrive early and picnic. We met up with one of Jeremy's coworkers and his wife and ate and played Uno until it was too dark to see. As a side note, Uno is basically played the same as in the US. The only discrepancies are ones that are probably just our way of playing it because as you know, Uno is like tomato sauce; everyone makes it a slightly different way.
          It ended up starting closer to 10 pm because, y'know, France. The spectacle nocturne is thrown at the end of tourist season every year. Every year the show is different, ranging from acrobats like Cirque du Soleil to magicians. This year was a musical tale intertwined with something I can only describe as fire art. They danced and played with fire. The tale was about a woman trying to move on after her husband's untimely death, dealing with spiraling loneliness paired with the guilt of desiring intimacy with another person besides the one she thought she would spend the rest of her life with.
          I didn't take pictures, but I found their website and used their posted pictures and video so you could get a grasp of the concept. The pictures are below and you can view the video by clicking on the word "video" in the previous sentence, which will take you to vimeo. The show is called Le Bal des Anges (The Dance of the Angels) and the company is BilBobaSSo, who originate from this region. It was very beautifully done and about 1,000 people were in attendance.

           Afterwards we headed on home. If you've ever seen the stairs leading down from the citadelle, you can certainly feel for me and my rubber legs right now. My next post will be featuring the awesome food festival that happened this weekend as well as a very interesting fad I witnessed called a "silent party".

          Last Friday I finally had my MRI done. I've had a couple MRIs done in the past before but never for my intestines. I get there and drink the contrast type stuff in the waiting room and then the nurse brings me into a prep room. She was very nice and understanding about the language barrier, speaking very clearly and slowly and making sure I understood everything she was saying. She asked if I had any metal on or in my person and I said no except for my bra. Only I didn't know the word for bra so I just showed it to her. Then she told me to take everything off except my socks and a word I didn't understand. I asked what it was and she showed me her underwear. Tit for tat, I guess!
          I laid down on my stomach with my arms above my head like superman and entered the MRI that way. A handful of minutes in I realized the contrast solution was dual purpose as my intestines started rumbling ferociously. It dawned on me then that obviously they needed to see how my intestines processed things so of course they gave me something to move things along. No wonder why the contrast tasted like a watered down version of the colonoscopy prep!
          Afterwards I run into their single person bathroom to occupy it for an ungodly amount of time. To make matters worse, the light wouldn't work and there were no windows so it was pitch black! I had to use my phone as a flashlight to find everything. I won't be going over the results of the MRI until September, because my GI doctor is on vacation for a month. It's impossible to get anything done in summer in France because everyone takes month long vacations.
          On Tuesday I went to see my normal doctor. She had called me on Thursday to say we needed to discuss my blood work. Uh-oh. I've been getting my blood work done monthly for two reasons; one is that anemia can show up months after an incident, and the second is that my colitis medication can cause liver problems. I was really hoping it was anemia or something non-related, because I really don't want to stop taking my medication. If my medication fails or causes liver problems, the next step is steroids which I really, really don't want to be on. I've been on them before for short term use and they make me nauseous and turn me into Super Bitch. Seriously, I am like the grumpiest person you will ever meet while I am on steroids. Poor Jeremy runs in fear.
          Turns out it was both anemia and elevated liver enzymes. My doctor, however, thinks that my liver enzymes could be elevated by only the anemia and not the medication so I will take iron supplements for 3 months and then we'll check again. The iron supplement are a real pain to take. I can't eat two hours before or one hour after so I've been trying to find the right method to take them so I'm not starving myself at normal eating times.
          I'm having a flair up right now and lost a few more pounds. I have now lost 40 lbs since I came here. My doctor is encouraging me to do sports since I'm so weak but I mean, c'mon, I am the epitome of sport intolerant. I'm just not athletic at all. The swim club near Jeremy's work gives discounts to employees and their families so maybe I'll go there.
          I don't mind the weight loss except for the fact that I can no longer wear my engagement ring. A few pounds ago it was staying on but sliding around a lot, and now it is just too big. It's very ornate and has designs around almost the whole band. I've had it taken down as small as jewelers would take it but it can't be taken down any smaller because it would mess up the design and potentially ruin the ring. It has a placement stone (white quartz instead of a diamond) that we were going to swap out for a diamond for the wedding in place of getting a wedding band, but I guess now we will have to get an entirely new ring with a placement stone and then get a diamond for maybe our 5th anniversary or something. I fancied the idea that maybe the original crafter would take it back and offer the second ring at a discount, but it's such an odd size (6 3/4) that I doubt that would happen. Maybe this all sounds silly but I love that ring and I miss having it on my finger. We just don't have the money to spend on such frivolities as a second engagement ring.
          Oh the woes of a first-world twenty-something! I'm not too concerned that I lost 40 lbs, have a life-long illness that will constantly need monitoring, and am in so much pain some days that I can't stand up straight, but the fact that I can't wear my engagement ring brings me to tears!

          We went to the Citadelle this weekend and they had a special exhibit in their Museum of French Deportation and Resistance on a woman named Germaine Tillion. Let me tell you, Germaine Tillion was a total bad-ass and a new heroine of mine.
          Germaine Tillion was a social anthropologist whose heart lied in ethnology. She obtained degrees from 3 highly prestigious schools; the École pratique des hautes études, the École du Louvre, and the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales. For four years between 1934 to 1940 (she returned home for short stints in between) she did fieldwork in Algeria studying the Berber and Chaoui people to prepare for her doctorate in anthropology. Her work, although not seen again until 1999, remains important to this day.
          Why wasn't it discovered until 1999? Because in 1940, while Germaine was preparing to return home to France, France was defeated by Germany. She stashed her notes and pictures away, not knowing if they would ever be found again, and immediately plunged into the aid of the Resistance. She started by giving her family's papers to a Jewish family.             She quickly became one of the leading commanders of the Musée de l'Homme, a French Resistance network in Paris. She helped Jewish families and prisoners escape and organized intelligence for the allied forces. She had a trunk (like picture the largest size carry-on you can take onto a plane) full of fake official stamps to forge any type of document needed to get a family into safety.
          Betrayed by a priest who had joined her resistance and gained her trust, Germaine was arrested in August of 1942 and interrogated endlessly. In October of 1943 she was sent to Ravensbrück, a woman's concentration camp near Berlin reserved mainly for political imprisonments (rather than religious, social, or racial) and to conduct pseudo-scientific experiments. Her mother, Émilie, was also imprisoned and sent there due to her efforts in the Resistance (bad-assery must run in the family). The conditions were harsh. The SS officers, all women, were known for being particularly inhumane and sadistic. Labor included strenuous outdoor work, building V-2 rocket parts, textile production, and electrical component production.
          While in the camp, Tillion's resistance efforts did not cease. She aided in secret educational programs, wrote an operetta describing camp life called Le Verfügbar aux Enfers (The Disposables of Hell), kept precise ethnographic analysis of the camp, and wrote a recipe book that was actually a cryptogram listing all the officers of the camp. A lesser form of resistance also included her textile labor; while making socks for the German soldiers, she and other laborers made the heels and toes of the socks thinner in hopes that they would wear out faster and give the soldiers sore and blistered feet.
          In 1945, Germaine Tillion escaped Ravensbrück, just months after her mother's execution, thanks to a rescue operation from the Swedish Red Cross. Her accounts led to the trial and execution of the priest, Robert Alesch, who betrayed her and over 80 other Resistance members. Robert Alesch was found in Brussels, enjoying the fat stacks of cash the Germans had paid him. They also disproved the previous beliefs that there were no gas chambers in the Western camps and gave insightful in-depth analysis of the escalation of executions, the automated nature of the Nazis, the profits of slave-labor, and the operation and execution of increasingly bizarre and inhumane Nazi mandates.
          After the war, Tillion published Ravensbruck, detailing not only her personal experiences but also her post-war research into the functioning of the camps, movements of prisoners, administrative operations and covert and overt crimes committed by the SS. She worked on the history of the Second World War, the war crimes of the Nazis and the Soviet Gulags from 1945-1954 and started an education program for French prisoners.
          Outside of her WWII efforts, she also undertook 20 scientific missions to North Africa and the Middle East, and returned to Algeria to observe and analyze during the Algerian War of Independence. She believed the principal cause to be the pauperization of the public and launched "Social Centers" to make higher education and vocational skills available to rural Algeria.
          In her lifetime she also spoke out about the French use of torture in Algeria, the emancipation of women in the Mediterranean, and torture in Iraq. She published 9 works on WWII, Algeria, and the Mediterranean. She remained vocal until her death in 2008, one month before her 101st birthday.
          She has received 8 honors in her lifetime including the Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur - the Legion of Honor and the highest decoration in France. Of the almost 100,000 orders awarded since 1802, only 5 were awarded to women. She is interred in the Panthéon, although only symbolically as this was announced 6 years posthumous and her family did not wish for her body to be uncovered. Interment in the Panthéon is severely restrictive and considered only for national heroes of France. There are 82 interred or commemorated people in the Panthéon, of which only 4 are women. Sophie Berthelot was the first woman interred. She was interred at the request of her husband, chemist Marcellin Berthelot, who was interred but wished to have his wife buried with him. The second woman, and first of her own merits, was Marie Curie. Germaine Tillion and Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz, another heroine of the French Resistance, were interred posthumously in 2014.

          Once in America, it was a whirlwind of trying to see everyone and trying to eat every food item we've missed. And clothes shopping, lots of clothes shopping. We apologize if we didn't get to see you! Jeremy got to see most of his friends because they're all friends as well. Since they're all hanging out with one another to begin with, it was easy to get everyone to get together for a night. Since my friends aren't friends of one another, it meant I had to make individual trips to see everyone. I got to see a few friends, but there were a handful more I was really disappointed that I didn't get to see!
          It didn't help that we were always so tired! France is 6 hours ahead of east coast America, so 6 pm in America is midnight in France. I was in bed by 9 pm almost every night, I just couldn't help it! And yet I woke up at 7 am feeling like it was already the afternoon and yet no one else was awake and no stores were open yet! Jeremy seemed to do much better adapting to the time difference than I did.
          We had Thai, Chinese, my favorite pizza, and Mexican (twice!) but didn't get to have sushi, my favorite pie (Penza Pies in Hammonton), or a Pop Shop breakfast. It's okay though, we were kind of being overwhelmed by reintroducing our taste-buds to American food. For example, I had a normal soft-pretzel and it was sweet! Like cake! I've always heard that Europeans think American bread is too sweet but I always dismissed it until now. I had a chocolate chip cookie from Wawa and after the fourth bite it was too much; it was so sweet it burned. Lipton tea was too sweet and soda was unbearable. In fact, by the fourth day I had a throat infection I assume due to too much sugar. After that, I gargled salt water and toned my eating and drinking habits down.
          I had wrongly assumed I could go right back to eating and drinking how I used to when I lived in America. It was a little depressing that I couldn't enjoy the things I once used to, but at the same time I know it's better for me. If coming back to America taught me anything, it's how unhealthy our prepared food is. Eating homemade food was fine, but anything store bought sent my stomach ablaze. My ulcerative colitis was flaring up big time. Within days I had to start taking my special intestinal pain killers, by the second week I was taking them every day and the last two days I was practically immobilized by nausea, dizziness, intestinal cramping, and fatigue.
          Despite that, we had fun. We saw Jurassic World and Inside Out, went to the Hammonton carnival, got to catch up with friends, went to the Philadelphia Zoo, but mostly just spent time with our families. We brought home with us proper fitting clothes (we both have found out we each went down about 3 sizes), black beans, pinto beans, brown sugar, and Fireball whiskey. Our friends love the whiskey, they don't have anything cinnamon flavored here not even gum, and the 1 liter we are legally allowed to bring back is almost gone just from all our friends trying it. Next time we'll have to each bring back a liter!
          The plane ride home was uneventful. I slept most of the time. This time our train left from gare de Lyon, not right from the airport, but luckily a bus brings you there for pretty cheap. However, whoever designed this bus must have used 5 foot models because the leg space is non-existent. I am 5'9" and Jeremy is 5'11" and we had to sit almost sideways because our legs couldn't fit. If you're coming to visit, just remember it will be uncomfortable for anyone around this height. I don't think my 6'4" dad would be able to fit at all. It's cheap at 16€ per person but if you're very tall or heavy set, you might want to cough up the 50€ for a taxi or just make sure you get the train leaving from the airport instead of gare de Lyon.
          We left America at 9:30 pm on Sunday and thanks to time differences and the gap between plane landing and train departure, got home at 5:30 pm Monday. We greeted our animals, got some fast food, and slept.

          After almost a month of silence, I've returned! I left my laptop charger in the US and had to order a new one which is the reason for the extended delay. I was not about to type out a blog on my phone!
          Our trip to the airport was uneventful and used to sleep a little. The only train time that worked out for us would be getting us there a whopping 4 1/2 hours before our plane took off. We got to the airport at 9 am and decided to check-in early so we can get past the gates and relax. We were flying Delta via Air France into Philly. Luckily, we didn't have to walk for long before we found Air France and checked-in via their kiosks. When checking in however, the kiosk gave us separate seats several rows away from one another. We tried to change them, but it wouldn't let us so we asked one of the supervisors in the area who, after taking a look at our boarding passes, told us that if the kiosk wouldn't let us change them, it means there are no remaining consecutive seats available. Now, this is 4 1/2 hours before the flight and as far as I know you can't chose your seat before checking in so I doubt this was true but either way he obviously wasn't willing to help us, so we continued on.
          We went through a few more lines, passing several people who all checked our boarding passes and all said they couldn't help us change our seats, and finally arrived at the area to drop off our luggage. She took our boarding passes and our luggage and then said, "Oh, you're flying Delta, you're in the wrong area. You have to go down to [gate all the way down the hall]." She assured us it was fine that we had used Air France kiosks and had already given her our luggage which makes me wonder why the heck we have to walk all the way to Delta now, but whatever. We get to Delta, they check us in, we ask for our seats to be changed, they say no, life goes on.
          We kill some time at the international cafeteria and then head to the boarding halls to look at things we will never be able to afford in our lifetimes. We play the "How much do you think this costs?" game where we guess ridiculously high prices and are still usually far below par. My personal favorites were a floral patterned cotton scarf for $75 and a very simple, bland looking (albeit gold) watch for $25,000.
          We settle down in our boarding area and wait for the plane to start boarding. The overhead PA system was barely audible, I could only catch a word or so per sentence, but luckily the people checking people through called out loud and I could hear them. We take our last shot at asking to get our seats changed and the woman goes "Oh yeah, no problem!", types on her keyboard for a few seconds, calls over to her colleague to ask if seat 25F is free, gets confirmation, and that's that. It took maybe 20 seconds.
          The line was going very slowly; there seemed to be a secondary security check that we got waved through. We headed past everyone and walked through that extendable portable hallway thing that connects the building to the plane only to find no plane. There was no one in site but there were some spiral staircases a little further down and to the right leading to the tarmac. We looked at each other and figured why not. Half way down we ran into about 15 other confused people waiting on the stairs. After confirming they were boarding the same flight as us, we joined them in waiting. It then dawned on me the few words I could pick up over the horrible PA system were "stairs" and "sorry for the inconvenience" and must have been telling us 

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          Here I come, America! Taking a vacation to the gool ol' US of A. I'll try to update but understand I'll be very busy!