When life gives you curdled milk, make gruyère…

From Guest Blogger, Julia S.

Hello blogging public!! Since I have taken up residence in the maison Decorvet, I am earning my keep as a guest blogger for this prestigious publication.

A little background: my name is Julia, and I am stranded in Europe because of a volcanic ash cloud from Iceland. There’s a sentence I never thought I would be writing. My husband, Blake, and I were on our way from Morocco to England, and we had planned to stop in and see the new Mrs. D for a couple of days. Thank the Lord we aren’t headed to Manchester until Saturday, we thought when we got to the Marrakech airport Thursday. All flights to the UK were cancelled. A British woman asked me what was happening, and I explained what I had seen on the EasyJet website about a volcano. She had heard the same—a text message from a friend that she had dismissed as a joke. Because, really, a volcano?

And then the ash spread. Thanks to email and Twitter, the BBC had no lack of material on stranded fiancés who would miss their own weddings, PhD students who couldn’t make their dissertation defenses and would fail to graduate, elderly British travelers marooned in Europe with only a two day supply of their prescription medication. I was in a relatively good spot: Yverdon-les-Bains, Suisse with an old friend who spoke English. After our flight to Manchester was officially cancelled on Saturday, we moved out of the fancy hotel that was no longer offering the Internet deal we had booked it for…and into Sarah and Jean’s living room.

True to form, I panicked. As early as Friday, I became convinced that we would never get home. The last time this volcano erupted, it was continuous for two years. Of course, then, it didn’t make a difference; Europe remained unconcerned. I had visions of myself as Leonardo DiCaprio, trying to win a poker game for a ticket on an [ultimately doomed] ocean liner back to the states and losing my job, of course, for taking a month off. But there was nothing I could do but wait…and marvel at Sarah’s life.

I am currently sitting on Sarah’s white leather Ikea couch (our bed for the past four nights) looking out at red tile roofs and blue mountains. I can see the edge of the façade of the eighteenth century church where Jean preaches on Sundays, and there is a thirteenth century clock tower that is lit at night. Sarah does not wear a watch or carry a cell phone, and there are no clocks in the living room—when she wants to know what time it is, she looks out the window. Blake and Jean just got back from the local bakery with croissants for our breakfast, and Jean is making espresso for me, tea for Blake. It’s not entirely idyllic—Sarah does have to hang her clothes out to dry and do without a disposal—but it’s a life that I think we’ve all dreamed of living but never thought we actually would.

After a long conversation with the Delta agent last night, we got ourselves on a flight out of Paris on Saturday. It was the first flight available from any southern European city, so we are praying there will be no more ash by then. Blake and I were reading through James last week completely by chance, and we came to James 4 on Saturday night, the day our flight got cancelled:

13Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

Well, I felt very small after reading that. Maybe I’ll go to Paris today; maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll fly home on Saturday; maybe I won’t. The volcano is just a reminder that one relatively minor act of God can paralyze an entire continent for a week. A little perspective is never a bad thing, even if it leads to a few nights of panic on a pullout couch in Switzerland.

As for Sarah and Jean, I really can’t express how wonderful they have been. For those of you who, like me, have never spent time with Jean, rest assured that he is completely adorable and unfazed (or pretends to be) by two huge suitcases and two oversized humans in his living room for six days. Sarah and Jean have been our hosts, cooks, travel agents, personal shoppers, technology consultants and cultural commentators, and they have put their lives on hold for us for the past week. They live in a charming apartment in a charming town in a charming country, and you should all be fortunate enough to get stuck with them.

So we’re off to Paris (if it is the Lord’s will)! Wish us luck…

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