Awaiting a flight to the US, I was walking through the Barcelona airport back to where Bill was sitting when I heard someone calling out “Monsieur, monsieur” from directly behind me. I turned around and there was Sophia Petrillo from American TV’s Golden Girls (well, the French version in my head, anyway) trying to find gate 48B. We were at gate 18 at that point so we had a long way to walk.

This 78-year-old bundle of energy explained that she had just flown in from several weeks in the Canary Islands, with a golden tan to prove it, and was grateful to finally find someone who spoke French rather than Spanish. Who, me? Although I told her that my language level was not all that high, she passed right over that and continued on about her trip and especially about how much we were going to like living in France.

Why and how this delightful lady picked me out of the sizeable crowd to help her find a connecting gate, I’ll never know. What I can say for sure is how happy I felt for those few minutes walking through the terminal and hearing such nice things about the place to which we are moving. What a joy in so many ways!