Britt and Drew arrived in Paris today. I was very happy to see them coming at me at the end of the quay at the Gare de l’Est train station, rolling their luggage and looking like seasoned travelers.

They are the first members of my family I have seen since we left for Abu Dhabi last October. And they already had gotten in some quality time Over Here before arriving in France.

They had been in Germany since Wednesday, where they spent a few days with Astrid, our foreign exchange student during the 1995-96 school year. She is from Worms, and is now a dentist, and has 2-year-old twins and lives in the house next door to her parents. All of them were very kind and generous with the girls.

(An aside: I heartily recommend taking in a foreign student if you have kids and a little extra room where you live. They teach you as much as you teach them, with the special added benefit of giving you someone you know on the other side of the world. Most of the exchange students are good kids, too, who want to see America because they expect it to be good. Few of them cause any real trouble, and most of them are ambitious and smart. Like Astrid was.)

Drew and Britt also saw Heidelberg, Frankfurt and Baden-Baden in their five days in Germany, and enjoyed it all. Both of them are fluent in German, and that made it even better.

They are over here celebrating a looming 30th birthday (of the former) and a graduation from UCSD (of the latter).

It is great to see them. It wasn’t as if they were likely to be dropping by Abu Dhabi any time soon (no one drops by Abu Dhabi), and we don’t plan to go back to the U.S. till next summer. And as we discovered in Italy, where we met up with Leah’s parents and her friend Liz (and, later, her cousin and her husband) … it just seems more fun. The more the merrier, and all.

The girls and I do quite a bit of e-mailing back and forth, but that doesn’t deliver nearly as much information as a few days (or weeks) in the same city, hanging out, doing things.

So, Day 1, they told us about Germany, showed us batches of photos of Astrid and her family, delivered gifts from home (thanks, Mom) … and then at 8:30 we went up the street to the corner bistro, toasted our reunion, and had a very nice meal — lamb shoulder, artichoke salad, vegetarian lasagna and gesier (gizard) salad landaise. And Britt (a fan of Germany) already was saying, “The food here is pretty good.”

So, yes. Good times.