You Just Might Wave Hello Again...

Well, it's starting to set in now, that mildly depressing oh-my-gosh-I'm-not-going-back feeling. It's been six days since our flight from Heathrow to JFK touched down at 4:40 p.m. and thoughts, emotions and feelings have been mixed. The least I can do to distract myself, as well as you, the reader, from sinking back into a post-European funk is to fill you in on the trip back.

After snatching about four hours of sleep at Amy's apartment, its inhabitants packed up their belongings and turned in their keys before embarking on a trip to the Piccadilly Line, which took us to Heathrow. Along the way, the towing handle on my morbidly obese suitcase snapped off, which led to the acquisition of my latest skill: carrying 150 lbs. of luggage and three winter coats across multiple airports. We squeezed into the nearest car and Lauren, Amy, Casey and I rode the car for about 40 minutes before arriving at Terminal 3. I re-learned the lesson that God's got a great sense of humour by experiencing the 70-degree, blue skies and sunshine weather outside of the airport just as we arrived. After checking in and grabbing a quick bite to eat, it was time to begin the rounds of goodbyes. Saying goodbye to Tahleen and Greg was sad, but Sara's was the hardest. We ran a lot together and talked and hung out quite a bit, so even though we'll be seeing one another in the fall, it's still difficult not to be able to see people like her every day.

As we boarded, my mind was distracted from its wanderings by the guy in line in front of me. He happened to be carrying a guitar in a Taylor case, which is a legit guitar to be carrying around. But, in an effort to cut down on my awkwardness, I didn't make conversation. Turns out that it was Rob Thomas from Matchbox 20. Good one. Kudos, me. Alexa sat next to me on the plane and we watched Juno in unison so that we could laugh in the exact same parts at the exact same time. Two movies and an episode of The Simpsons later, we were touching down in JFK. Luke and I detatched from the rest of the group after saying a lot of farewells around the baggage claim and hit up the JetBlue terminal, where we waited until getting our flights back to our respective homes. Mom picked me up in Rochester around 10:30 and then it was time to sleeeep.

Sidenote: something I still don't understand is why my Spanish keeps surfacing in the most random places. In church this past Sunday, "hoy en dia" slipped out instead of "today." And just now, it was almost "equipaje" instead of "luggage."

In an effort to keep this shorter than usual, I'll save the reflective stuff for another post. But yeah, now I'm back on American soil. And it's still weird. Yeah.