Home!

So I am officially home now. After a somewhat emotional goodbye I had quite an experience making it home. First off, I was able to check my bags in at the train station the day before which was convenient. I ended up having to pay an overage fee because my suitcase was like 66 pounds. Oops. Then after maybe 2 hours of sleep, I got up at 3 am and Urs took me to the airport for my 7am flight. I made it through security easily and was on board and everything was going great until we were informed that we would be delayed 30 minutes because Frankfurt airport was having problems. So again we were all ready to go, and what happens? We were delayed another hour. So we finally get to Frankfurt and it's already 9:30. Well my direct flight to Dallas was supposed to be at 10:05. Well on the plane they were giving out information for people who perhaps missed their connecting flight and which flight they would be rebooked on. Well for my flight they gave me the gate number. So I assume that they've informed the flight saying you need to wait for these certain passengers. So we get off the plane in terminal A and I have to go all the way to terminal C. And if you know Frankfurt airport you know that it's one giant line so I literally have to walk all the way to the other side of the airport. I make it through passport control and security and I make it to the gate about 10:10. And I can see the plane is still there, but they've closed the gate and there isn't anyone manning the desk anymore. Not cool. So I end up having to go all the way out and to terminal B to the Lufthansa desk. After waiting a bit, I was helped by a nice lady, and she booked me on the next flight to Denver and then to Dallas and rerouted my luggage. So I go all the way back to the exact same gate as before having to pass through security again and waited about an hour. So I was finally off at 1:15 and had a pretty uneventful flight of about 10 hours to Denver. Upon arriving in Denver I had to go through customs which despite the long line it was a pretty easy pass through immigration and then luckily my bags arrived with me and were already on the baggage claim belt so I was able to quickly grab those and then basically just hand the lady my customs declaration form and walk through and straight to recheck my bags again. Then I had to pass through security yet again and walked through one of those body scanner deals (which at this point I was just like, I don't care, whatever) and go to the next terminal. I made it to plane pretty easily and the flight was about 1.5 hours. I finally arrived in Dallas at 8:30 pm. I had to wait a little bit for my parents but was glad that they had found me. When I had missed my flight I had sent them a text message letting them know, but apparantly my mom didn't receive it for some reason or other. So they told me they waited for me for my original flight for over an hour and when they saw the pilot and flight attendants they figured out I wasn't coming. My dad talked a Lufthansa agent into telling them where I was and if they should continue waiting or not. They aren't suppose to give out that kind of information but I guess she decided to be nice. So luckily I was able to make it back home and I finally crashed at about 11 pm. That's 6am swiss time so I had slept maybe 4 hours withing the last 45. Needless to say I was beat.

I spent my last week spending some time with Ryan and taking some last minute pictures. I also met the newly arrived Jaramar who I felt was very nice and a good choice. I think Ryan was so excited for her to be there that it overrid him feeling sad for me leaving. He said goodbye the night before because of my early departure time and wanted to know if my parents would jump to the ceiling when they saw me. And despite my sometimes complaining I will miss the kid. Though luckily this day and age it's much easier to keep in touch and we will probably have a skype session.

So this concludes my blog and thanks to those that were reading. I will leave you with one of the last pictures of Ryan and me.

We're dinosaurs :-)