Homecoming and Back to Reality

Well, you will be glad to know that Les and I are back in the good US of A now. We got back into SF mid-Friday afternoon and our good friend Eugene was kind enough to pick us up from the airport. 15 hours of travel is pretty exhausting, just so you know.

Couple of tidbits from our travel:

1) British Airways has the best overseas flight. It's like Jetblue where every seat has its own TV, so you can forget about sleeping on the red-eye because you can catch up on all the latest movies. I think I watched 4 movies: Angels & Demons, Gladiator (residual "hey, I was there! movies), the Soloist (was surprisingly a letdown), and part of the Hangover.

2) Security getting back to the states is insane. Thanks to the shoebomber, Richard Reid, the scrutiny and inspection that goes on at the airport is ridiculous. I think I have 1 shampoo or toothpaste bottle in every airport garbage can.

3) I think it's easier to overcome jetlag going east, than west. By the time we hit SFO, it was 230pm, which is about 1130pm Rome-time. Imagine having to have to stay up for the first day of class in Macro-Econ that same night from 6-9pm (or 3-6am). Nothing seems to make much sense at that point.

But all in all, once Les and I got back home and dropped our backpacks on the floor, we were finally able to breathe a sigh of relief that the trip was finally over. Relief? maybe more of depression. I guess it was a little heart-breaking to finally see the months of planning and excitement come to an end, but I guess that just means we can start the actual married part now. The good part is that we made it through 2 weeks of traveling together, so we know we can do it. Step 2 is sucking in other people to our future trips and slowly expand our traveling party. Asia next year, anyone?

Also, a good thing is coming back a few days beforehand to get adjusted mentally. I'm not sure if we'd be able to pull ourselves together for a workday if we came back Sunday. I know we spent most of the weekend sleeping and trying to acclimate ourselves, so without that, we'd be in serious zombie-like trouble. Although maybe we could have stayed in Rome another day, just so I didn't have to watch Cal get pummeled by Oregon for 3 hours on Saturday. I mean, seriously, did someone poo-poo in their wheaties?

That hard part about coming home though is having to catch up on the loose ends from the wedding. On the nice side, we finally got to open our wedding presents, so now we get to fiddle around with our toys like Henckel knives and the ice cream maker, but we also get to prepare the thank you cards and whatnot. That may take a while, but for now, thank you all so much for the lovely presents! Now, onto my eBay account...jk!