Well, today has already been an adventure. I debated not
sleeping last night so I would be sure not to miss my tram to the shuttle bus
that would take us to the airport, but eventually decided I should get a few
hours of sleep. So I set two alarms for 4 and 4:15 just to be sure that I would
wake up. I woke up at the first alarm, blinked, and looked at the clock. It was
5:03! I quickly dressed and shoved the remaining trinkets into my bulging
backpack, desperately trying to make time slow down. I needed to catch the 5:14
tram to be on time or I would miss the shuttle. When I reached the bottom, I
looked at the clock and my heart sank. I only had 3 minutes to get to the tram
stop, and there was no way I could take a 20 minute walk and turn it into a 3
minute sprint while dragging a suitcase and carrying a heavy backpack. In a
panic, I knocked on the door to the main part of the house, waking up everyone.
Sophie looked at me before her eyes widened and I went to Annette and asked if
she knew how to call a taxi since I needed to be at the Hofgarten in 15
minutes, and if she had any money to pay for it. My whole host family was so
sweet, Annette called the taxi saying they would be there in 2 minutes, and
Sophie gave me some money to pay for the ride. It is entirely because of them
that I made it on time to the shuttle bus before it left as I would not have
made it otherwise.
I hopped on the small bus with 12 other people and settled
in for a long drive. I must have fallen asleep at some point, because the 2.5
hour bus ride didn’t seem so long. Since there were like 7 other people on the
same flight as me, we all moved en mass to the check in corner to check our
bags and get tickets. They asked us a bunch of questions like “when did you
pack your bag,” “Has anyone given you anything to hold?” “Where have your bags
been since you packed them?” and a ton of others. Apparently the airport had a
scare a few weeks ago with some passengers and what turned out to be a bomb, so
they’ve been asking us these questions every time we pass a checkpoint. I ate
some food at the airport, and waited for the plane to start boarding.
Our bags for the ones going back. It's a lot
On the plane, it was rather boring. I fell asleep quite a
few times, which is a good thing I guess because I was tired and it will help
me to get back into the Texas time zone. The movies that they had available
were frankly terrible. The only one that was relatively decent was Jack Ryan:
Shadow recruit. It kept me awake at least with the fight scenes that it had.
When we landed at Dallas, we all got off the plane and waited for everyone else
to disembark. The only thing I could see were the smiles on our faces, and I
could tell from the way that my face hurt that I was beaming as well. We were
finally in the U.S! We went through customs, which turned out to be super easy because we were U.S. citizens. Then we grabbed our bags and rechecked them before heading to our next gate. We lost two of our members as they went home, but the rest of us went and hung out before our flights. On the flight to Austin, I sat next to a sweet girl holding her small toy poodle in a holder. An actual living breathing toy poodle, not a stuffed animal. We had a great conversation that lasted the entire flight, and parted ways when we reached Austin.
We're back in the U.S.!!
My first look of Austin
At the Austin airport as I went down the escalator to the baggage claim, I saw my family and ran up to them to give them hugs. I was so excited to be home and to see them again, and I had the whole family there too! On the drive back home, I asked if we could stop by a Mexican restaurant for my first meal back in the U.S. We had a great dinner and talked about a lot of different topics, then went home. When I got home, my pets were running out the door to try and see me. As I walked to the stairs, I saw all the papers on the stairs welcoming me home and showing all of the places that I've been to this semester. As I walked into my room, I was speechless. On all the surfaces were pictures that I had either taken or were on Facebook. They showed places that I've been to and things that I've done. On the bed was a booklet that turned out to be this blog in paper form. I asked, and there were about 300 pages that were printed out and bound into this book. That means that I've written about 300 pages over the course of this semester....and you've read them all. Thank you for continuing to read this thing and keeping me writing. I spent some time with my parents and distributed out the souvenirs, and went to bed tired.
Aww, my parents put this together for me. They're so sweet!
I can't believe all that I've done this semester, and when I start to think about it, I feel like it's been a dream. This past semester has taught me so many things, and not just in the classroom. I'm more confident, appreciate simple things more (like understanding the people around me) and feel lucky to have the life that I've been on. This may have been the end of my journey through Europe, but I will never forget what I've done and the next part of my life will be heavily influenced by the past 4 months. I look forward to what my next journey will be.
Erin Z
No comments:
Post a Comment