Home Again: The Recap: Part Two

December 13th found me on my way home, just a few short days after my birthday. To be perfectly honest with you, while I wanted to see my family and friends, I was not at all inclined to leave, and I found myself wishing I had a few more months. I had started to feel, for the first time, that somewhere other than my parent’s house could be home. And leaving home, however necessary sometimes, is always hard. The trip home was long, of course, but thankfully uneventful. I was as nervous about customs coming back, but I discovered, to my glee, but being an American going through American customs is 31 flavors of EASY, much less being as adorably innocent as I was. I am so scared of customs that the customs people actually helped me THROUGH customs, help me take care of my stuff, and put me on my flight. God bless the great US of A. The London to Chicago flight was long, but made somewhat more bearable by my seat companion, a member of a party of 20 (or so) people from a church in Corvallis that had just been on a mission trip to, you guessed it, Rwanda. Most churches go to Mexico, or maybe Canada, these people were on a mission. They gave away everything they owned and loved every minute of it. By the time I got my longest flight, they had already been flying over 18 hours, and were looking at another 12. Besides regaling us with stories of their travels, they were all distinctively dressed and therefore very handy because, on reaching Chicago, I was able to follow them all the way through customs. It was snowy in Chicago, and from there on it was Chicago to Portland, and then family, friends, and a lot of jet lag.