I made it home!

After a LONG, and I mean LONG night of traveling, I finally made it home! It's so crazy to know that I was just in the Middle East, than in Europe, and now I am sitting at home in the United States.

Getting to the Cairo airport was quite stressful, but once I had my ticket in hand it was easy. One of the Egyptians working in baggage tried to convince me I needed to give him a tip. Since I only had American money left there was no way I was giving him a ten for simply lifting a few bags onto the conveyor belt. As soon as he asked I told him I had nothing for tips and then proceeded to put the rest of the bags up myself.

My terminal was quite boring until a random guy sitting across from me happened to look up and saw my college jacket. He commented on my school since he has heard many things about it. He lives in Northern VA with a lot of friends who go to VA Tech so he knew the area. We started talking and I found out that he was studying Arabic for two months in Damascus and is going into his senior year of school just like me. We started comparing the different cultures in Egypt and Syria and soon we had to board. (P.s., Middle Eastern countries are not strict at all when it comes to what you bring on a plane. They run your stuff through the equipment, but that's it. They let me bring on a bottle of water with no problems.)

And I slept a decent amount on the first flight, I'd estimate about three hours.

My new traveling buddy was headed for Dulles as well so when we had a four hour layover in Paris we talked a lot more and took turns guarding each others stuff. The time went by much faster than the last time I was in Paris where I was waiting all by myself. Finally the time came for the flight to cross the Atlantic. I pretty much watched movies the entire flight. Date Night and Invictus were great movies. I also watched an episode of Mad Men and started How to Train Your Dragon. I really want to finish this movie now, it was really funny. And the airline cut it off so abruptly, it was actually in the middle of a sentence. Sigh.

Already since I've been home I'm back into texting mode with my friends who I know have been worried/thinking about me and my travels. I love technology and I had missed my phone so much. I used a company phone while I was in Egypt but it's not the same as being able to use your own phone. ...And I just realized that I didn't delete contacts or pictures that I had added over the summer. So whoever gets the phone after me will get a surprise I guess.

Anyhoo, I'm off to bed. Tomorrow my only plans are to unpack, work on my paper for school, and pull out the stuff I need for school. I somehow picked up a cold my last day in Cairo and it is making me miserable. And I did take some fun pictures to document my last night in Egypt but I'm going to go crash and hopefully start the healing process of getting over this cold before I put up any pictures.

I am so glad to be home!!! Though I really do miss Cairo now...