I Made It!

After an excruciatingly long day I am finally back in CA, safe and sound at my parents' house.  I now realize why I haven't been back in two years...the flight is painfully long and customs has a way of really ticking me off.  When we moved over to Sicily we avoided customs by taking a military flight from the states.  Our travels since hadn't taken us out of the European Union so we were able to travel freely with just our passports.  Not so easy when going to the States.  Ugh.  Long story, but I nearly missed my connection in Frankfurt because I was late coming in on my flight from Rome (an hour and a half), had 30 minutes to make my connection in another terminal, and had to go through customs where they had many questions when I said I'd been in Europe for 2 years. I finally made it through, but barely.  I was sure my luggage wouldn't make it but it did!! I said a little prayer when we landed and God came through. :)

Once I made my way through customs (yes, again) at SFO I finally got to see my parents!!  Big hugs and a few tears of joy!  I hadn't seen my mom in a little over a year, my dad in about a year and 8 months.  We piled in the car and began the journey south to my hometown, San Luis Obispo.

We stopped in Gilroy for my first stateside meal - Chevy's!!  Tex-Mex isn't exactly authentic Mexican food, but oh man was it delicious! I dug in with gusto to the chips and salsa and devoured my chile rellano and tamale along with a cranberry margarita. And then, as you probably guessed, I promptly passed out on the rest of the drive.  Jet lag+margarita=good night's sleep.

So now it is my first morning back and I think I might actually have made the time change smoothly having slept all night.  I woke up around 7:30, made some coffee with my mom's bialetti (gotta have my Italian creature comforts!), checked my email (was weird being disconnected for 12 hours on the flight, no email, no texting, felt like my hands were tied!), and now catching up on a quick blog post. So now to fit in all of the things I want to do and all of the people I want to see over the next 6 weeks...I can't wait!