The Journey Home

"A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it." --George Moore 

We woke up early the next day to catch our flight. Our flight was on Air Canada through Continental, which added to the confusion of what terminal we should go to. We arrived at the airport with plenty of time and tried to check in at what we thought was the right area, but it turned out it wasn’t. So we hauled our bags to a new terminal and were finally granted access. When they weighed our bags they said one was over weight, but since the others were underweight they would let it go. Thank you Air Canada, Canadians really are nice!

We hung out until it was time to board our flight. I had my passport in my hat and the the guy checking passports for the plane asked me if I was looking for donations. I told him it couldn’t hurt (especially since we were going back home with no jobs lined up yet).

The next part you get the privilege of fast forwarding through because you are the reader. If only you could fast forward through an 8 hour flight for real. So in your mind real quick you can play a montage of us taking off from London, flying through the air, eating, sleeping, watching movies, reading, and then landing in Toronto, Canada. Wow, wasn’t that easy?

Oh, I forgot to mention the best part of the flight, Ben sat next to a Scottish man who was so quintessentially Scottish (minus the kilt) that I wanted to take his picture. He swore like a sailor, drank like a fish and said that half of England was complete crap. The flight attendants had to cut him off after a while from drinking, saying, “Sir we don’t have enough Beer left on the plane.” Then they slipped him some sort of mini bottle of alcohol and he was happy.

We landed in Canada and had to go to baggage claim to check out our bags, only to recheck them back in for our next flight. It wasn’t too complicated since it was all in the same building. No transferring terminals for us this time.

We checked through customs in Canada with no problem. The customs were for the U.S. So we got stamped by the U.S. even though we were in Canada, weird. The customs gaurd was strangely relaxed. He noticed all our bags and asked where we had been. We told him we lived in the U.S. and that we had been teaching in Hungary for the last year. “Oh, at least you weren’t in China, they’re trying to take over the whole world,” the customs guard said as he stamped our passports.

We then waited for our next flight from Toronto to Houston. As we waited a Dad came in a sat near us with his two young sons. The Dad pulled out an iPad for the first son and then pulled out a second iPad for the other son, and then pulled out an iPad for himself. Wow, I thought we are definitely not in Hungary anymore.

Soon it was time to board our plane, which was a little small I thought for a three hour ride. Smaller planes make me more nervous sometimes than the bigger ones do. Maybe because I feel like I am closer to the elements. The plane ride was thankfully uneventful and once again, you as the reader get to fast forward through 3 hours (I’m jealous).

As we made our way towards landing in Houston I felt strange to be there. Wasn’t I just in London 12 hours ago? Hungary 24 hours ago? and Italy 100 some hours ago? Where did the time go? How am I already home? Am I just here for a visit? Nope this is for real, this is our stop.

We got off the plane in Houston and there were no customs to go through. So we went straight to baggage claim and wait for it....all our bags made it! The banes of our existence for the last few days were there. We no longer had to travel across the world lugging them. A true weight of relief swept through me, we were done.

We found Ben’s family which included his mom, dad, sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew. Logan and Anna (our nephew and niece) had drawn a huge welcome home sign. Everyone gave us hugs and told us how glad that we had made it and how much they had missed us.

We went to the car and they asked us what we wanted for dinner. Hmmm, it’s our first night in Texas and what do we want for dinner? Mexican food please! After a year of no Mexican food we were dying for an authentic fajita and margarita.

And that’s what we did, we ate and talked and ate some more. I should have taken pictures of us arriving, of us eating, and of the family that day. I should of, but the photographs were not taken by my camera that day because sometimes you just need to be in the moment--completely.

The journey was long, but like the quote at the beginning of this blog entry says, the thing we realized we needed the most after being gone was our family and friends. Those are things that you can’t pack in your luggage. Trust me, we would have, but then we would have definitely been over the weight limit.