Home again, Home again, Jiggity Jig

Well, I've been home now almost a week and things are starting to fall into place again.

It wasn't a fun journey home-- due to a snafu in Los Angeles, I was in transit a full 42 hours. I did manage an aisle seat for the 14 hour jaunt from Hong Kong to LA, which was lovely (well, lovelier than the middle seat would have been), but once I got to LA I was informed by my father, who was, extremely luckily, in town on business, that our plane had been cancelled, and we had been rebooked on a flight 12 hours later. He still had his hotel and rental car though, so the trip ended up fairly painless. After collapsing in the hotel room for 4 hours, we went to nearby Hermosa Beach, a little beach town right outside LA proper. (Or is it still LA proper? I've never understood) and had excellent Mexican food, people watched, and walked out onto the pier to watch the sunset. Then we got on a red eye, but not to Boston, no that would have been too simple-- to Washington DC.

Funny story, though, and by "funny" I mean "wahhhh." We sat for 45 minutes on the runway until the pilot came on, all "Sorry folks, we're having a weight distribution problem, we'll get that resolved and be on our way soon." Apparently what "get that resolved" means is "take some people's bags off the plane, including Alissa's." Needless to say, we had to run to catch our connection to Boston because we came in so late (luckily our flight was just one concourse over, if it had been in another terminal we never would have caught it) and when we finally got to Logan around 10 AM, my bag was nowhere to be found. The United people promised it would be at our house by 4 PM. Then they promised it would be there by 6 PM. Midnight. 8 AM.

My bag finally arrived at our house at noon. The next day. Argh.

After which we drove ourselves up to Maine, and the rest of the week was devoted to relaxing, rereading Harry Potter (I'm almost finished with the third book), catching up with friends, and starting to try and wrap my head around the fact that I'm Back. So far, things seem to be alright. I'm settling in, getting used to the soft beds, the constant barrage of English, revelling in amazing summer fruit and incredible cleanliness of public bathrooms. I think it helps how starkly different my lives are in China and here. It just feels like a different person did all those things in a different world, a different universe. Hopefully sometime soon I'll start coming out of the clouds and understanding that this is more than just a dream of home.