flight_home

I had a very nice last day in England walking around Southport, a near by town, shopping. The last of us, Jeremy, Starla, Emily, and Anjuli and of course me went over there for some last minute things to tie up and to see a movie. It was a nice day and we saw Santa Clause 2 and were the only ones in the theatre laughing. The British didn't get the American humour that we were laughing at. oh well their loss.. LOL We then sat up half the night laughing. At what don't ask, because I am not quite sure at this point. It was 2 in the morning... we just laughed. We waited to usher Starla off and then decided to get a quick nap (I was heading out at 5am)... and so we all headed to our rooms... Em and Anjuli and Jeremy all getting up to say good-bye to me and see me leave . It was hard to leave and I will miss them and yes even Milton House.

Thankfully Angela (another student teacher) and I were traveling together for half the trip. We got to the airport and finally got to the checkin. Well, she had no problem checking in, getting her tickets, and getting rid of her bags.. but it didn't go as smoothly for me. My biggest fear was that my luggage was going to be over weight, so as I put them on the scales, I prayed for lightness of them. Thankfully they were fine. But thats not were the problems came in. ... I handed my tickets to her and she looked at me as if I had just grown horns.. as she said "do you have your tickets" Um... WHAT! those are my tickets.. that was all I had been sent... so off she goes to the office... after about 5 min she comes back and thankfully says that it was okay and handed me my new tickets and seat asignments... wow! that was a close one. But then I found out that I wasn't allowed Christmas Crackers on the plane (for the fam you will find out later what they are, for everyone else I think you should know what they are), so I had to take care of that. So I pulled them out and emptied the contents of them. Fine so I was done with checking in... finally. So off Angela and I go. After a half hour wait in the que we get to the metal detectors. Everyone was patted down. I mena not just a quick wall through the detectores... no the hands held detectors thoroly checked! I also had to take off my shoes and they had to be checked.. crazy. But we survived that and then trecked to the gate. Which required us to go down steps to only come back up them on the other side. Crazy set up. We boarded and all was okay. Off to Frankfurt Germany we went! When we got to germany it was quite interesting, because they don't have gates, the plane stops in the "parking area" and the steps are attached you walk down them and onto a bus. It was very interesting, never did that before! Fun stuff... and off we went to our connecting flights to the USA and this is where Angela and I had to split up. .

So I am finally able to get on the plane after a 30 min delay and I find my seat. AALLL the way in the back.. middle at that. Oh well... make the good out of it! Silver lining in everything as the dad off of Stuart Little 2 would say. That was the movie that they played.. not the best or my pic, but hey. The cartoons on later were pretty good.. except I didn't get to finish watching Duck Tales.. an old favorite of mine. one i haden't seen before either. The flight was very long... and pretty boring. I did get to finish my book though that was nice and start the other one (Silver lining). I did get some sleep too. OH but get this.. the meal.. it was great! Yes you heard me right.. it was good. I had some kind of pasta and mmm it was excellent. I really enjoyed it! And the snack for later (just a ham sandwich) was good too!!! never thought I would ever rave over the airline food!!

Pictures will follow.... they have to be developed!

Flight Home:

The flight was finally over.. thankfully and off I set to go through customs and get my luggage! Which was the next adventure to take. So I had the bags checked all the way back to Rochester (where I flew from in Sept) but since I was flying into D.C. it was better for me to get off and Mum and Dad come for me. So I got my bags okay, but I couldn't just walk out of the re-check baggage area. So as I passed the place to re-check it I ran into a little snag.. the x-ray/metal detector carry on check point. I couldn't go through with all my luggage... so I asked what I was to do, because I didn't want to recheck the baggage like planned. So the guy looks at me and says you won't be able to carry all four of those by yourself up to the tram to go to the main termanal. OH dear. So thankfully he was really nice and told me to go to the desk and see if they could have it tagged to go on the conveyor belt over to the main terminal. Yes they could so after some explanation, they tagged it and taken out a side door onto the run way area, I was a little nervious about my luggage being left on just a cart outside, but they reasured me it would be taken to the main terminal at claim #2. So I again had to go through the check point. (For the fourth time that day - making sure I wasn't carrying anything I shouldn't have had!). I made it through with no problems and off to the main termnal I went. Having to get a tram over to it. I make my way down to baggage claim and wait on my bags. The bags did come in about 5 minutes time. Which was to my relief! But now the key was finding Mum and Dad, because at this point it was over a half hour or so from when the plane came in. I looked around but to no avail. One of the guys that offers to carry luggage came over and I surcommed to the pressure and allowed him to take the bags. He did offer to have them paged, which was great and very helpful, as they were standing at the other end and would have never found me. So waiting a few minutes I was surprised and joyed to find that Fay and Kevin had come too. What a neat thing to be greeted at the airport by so many!! Oh yeah I had no problems getting through customs at any point in my journey, and got yet another stamp in my passport! Isn't that soo cool, well I think so, I would love to have it filled with them! Maybe one day.

So there ends my adventure for the day and the flight home. I was exhausted by the time we ate dinner (which was great, hamburger, hadn't had a good one of those for a while) and traveled home. It was only 9:30 here but for my clock it was 2:30 am... I was wiped out! So I went straight to bed!

Keri and Carl (This is the part especially for you):
You both will get a laugh out of this... or at least I did. Carl did you pick up the pepper in tomato juice while in Germany by any chance? Heres why I ask.. I had the privelaged (or rather not a privelaged) to sit between two people that both ordered tomato juice and then proceeded to put pepper in it!!! Since my flight was out of Germany and both of these people (I presume as they didn't speak English) were Geman. I thought of both of you and just laughed!

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