Back Home

So I'm finally back home in Portland, still recovering a bit from the jet lag. Home is so crazy, I've missed so much while I was gone and it was only for three weeks! I can't imagine how much stuff people miss when they are gone for a semester or a year. So our last day in Europe we went to an art museum in Brussels, I did some shopping, and I updated my blog. After all of that, all of us met up at Cafe Delirium one last time for some beers. We had a dinner reservation at 6:30 at Chez Leon which was Belgian food. We had a pre-paid meal and had a few choices for dinner, and I was in the minority when I ordered chicken; everyone else got mussels-- something Brussels is famous for. The craziest thing was when people started finishing their plates of mussels and the waiter would come in and bring more! It was great talking about everything that had happened on our trip and talking about bottling our beers and graduation, which for most of the group will be in the spring and then for four of us it will be next fall. I then went back to the hotel to pack.

At 3am I woke up to get ready for the flight. We had a 50 minute flight from Brussels to Amsterdam and then a 10 ish hour flight from Amsterdam to Portland. In Amsterdam we met up with the Jan Term group who went to India and they were sharing their stories--way different than our trip. Plus they had already been on a flight for 8 hours before even getting to Amsterdam. This flight had four movies and I slept through parts of all of them. Once we landed in Portland, we got off the plane and there are two paramedics waiting at the gate-- one of them was my uncle! He works for the airport and found out when and where my flight got in and stopped by to see me. After a quick chat with him, I headed through passport check and customs, then we had a long bus ride to McMinnville where my parents were waiting for me. I grabbed my stuff and we drove back to Portland. The original plan was for them to just get me at the airport but I had left my wallet and keys and such in McMinnville. We caught up and I showed them all the stuff I brought back and we had dinner and caught up some more.

Last night I fell asleep around 8pm and woke up today at 4:30am. I wrote my reflective essay and had lunch with my parents and went grocery shopping. My brain still isn't fully functioning in English-- I mean I spoke in English mostly when I was in Europe but I'm still half expecting people to not be speaking English. My dad rented "In Bruges" from the library and we watched it tonight so I could point out where I had been-- it was actually a lot better movie than I had thought it would be. It was really cool pointing out where I had been and stuff and then it hit me: I was there about 4 days ago! Crazy! Anyway, I'm still not used to the time so I'm about to go to bed, I'm going to try to update this blog occasionally until I've adjusted back to American culture.