63. The Long Journey Home

Well the journey home was filled with lots of anticipation, yawns, a little sleep (yay!) and a heart stopping moment.

Sometime in the middle of the night on the plane over Africa, I don't know what time it was, but we were over the DRC according to the map on the seat in front of me, and I think someone smoked in the lavatory because the fire alarm in the plane went off. Scariest minute of my life. Maybe more scary then getting chased by that ostrich the second time? Ok, maybe not. But probably tied. But then the alarm went off after a few minutes of the flight attendants running around panicking and everyone waking up, realizing what that noise was and screaming. I didn't scream, but just sat there kind of like WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? THIS IS NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN! All I could think of was that the DRC was a really bad place to crash land because we'd probably get killed or taken hostage or something. I wasn't really concerned about the whole 39,000 foot drop through the sky on a burning plane to the ground... Getting shot by insurgents would be the least of my worries... but that's the thing about the fire alarm going off on a plane in the middle of the night - you don't think rationally. You just don't.

I also had the winning seat because the lady in the seat in front of me reclined her seat as far as it could go. Her kid screamed too, but that didn't bother me at all. Kayamandi prepared me for that! :)

The trip home was also weird in that I had a lot of breakfast. So the British Airways flight between Joburg and Cape Town fed us breakfast when we were somewhere over northern France before we landed in London. (Breakfast #1) It was barely light outside, London local time was 4:55am when we landed. Who eats breakfast before 5 o'clock in the morning anyway?!

So I got off the plane and was in this huge over-the-top glamorous department store type terminal with lots of duty-free international shops. Mostly make-up and stuff. Lots of designer products. Anyway... I saw a Starbucks, and although I don't like coffee and almost never drink Starbucks at home, I had this sudden recollection that Starbucks exists - hey there, Northern Hemisphere! and felt the first tingling sensation of *home*. So I promptly went and ordered an iced mocha and a banana. (Breakfast #2)  I also had a random freakout moment when I was like IT'S SUMMER! Because even though it had been probably hotter in Limpopo than in London, it was technically winter in Limpopo and summer in London. Random...I'm such a weirdo.

I got on my flight to Chicago after a few hours layover in London, but it was around 8 in the morning I think. So naturally, they fed us breakfast on the flight just after we took off (Breakfast #3). On that flight I sat in the middle of the middle section, between two really cool people who wanted to know all about my experiences, so I didn't journal, but just talked to them the whole time. One was a guy on his way back form a mission trip in Kenya. And the other was a lady on her way back home in Hawaii and she was coming from Turkey and Greece since she was a Biology and Classics major in college. WUTTT? Anyway, that was cool :) Right before we landed, American Airlines wanted to feed us another meal, and since local time in Chicago was 9am...they fed us breakfast...again. (Breakfast #4).

When I got back to Chicago, went through customs, easy peasy lemon squeezy. And then bam was back in America! It was so weird/great/almost anti-climactic, but still pretty awesome. I went and sat in my same spot that I'd been sitting in - exact same spot in the foodcourt by the H/K terminals because there's free wi-fi there - right before I took off for London way back when on April 1. I had this weird "did I even go on this trip or was that just a dream?" feeling which was really disappointing because I wanted to be entirely changed and a new person and blah blah blah. But it takes time for things to change you... I wasn't thinking that clearly at the time. I'd been awake for like 40 hours or something like that. And traversed two hemispheres. Well I was actually a bit hungry, believe it or not, so I decided to grab lunch. And I was looking for somewhere to eat when I walked past Great American Bagel Co. and all of a sudden remembered that bagels existed. They don't in South Africa so I was like OMG I WANT A BAGEL! So I had a bagel for lunch at about 11am. So that was basically breakfast #5. Too. Many. Breakfasts. But if it's lunch then that means I had Monday night dinner in Jozi, Tuesday morning breakfast in London and Tuesday lunch in Chicago. Pretty crazy! Three meals. Three continents.

So I got on my last tiny little plane for Kansas City. It was empty, but there was a lady sitting two seats over from me and we got to chatting and she actually went to Northwestern, dated all the football players in the 1950s. Haha. But it was fun to talk to her. And talking to a NU alum felt like a tiny taste of home!

Then I landed, met mom at the airport and got that huge hug I'd been waiting for and drove home and went to bed pretty early. I had no idea what day it was. What month it was. What season it was. What time it was. But none of that mattered. Because I am home.