Wednesday, November 24, 2010

America = Magic!

Hey there, America!  You're looking good.

I'm in New York waiting for my flight to LA and I'm just so excited to be around people who are speaking English that I don't even mind that in the last 38 hours I have gotten just 1 wee hour of sleep or that I still have a 2 hour wait and a 6 hour flight and a 1 hour drive to get to my bed.

When we landed I texted Katie with the exciting news that I was back in America and she called right away and I busted into a very soulful rendition of "America, the Beautiful."  Much to the delight of my fellow passengers.  Who were fantastic, by the way.  I somehow didn't have a seat assigned on my Rome to NY flight (which was a huge joke, but I'm over it) so I was essentially put onto the stand-by list and ended up on the last row of the plane with Maureen and Al, this 60-something couple from Long Island who just finished up a Mediterranean cruise.  They were hysterical.  They had the best accents and they told me all about their kids and their world travels and anytime I would say something to Maureen that was remotely funny she would wake Al up and tell him and they would both laugh and laugh.  I mentioned to them that I was going to have to declare bringing in dates to the country and Maureen suggested that I try to smuggle them in and just have Thanksgiving with them if I am detained over night.  Speaking of those dates, I did get them through because I convinced the agricultural inspector that they were picked 3 weeks ago and thus, not technically fresh, thus making them dried fruit, which is acceptable to bring in the country.  And he made a reference to Star Wars and I told him I went to the Tatooine set and suddenly we were best friends.  And I may have shimmied somewhere in there.  Because I was just so happy.  I suppose we'll never know what was the clincher.

There's a girl eating a Wendy's cheeseburger sitting next to me and my spell checker is no longer in Arabic and I just bought an US Weekly.  America = Magic!

5 comments:

Stephanie said...

Welcome home.

Kelly said...

Happy Thanksgiving. Having lived overseas I can totally relate to your US bliss fest.

The Katzbox said...

You're home. Welcome back. I will miss your pictures, but I loved your stories. I look forward to hearing about your NEW culture shock. Your perspective will have shifted (along with your luggage in the overhead), so things should still be weird to you....in a good way.

:)

Love you.

Valerie said...

I want you to make it home for Thanksgiving, but, I'd kind of prefer if you spent it with Maureen and Al in Long Island.

Rach said...

I'm glad you made it onto the plane, and what delightful people! And the fact that you just used shimmy and Tatooine in the same sentence just made my day.