For me, this Christmas was the most special one I've had so far. While I've known that the holidays are not just about presents, Santa, and decorations for a long time, this year in particular I really recognized and appreciated how important family is not only during Christmas, but also throughout the rest of the year. If not for the love and support of my family I'd be without the emotional and financial means to make it home. I never would have had the drive to fight so hard to be here if I didn't know and appreciate exactly what it was that I would be coming home to. So for those of you that I haven't seen over the past couple of days, I'm going to give you the CliffNotes version of the adventure that was me coming back stateside.
I could hardly sleep on the 20th, knowing that the airports in London and Paris had canceled all their flights that day, yet I still had hope that my flights would leave the next day and that I'd be able to make it home. I had a taxi booked for 7.30 AM because I didn't know if the buses would be running because of the snow and black ice, but at 6.00, a half-hour before I wanted to get up, I picked up my phone and saw a text message from my cousin telling me that both of our flights had been canceled. Immediately, I jumped out of bed, flipped on the lights and started up my computer. I got on the phone with Katie and we scrambled to find a flight home. After several calls back and forth to one another, as well as 3 or 4 to my parents (who I woke up in the middle of the night), I was able to secure a ticket home. However, the only catch was that it left from Geneva, Switzerland and went to Rome before ultimately ending up at JFK. At that point, now that I had a ticket that was the least of my worries because I still wasn't sure if I could make it to the train station. Still in my pajamas, I ran down the steps, went outside and slid down the street to the bus stop to see if the buses were running. Luckily they were so on my way back I called and canceled the taxi and once I was back at the school I started looking for a room with a printer so that I could print my confirmation emails. Thankfully I have the master keys for the school so after visiting a couple of classrooms, I sprinted through the darkened hallways and down the steps to the teacher's lounge where I was able to open and print what I needed to.
I tried to order my train tickets to Geneva online, but my French debit card was denied and I knew I didn't have enough money in my American account, so I knocked on the door of my Chinese neighbor to see if she could come to the train station with me so that I could use her card to buy the tickets. Together we slid down the street trying not to face-plant on the pavement or get hit by a car while carrying my massive suitcase. We made it to the train station in plenty of time and my French card was accepted, and I was glad to be able to sit down for a while on the hour-long ride to Paris. Once in Paris, I got on the metro to Gare de Lyon and waited for my track assignment to Geneva.
I only dozed off for a couple of minutes during the 4 hour ride down thanks to the enormous old man next to me who smelled like sour milk, pig manure and litter box. I was starving, but couldn't stand to eat while sitting next to that. I breezed through customs in Geneva before I took yet another train to the airport. At the airport I decided to see if I could get on an earlier flight since mine wasn't until 11.30 AM the next day. I handed over my confirmation email, and after a couple of minutes of eyebrow raises and "je comprends pas" I finally asked what was wrong, and the woman told me that I had no ticket and my reservation had been canceled. Stupefied, I asked the woman how that was possible; I had the confirmations from the airlines, they'd taken the money for the tickets and no-one had notified me that the reservation had been canceled.
Three hours later thanks to a phone call to an American representative at Delta, a nice lady who let me use her iPhone and gave me a phone card, my reservation had been found, I had a boarding pass and my suitcase had been checked. Spending the night at the airport was no treat since I only had 6 juice boxes, 2 apples, 2 pears and a stale baguette to eat and my glasses were in my suitcase, but I made my way through 2 books and 3 different playlists. I didn't sleep out of fear that my stuff would be stolen or I wouldn't wake up in time for my flight, so when Katie finally got to the airport the next morning, I looked terrible and felt worse; especially when I found out that she didn't have a spot on her flight home.
As it got closer to boarding time, Katie and I had to go our separate ways and I had no news of her until I saw my mom and brother some 13 hours later. When I got to Rome I had to do that awkward speed walk from one terminal to another 15 minutes away because I still needed a boarding pass for the second leg of the journey. I pushed my way to the front of the line (yes, I was one of those people that everyone hates) and after my boarding pass had been printed, I was told I could get it in 5 minutes. Even though I thought that was kind of odd, after what I'd been through already 5 minutes wasn't the end of the world. However as minute 4 came and went, I looked around me and noticed the flock of passengers on stand by. I inched my way back to the counter where a guy was printing and exchanging tickets of Italian passengers. He picked up my seat-less boarding pass and looked at it before another Italian came up to exchange tickets. Realizing that if I didn't speak up soon, I wouldn't be going home, I interrupted him as he started to work on the next passenger and asked if he could get back on mine since all I needed was a seat. The next 30 seconds were the longest 30 seconds of my life and as he handed me my boarding pass it took a huge effort to not cry out or jump or something. I was going home.
I slept on the plane and inhaled the food, and as we circled JFK I enjoyed the high of being back in America. Even though I still had 3 train rides ahead of me until I got home, at that point I was just happy that everything was in English again.
After that day, I've got a new appreciation for what it means to be an American. I know the rest of the world thinks we're loud and obnoxious, fat and arrogant, but there's honestly no place that I'd rather come from. At the beginning of this experience I thought it'd be so awesome to be French (or European in general), but now that temporarily - for all legal intents and purposes - I am a French citizen, it's not what I thought it would be. Sure the French have some things working in their favor, but at the end of the day, America rules. End of story. Just like people, no country is perfect, but I've got a newfound admiration for both the people and the places in this country I call home.
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