home, sweet home...

Image one: sunset and corn field. I miss corn fields. I am definitely a Hoosier
Image two: me, Terralyn, Mona making the buckeyes

I made it! I am home again. It feels great. I am really excited to spend Christmas with my family.
Traveling went pretty smoothly, including some unexpected diversions the night before we left Tirana. I'll post about that later. Let me just say the Hashers are an interesting group. I travelled with my neighboring site mate Juliet. It was nice to travel with a friend.
We arrived at the airport using a taxi because the shuttle between the central square in Tirana was not running every hour on the hour despite what the sign in th bus window said. The nice thing was that the taxi driver gave us a fair price and did not try to charge us more. I would have argued with him if he had. He wasn't even a real taxi driver but rather just a security guard at the Sheraton where our friend dropped us off at 3:45am.
The lines went smoothly and Juliet didn't get charged anything for her bag being a little heavy. I even had fun in line. Albanians don't really do lines. It's more of a crowd in front of a counter and shout out orders or push your way to the front. I still haven't managed to adopt this style but I have come up with some defensive tactics when I see it coming. The line was beyond the small rope off section. A lady came up and stood right at front of the line going into the ropes. Unfortunately for her, she would have to cut in front of me to get in line. HA! So not gonna happen :) I forced my foot between her bag and the guy in front of her. She retaliated with a more forceful push of luggage and self. I stood my ground. The line opened. I looked and her as she started to move forward and said in Albanian, "I am next." She just looked at me. It was awesome. What can I say, it's the small things.

Though Alitalia was crappy with the food service and lacked drink service but one time other than with the meal and snack on a 10.5 hour flight (I will ignore the fact that I only got one meal and SNACK for ten plus hours), they did not damage any of the fragile contents of my luggage. I was very worried about that. I brought home a bottle of wine for my sister's birthday. I have had a bad experience with packing a bottle of wine. It ended with a wasted bottle of expensive wine and a couple of articles of clothing completley ruined.

We celebrated my sister's birthday last night and attempted to make buckeyes (chocolate covered peanut butter balls). She LOVES them. We had a slight problem so we have to compelete the chocolate phase tonight.

It feels good to be home.