I am back on solid American soil. It was a long time coming but here I am. I am often asked if I miss Vienna and I know sometime soon I will but right now I am just grateful to be home with those I love. The flight back felt like a torture experiment. We had a brief flight to Paris where I was able to grab some lunch and pick up a Paris shot glass that I had forgotten to get when I first went to the city of lights. I collect shot glasses from places I've been and was kicking myself for not picking one up.
I had been craving Christmas in Vienna so while I sat in the airport waiting for the second plane, I read the short Christmas stories I had downloaded from the Amazon Kindle Store a week before. The first was "Christmas in Venice" by Meadow Taylor (do you think that's her real name? Because I have some yuletide doubts.) The second short story was "Christmas at Pebble Creek" by Vannetta Chapman. They were both free books and after spending three months in Europe my budget had been well depleted. I had never purchased a Kindle short story before but I figured they would take maybe a couple hours to read. Well, they took about twenty minutes. That's how short they were. That's not even a television show without commercials. That's like one half of a cartoon. I was very disappointed because I wanted that cozy feeling of reading a Christmas novel to keep me occupied during my wait. On the bright side, I feel confident that I could easily write a "short story" and publish it to Amazon sometime in the next few months. So stay tuned for more on that!
On the second plane I sat next to an older gentleman who asked me how I was before introducing himself. When he sat down he handed me his customs card and told me he had forgotten his glasses in his checked luggage (ever notice you say luggage when you're on a plane? Maybe that's just me.). He handed me his passport and asked me to fill out the form for him. I definitely spelled the name of his town wrong but I'm going to chock that up to being away. His name was Elias and I informed him I have a nephew also with that name. He chuckled and gave me a nudge, "Now you have Uncle Elias and Nephew Elias." He was a nice old man but he definitely weird-ed me out. Mostly because I was tired and wanted to get home faster than the plane could take me. But partially because he kept hovering over me and getting up and coming back.
I usually love long flights. You have so much time to watch movies, listen to music, read books, and write. But this was the first time I had been on a plane and could barely watch the movies on the screen in front of me. I watched "The Heat", "The Way Way Back", and part of "The Great Gatsby." They were all good movies and I was glad to watch The Great Gatsby again but I could barely focus on them. My mind was on picking up my bags from baggage claim, seeing my parents, getting a Dunkin Donuts iced coffee, and seeing my puppies. In that order. It felt like Christmas Eve in a sense as I sat with great anticipation.
As soon as I arrived I did those exact things in that order. When I got home I forced myself to stay up awhile longer but after passing out in my bed that felt gigantic after being in a tiny bed for three months, I woke up fully alert at 4 in the morning. As soon as my parents were up I was ready to go out to Target. I had missed Target probably most of all American stores. I wandered around Target looking at everything from blenders to socks to makeup. It felt so right. As I was walking around I eavesdropped on conversations, something I hadn't really been able to do for awhile. At some points I could barely understand what people were saying because I wasn't used to listening to English as well as I had. I was with English-speaking people during the trip but I hadn't been listening in on conversations as much. I was hyper-aware of the accents of people from my area though. I don't have much of an accent from this area but when I listened I felt like I was getting slammed with strange sounding words. Since then, it's become more normal to hear other American voices and it doesn't sound as harsh as it had that first day back.
Little things felt overwhelmingly joyous to me for the first few days. I made small talk with cashiers and even some people in line. I was full of gratefulness at just being able to communicate. Nothing scared me. My knew motto became , "If you speak English, you don't scare me." Being back felt like the playing field had finally been leveled after months of being at the bottom of a ditch. Not being able to communicate simple things like, "I want that to go please" felt like being tormented. You were subjected to whatever the person decided they would do for you. Of course people spoke English as well but it always felt like a burden talking to them. Being able to speak my native language without judgement felt like a gift and I was grateful to everyone I came in contact with for it.
While traveling I used to have to screenshot things I might need before leaving the apartment or search for a WIFI spot if it was important. Now I can just look up whatever I want whenever. It feels like I got a smartphone all over again and I've fallen back in love with it. My iPhone has never seemed so precious to me. Of course this means that my battery is drained much faster than it had been while in airplane mode. Little technology things like being able to used blogger.com in English make me so happy.
I love being able to drive again as well. Now that I'm back to work I get to drive my car an hour and a half a day and I love it. I have my audio books and music and the open road. It is absolutely a beautiful feeling being able to control exactly where you want to go and not being crammed in a hot train with strangers.
It's been a crazy ride coming home but I have been grateful every step of the way. I am thankful to being able to spend the holiday season with those I love the most.
Yours Until the End of the Internet,
Eiggam
