A Bittersweet Adventure

I am finally home safe and sound.  And let me tell you, it has definitely been an adventure getting here.  I arrived in Dulles Airport around 2:30, and about an hour later was through customs and on my way home!  But, lets rewind 15.5 hours from my arrival at Dulles, because that is where my adventure really begins.  I got up at 4am this morning (GMT - so 11pm yesterday in EST) in order to finish packing and get everything in order for departure from our flat (we had to pack up our bed linens and make sure all our dishes were clean, etc).  So I got about 4.5 hours of sleep last night, and about the same the night before after we went out for our final night out as a programme.

Our Last Night Out

So with that background in mind, I arrived at the Bristol Airport "bright-eyed and bushytailed" around 5:50am, after a very sad farewell to my roomies and my last taxi ride through Bath and Bristol.  After dealing with the very inefficient system for paying for extra luggage in the BRS  Airport, I met up with two other ASE students on my flight to Amsterdam, and we awaited the announcement of our gate.  Sadly, instead we got a notice that our flight had been delayed 35 minutes.  Originally I did not think much of this, but then I realized that I would be missing boarding for my connecting flight to Dulles.  Trying not to freak out too much, I sat rather impatiently through my flight to Amsterdam (once the airplane finally came).  We arrived with all the other connecting flights in Terminal B, where I located a departure schedule.  At this point it was 11:50, and boarding for my connection started at 11:30.  On the departure schedule, I read the most dreaded words on the screen:  "Gate Closing / Gate Besluit."  Needless to say, I ran from that point on to Terminal E, and to my gate.  Arriving out of breath, the lady running the security check just sort of looked at me, and said, "you're on time, you don't need to worry." Funny, I was not under the impression that the words "gate closing" meant "on time," or that my panting could be instantaneously stopped by not worrying haha.  Of course to make this adventure even better, I had to go through the xray machine and get a pat down at the security check.

ASE Final Tea

As I was walking down the walkway to the plane, I was stopped by another airport employee, telling me that I could take my time now that I was past security.  Only, he thought I was Dutch, so he was explaining all of this in Dutch until he finally realized that I had absolutely no idea what he was saying!  So apparently, I can pass as a Dutch citizen and a German citizen (see notes on trip to Rome)!
All of these insane aspects of my travels were made up for with the Toffee Ice Cream they served as our snack on my flight to Dulles.  THEY SERVED ICE CREAM ON THE AIRPLANE!!!  Why is this not a more common occurence?!?  I was also very thankful that my luggage made my connection as well - I was not expecting them to get my luggage on my AMS-IAD flight, since I barely made it in time myself!
So now I have officially been awake for 22 hours, I'm ready for bedtime!  I am so excited to go to MPC tomorrow - I've missed going to church so much this semester!  Speaking of missing, I miss my ASE friends already, it's so weird being apart from all of them, knowing that we're all going our separate ways.