So I'm now back home in Henrietta, New York.
Monday before finals the photo students had a Mexican dinner for everyone at their apartments. All of us study abroad students came and ate and drank and socialized and took group pictures. It was fun. Teo was making drinks for people and invented a drink called "sex with Teo." Kara's rice was like the best rice I ever had, I'll have to ask her how she made it.
Two days later on Wednesday we had a dinner at my apartment. We made chicken and eggplant parm, salad and garlic bread. Our guests were every study abroad student, plus our professors, Axel and Denis, their wives, another American professor, Ted, Anna's friend, and our friend Feđa. We had 21 people in the apartment and it was packed. Teo played bar tender again and he made me a drink and got me drunk. It was lots of fun though and afterwards almost all of us went to Fresh. Our apartment hasn't been organized since...
On Saturday my mother and sister flew into Dubrovnik to pay me a visit. I took the bus to the airport and picked them up. They stayed in Old Town. My last week in Croatia I did some things I didn't get to do that I wanted to such as walking the city walls and going to the island of Lokrum which is right outside of Old Town. Lokrum was really really nice and I actually swam in the salt lake, which was awesome, but the water was cold and I got sunburned, but it was still awesome.
My classes finished up with finals. I had an Environmental Science final and a final project in XML and a presentation to the class about my final project. I did my XML final project in only 1 day and I got most of it done, I was happy with my final grade of a C in XML. I was guessing I was going to get a C even before I came to Croatia considering how hard Axel's classes are and the fact I was going to be in Croatia. The other two classes I got extremely easy As in.
I left Croatia on Saturday morning and flew to Ireland with my mom and sister. The flight was 3 hours long but I was so tired I slept the whole way. We stayed just outside of Dublin for 2 nights. Dublin was really really awesome and I'm glad I went. My camera broke the first night I was there though, so I got almost no pictures. :( We went to the castle in Dublin and we were going to go to Guinness storehouse but it was closed by the time we got there. My mom wanted to take a bus tour of the city which I thought was lame but we did it anyways and I was really glad we did it, it wasn't as lame as I thought it would be. The sun appears to always be shinning in Ireland... I woke up at 5:30am and thought it was 10:00 because the sun was out and shinning, then at night it doesn't start to set until about 9:30-10:00pm. I had the best food in Dublin from a "Take-away" restaurant, I ordered "vegetarian kebab" expecting to get some kind of vegetables on a stick. Well, no, it was an overflowing thin pita sandwich with some kind of... grain based patty and plenty of toppings and sauce. It was impossible to eat without dripping it all over and toppings flying out everywhere and of course they had no napkins. It was absolute heaven though, I mean, sure it didn't sit well in my stomach and adding Guinness to my already woozy stomach promptly made me throw up, but it still tasted so good! I returned to the same place and got another one the next night. I wish I had another day in Ireland.
Monday I flew out of Dublin to Philadelphia. My mom and sister were flying to Albany and me Rochester, so we parted ways in Dublin. Their flight was at 11:30 and mine at 2:30, so I got to the airport almost 5 hours ahead of time. I wasn't able to check in or get my boarding pass until 2 hours before my flight and I had my obnoxious amount of luggage I had to carry around with me. Eventually I was able to check my bags and head to the gate, I saw a bookstore and so I used the last of my Euros to buy a book for the ride home, The Da Vinci Code. I finished about half of it before I got back to USA. US customs has a whole section of gates in Dublin for flights leaving for the United States and once you passed the US boarder officials you couldn't return. It was different then flying into Europe...
We now arrive at my new least favorite airport ever, Philadelphia International Airport. First of all my itinerary was from Dublin to Philly to LaGuardia in New York City, to Rochester, which makes no sense considering USAirways operates about 50,000 flights between Rochester and Philadelphia everyday. I saw about 4 flights going to Rochester at the time I was going to waste in LaGuardia in the one terminal alone. When we landed in Philly I had to go through US customs... again. I had to get my checked luggage and then re-check it again. Why? I don't know. Then I had to go through security... again. Uh. So I didn't figure I was going to have to go through security again so I forgot to empty my water bottle and they took it away from me and wouldn't let me drink it without having to wait in line again and go through security again. UH. So I said they could have my water bottle that I've had for the last 3 years and now I'm going to have to get another one. Boo. So I landed at B terminal and I had to go to F terminal which exactly opposite of what I had to do on the way up. So F terminal is not connected to the rest of the airport and you have to take a shuttle bus to get there, so I did. I got to my gate and then laid down on the floor and took a nap. When it was time for the plane to depart, it still had not boarded yet and the status still read "on-time." We finally a manager came to the gate and announced the plane was delayed an hour and a half and they had no staff to update us because it was Memorial Day. So I was going to miss my connecting flight in LaGuardia so I told her and she said "uh.. why aren't you just on a flight directly to Rochester?" I was wondering the same thing myself. So she said once the delayed plane leaves she can give me boarding passes to a flight directly to Rochester but she can't do it until that plane leaves, which makes no logical sense. Finally when the plane left I got my boarding pass and I had to go back to B gate. However, now I only had 10 minutes to get from F gate back to B gate, so it was a mad dash, I didn't want to be stuck in Philly for the night. I sprinted to the shuttle bus and then from the shuttle bus to my gate, when I got there the plane had already boarded but I handed over my boarding pass and the person at the gate said "Goody gumdrops, you *just* made it." So then I got on the plane and waited... and waited... and waited... The captain came on to tell us that there was a queue of 30 planes waiting to take off so we can use our cellphones because the wait was going to be like an hour. The whole plane took out their phones and started calling and texting. The guy in front of me answered his phone "I'm *still* stuck in this God-forsaken Philadelphia airport." I felt the same way, however I was glad I have my cell phone again, so that was the one positive, I could make phone calls at least. Eventually after waiting an hour and a half for a 45 minute flight, I made it to Rochester at 11:00pm. My luggage however, did not, it was lost. It arrived in Rochester the next day and they delivered it to my house by noon.
Getting back home I found out that my roommate had moved out while I was gone and I had more food at home than I ever did in Croatia and while my friend Austin was watching my cat, Zeus, he got fat. I skipped graduation ceremonies for my trip to Ireland, so I had a friend pick up my cap and gown for me so I could have the tassel. Now I can pretend like I don't have 3 more months of classes.
Since I've gotten back to the United States, I've been catching up on my sleep and haven't done anything else.
Pictures to follow eventually.
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