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The journey home from Italy was tiring, but I have already adjusted to jet lag well. I left my hostel at 7:00 AM, took a 7:45 bus to the airport, and took off at 12:30, since my flight was running an hour late. I flew into Chicago and felt happy to be home. It was strange to realize that Chicago felt like home. Being abroad made me think of all of the United States as home, whereas before I had always thought of Connecticut as home (and now Virginia). Ordinarily Chicago would feel far from home, but coming back from Europe it felt like a familiar place to me. It felt nice to be home after traveling for 45 days. I went through customs, which was a breeze because I ran off the plane before everybody else and was among the first people in line. The customs officers chose not to inspect my bag and so I walked through without any hassles. I even got through TSA security very quickly and so I had nothing to do in the airport for about 4 hours while I waited for my connection. My first purchase in the United States was at a Starbucks, where I bought some banana bread as a midnight snack, although it was only 5 PM in Chicago. When I landed in Richmond I was tired since I had barely managed to sleep all night and to me it was 6 in the morning. Luckily mom was waiting right outside the door for me and the drive home felt fast since we had a lot to talk about. As soon as we were talking I didnt feel tired anymore and ended up staying up until almost 3 in the morning.

I have been home for a day and a half and am relaxing before I have to finish my Monroe Research project and then head back to school. My facebook friends will probably already have noticed that I uploaded my favorite photos to my profile. I also ordered prints of my favorite shots today and will pick them up soon. If I have time I plan to put them into a scrap book along with some of my ticket stubs, and put a few into frames. I hope to finish my Monroe research project soon so that I have time to relax before going back to school, but knowing me I will probably keep working on it up until the deadline anyway, perfecting the final product rather than taking it easy.

Last night we had ribs with barbeque sauce and mashed potatoes, an all-American meal that I haven't been able to enjoy for a long time. I missed my mom's cooking for sure. Tonight we will have fish since the seafood available in Perugia never looked very appetizing to me. I thought it was strange that the grocery store always offered octopus as an option, but my mom told me that octopus is a typical food in Italy. I may have been in Italy for over a month, but I clearly haven't learned all there is to learn about Italy. I guess I will just have to go back some time!