Traveling Back Home

We arrived home last night, on time, all in one piece, and with all of our luggage. Answered prayers like crazy!!! It's pretty amazing to see the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Pacific all in one day. The most breathtaking experience yesterday for me was seeing the still, peaceful, jagged icy coast of Greenland from the plane. Unfortunately, I didn't get a good picture, but I found this one on the Interweb that looks very similar. Wow.

We're doing really well, but jet lag seems to be in abundance this time around...and it feels quite strange to be back, almost like a dream. Hard to explain! As we blankly stared at our pancakes this morning, Wing said, "I feel like a different person." I think that sums it up nicely! So far, we are successfully resisting the urge to take a nap today, and keeping busy with unpacking and such. But, it is good to be home even though we already miss Toasty and Tea. And tennan shwarma jezz (2 chicken shwarmas).

One interesting note: if you plan on visiting Lebanon (and I assume other areas in the Middle East), plan on getting questioned like crazy by customs when you attempt to enter back into the country. Or maybe our blood-shot eyes and slumpy shoulders looked suspicious. Whatever the reason, we were sent to special lines when entering back into the US and were questioned multiple times regarding what we were doing in the country, who we know there, their names, how long we've known them, what we thought about the country, where we are from, if we know of anyone famous from the area in California, what we do, etc. Everyone was friendly, just "curious." :) We wondered what it would take for them to drag us back into separate little white rooms like on TV for further interrogation, but then we stopped wondering since they could have been reading our minds and missed the part where we were just joking. ha. ha.

Other random things... we were surprisingly bumped up to "Cedar Class" on the Middle East Air flight from Beirut to Frankfurt, which was fantastic! Frankfurt was cool (as in temperature) and green and lovely -- we wish we could have spent more time there. Overall, we had our passports checked four times in Beirut, three times in Frankfurt, and three times in SF, for a grant total of 10 passport checks. We went through five security check points. Better safe than sorry, I suppose. :)

Upon returning to "The States" (we loved saying that while we were overseas - it sounds so posh), we now have a deeper appreciation for "dry heat," the delta breeze at night, the enforcement of traffic laws and no smoking areas, shorts/short sleeves (for me only), robust plumbing, dryers (as opposed to line-drying), the lack of horn-honking on the street, and the ability to drink water from the facet without possibly getting sick. :)