There's No Place Like Home

I’m back! In Armenia that is.  My vacation in the states went by WAY too fast.  I’ll back track to June 12^th while I was still in Armenia.   I met up with all the volunteers in my year because we had a Mid Service Training together at hotel for a few days.  It was actually a really nice conference and I had a great time catching up with people I hadn’t seen in months. I came down with giardia (look it up), and had a very unpleasant time running back and forth to the bathroom every hour.  Thank goodness this struck in a hotel, I can’t imagine being this sick and having to use my outhouse, gross…. Anyways, the doctors brought me medicine that luckily kicked in just before I boarded my plane for America.  My flight was supposed to leave at 5:55 am according to Orbitz, but other people told me that the true time for my flight was 4:55.  How could Orbitz be so wrong? Well, Armenia boldly decided not to do daylight savings time this year and the rest of the world inconveniently forgot to notice.  I stayed out all night with a small group of volunteers and then happily took a taxi to the airport.  This began a long string of the most horrible flights I have ever had.  The man next to me used an electric razor TWICE on the plane for a solid 15 minutes each time.  Seriously, no one needs to use a razor that much on a 5 hour flight to London.  After London I flew to DC and hustled to catch my flight to Jax.  My mom was waiting for me and literally ran past security when she saw me.  We both started crying and just stood there for a few minutes; neither of us could believe I was actually there.  Then we drove home and my brother surprised me there since I wasn’t supposed to see him for another week.  My first meal was chips and guacamole and then I was passed out in my own bed at 9.  A whirlwind 2 weeks in Florida were slightly hampered by the tropical storm, but nothing beats being home.  I spent a lot of time with my extended family, some of who traveled all the way from New York to see me (Thank you!!) and then I traveled to UF to meet up with my friends for a few days. 

After a wonderful two weeks in Florida, I flew to DC to visit my boyfriend.  I was flying United and everything was going fine for the first hour.  Then all of the sudden we started flying in a different direction.  The pilot got on the speaker and said that we were having air valve problems and needed to divert the plane to Knoxville.  We all thought surely they must have another plane waiting for us in Knoxville, because why else would they divert a plane that far??  Nope, they had no plane waiting for us and we all had to spend the night at the airport hotel.  Considering I was only spending 7 days in DC to begin with, I was pretty upset.  The next morning my flight left for DC at 5:50 and I got there with no problems this time.  My awesome boyfriend was waiting with a bouquet of roses at the airport and so we started our DC adventure.  We managed to see all the monuments, museums and fireworks while eating the most delicious food the entire week.  A week was not enough time at all, but it was perfect J