Vacation

As luck would have it, the airline confusion did not end with my last blog post and we found ourselves flying into JFK with poor weather conditions and…late. This means that we missed our gate spot and since planes were slow in taking off we spent a lot of time flying around in circles over Long Island. But once we landed, I was pretty much waved through every checkpoint.

However, my parents brought a jacket to New York! And, while it was not very cold when we first got to New York, it was definitely rainy which I thought was awesome.  And, what’s even more awesome is how many people made their way to the airport to find me- even two very special friends who had taken a bus all the way from Boston just to be there and, a little puppy too.

Our first stop on the way home was, a diner. I hadn’t had blueberry pancakes in a while so we decided to stop at a place where everyone had something they liked- salads, sandwiches, pancakes, etc.

At home, I have been able to reconnect with friends both old and new and experience meals that aren’t really in Burkina (and drinks too). I also had the opportunity to go to a swim meet to watch my youngest brother race, and then see him at one of his practices too.

Although, I have to say prices here are ridiculous. After Burkina Faso where you can live comfortable on a dollar a day I found myself thinking that paying $8 for a sandwich (even one as good as a Buffalo Chicken wrap) was a bit ridiculous.

As are malls during the holidays; I wasn’t a big frequenter of malls before I left but I have been hanging around with my brother a bunch so we ended up going once or twice and whoa it’s an experience and a half.

But I digress- the weather is awesome. It has been sunny and cold, windy and sunny, cold and cloudy, rainy, etc. And, I’ve enjoyed all of the combinations mainly because they aren’t sunny and 90 degrees. It has snowed twice since I’ve been home and I don’t think anyone has ever enjoyed shoveling more, especially when you accidently throw the snow into the wind and it blows back in your face.

And the holidays were great too. I enjoyed seeing all of my family, and eating dinner with them, cleaning, and yes, a little bit of bickering too. It’s odd to think that next Christmas I’ll be back again with another batch of stories and a year older.

But, three weeks moves pretty fast when you get down to it so on Tuesday I’ll be heading back to Burkina Faso for my last year of service. With health projects such as CPR, family planning, and everything else in between (even tree planting), it is sure to be an activity filled year (I hope).

I'm on a Plane

I decided to take a vacation. After two months of training and 12 months of service I figured that it would be nice to spend the holiday season with my family back home. While the plan itself was simple enough (request vacation days, get aforementioned vacation days approved, purchase plane tickets, and make it to the airport on time) the actual execution was a bit more difficult.

The first step was actually pretty easy, I spoke to my major about how I was going to go home for vacation and he was all about me going to the US (he hadn’t been back to his village for a while either so we were on the same page about wanting to see your parents, family, etc.) So he signed my paperwork saying that I had informed him that I was going to disappear for a period of 3 weeks.

Unfortunately we both wrote in black pen. Apparently this was an error because after you copy a form the ink is…black. Meaning you can’t tell whether a form has been copied or whether it’s waiting to be copied, or whatnot. This did not help in the accomplishment of step 2. But, step 3 went pretty smoothly.

Step 4 is a story in and of itself but suffice to say an activity that I was participating in was pushed back 24 hours while my plane schedule did not. So rather than having 24 hours to go back to site, pack up my stuff, say goodbye to people and tell them that I was, in fact, coming back I only had 2 hours to accomplish the same thing. But I was unable to find my Major or the Doctor.

As luck would have it, I was on the same plane as two other volunteers who had just finished their service, so we all got to hang out in the airport together and ask ourselves, “Our tickets say the plane leaves at 2:35 AM, why is the airline saying it leaves at 12:50AM?” Turns out it was a communication error on behalf of the airline and that we were, in fact, leaving at 2:35AM.

The plane ride pretty smoothly all things considered. As someone with relatively short legs I don’t often find myself in need of extra legroom but it is actually quite awesome in this case. The food was really good though I’m not sure if that’s a result of my standards going down or the airline standards increasing.

And, while there was no in-flight movie (really noticeable on an 8 hour flight), thanks to a friend in the Peace Corps- I was able to watch The Amazing Spider-Man (apparently that came out), and the new Batman movie (I did know about that one).

So now I’m on a plane, flying over Nova Scotia at 34,000 feet, staring at what I think is ice, and hoping that someone brings me a jacket when I get to New York.