Le Grand Retour

We have now been back home in the States for a month (plus a few hours). In seems like ancient history now, but I thought I'd try to recollect how the trip back went.

Naomi and I substantially worked up until the end of our stay. We had a nice Shabbat dinner our last Friday night (June 5th) with some friends, and one of Naomi's collaborators hosted us for dinner our last night (Saturday, June 6th). We tried to tour a castle near his house, but we got there just as the castle closed; so we had to settle for visiting the rather small farm next door (read on for the resulting consequences). Saturday was otherwise largely engaged by packing, as you might imagine. Sunday morning we had brunch with a few of my colleagues, at a casual place near our apartment, and then two of the colleagues drove us and our ample luggage to the airport.

We got to the airport in plenty of time, for once, and our luggage took up four carts. Two of the bags were literally dedicated to bringing back Belgian chocolates. The chocolate was very dense, so even though the bags were small, they were heavy! And the big, heavy bags were really heavy—most of them were over the weight limit, but British Airways was nice about it, and didn't charge us extra.

The "chocolate bags" were among our carry-on items, and so we were weighed down with a lot. Jenee's "chocolate bag" broke during our layover in Heathrow, so she had to carry it instead of wheel it around. In addition, the girls were not pulling their weight, to say the least, and wanted to be carried around. To make matters still worse, we thought we had gate-checked our stroller, but it had been checked through all the way to our US destination (O'Hare); usually our stroller has a kid in it, plus lots of bags hanging off of it. Oh, well, we did the best we could.

The flights themselves were fine, and the girls traveled pretty well in general. The on-demand video system completely rocked, and I remember glancing over at Amelia cracking up while watching one of the "Ice Age" movies.

But by the time we got to O'Hare, it had been a very long day. We left Brussels around 3:30pm local time, and got to O'Hare about 8pm local time, which is 3am Brussels time. On our customs form I had marked that we had visited a farm and touched farm animals while abroad. (We had petted rabbits and fed goats the night before, and we had also petted goats at the petting zoo in the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo.) That made us quick friends with the good folks at customs—and also made a cranky Naomi incredulous. (Curse my honesty!) After she stuttered non-sensical responses to the questions from the customs agents, we all got taken aside. They took the shoes we wore on the farm, and after a few minutes came back with them—we didn't ask what happened in between. Then we were free to go!

Our friend Matt picked us up in our minivan and drove us back to Madison. Amelia had a very impressive meltdown as we left O'Hare, but eventually everyone except Matt fell asleep, and we got home around midnight (7am Brussels time). Matt's wife Brenda drove us down to O'Hare at the beginning of our big adventure, so it felt like the circle was complete: the trip was over!