BACK HOME AGAIN IN INDIANA

Our flight from Paris, while delayed from 12 to 3 p.m., was so relaxing and peaceful, and the service in business class is great. It was such a nice treat to just sit, knowing we didn't have to go somewhere and see something or spend anything. We ate and drank to our hearts delight. I watched Tin Tin and Hugo. We landed safely in a sunny and warm Chicago around 5:00 p.m.

It seemed like we walked forever from the plane to Immigration Services. Once we cleared passport control and then picked up our bags, we had to go through customs. They wanted to charge duty on our tapestries, thinking they were carpets, but once we explained and showed how they hung on the walls, the duty was waived and we walked through the doors, officially entering the United States of America.

While waiting for the 7 p.m. bus back to SB, I called Alexi and Greg. My US cell phone works!

It was around 11:30 p.m. when we walked in the door at Nall Court. Of course, Cricket went nuts when she saw Andrea. That's all Andrea had talked about throughout our travel day; "X number of hours until Cricket!"

It was close to 1:00 a.m. when I fell asleep. I did not sleep well, which countered my plan of not sleeping all day in order to get home and collapse, to wake up fresh this morning. After being up 24 hours straight and only five hours of interrupted sleep, I could take it no more and got out of bed.

In addition to a growing list of chores (partly based on discoveries of things that had gone wrong in our absence) I plan to select and upload photos from France, as I suspect people may be more interested in those than all the text chronicling our trip.

So, it's now back to reality...