The day has finally come.  On Tuesday I set my first foot on American soil in over five months, at Newark International Airport.  I was pretty meloncholy for most of the (excruciatingly long, 9 hour) flight and am still getting over it.  The things that I expected to be strange — not having to switch languages anymore, fighting crowds of fat people — haven’t actually been that bad.  Just a lot of minor things that I have gotten used to are adding up to create a substantial feeling of disorientation.  However I doubt it will take long to get back into school mode when I head back to RIT next week.

I’m writing this from home after my second full day back in Lewis County.  It is, of course, as boring as it always been, with the addition of a large, ugly Walmart Supercenter on route 12.  I don’t like the direction that’s going at all.  So on Tuesday I landed, took a bus to Manhattan, helped a German girl get oriented with the city, and made my way up to Queens after meeting up with Brandon briefly.  I was an exhausted, fatigued mess for most of the night and not very good company, but it was still great catching up.  An extra six hours awake combined with some serious partying the last few days in the fantastic city of Berlin led to a sound night’s sleep.  My parents picked me up in Utica after a 4.5 hour train ride (one of the stops was Amsterdam, NY…*sigh*) and we went out to eat and headed home.

Soon I’ll post about Berlin, complete with photos.  It was a great choice as my European farewell city.