Heading Back to Europe

  St. Louis, Missouri, United States
Monday, December 29, 2008

As you may have gathered from the title of the entry, and as most of you know, I'm heading back to Europe today! I'm sitting in the Philadelphia airport right now (the worst airport in the world). My next flight is at 8:50pm Eastern time. Seeing as that is a good 2 hours from now, I figured this is an ideal time to tell you about the end of my time in London and my way-to-short trip home.
SO, on the way to my Monday final, I threw out the idea to a couple of my friends, that, as a treat for all the 'hard' work we've been doing all semester, we should go see Billy Elliott again after our Tuesday final. I, personally, thought it might be a stretch, but they all bought it. Hooray! So, Tuesday morning we headed out to get tickets, studied all day, wrote as fast as we could, and headed to the show. It was just as good as the first time I saw it ... and it prevented Kieffer and me from just sitting in our rooms counting the seconds until our flights home (everyone else stayed in London several more days).
I got up bright and early Wednesday morning. Although Kieffer and I weren't on the same flight, we decided to go to the airport together. This put me there realllllllllllllly early, but I just wanted to GO HOME! My flight across the ocean wasn't too bad ... watched a few bad movies, read, slept ... the usual. I was welcomed to the US by the worst airport in the world ... you guessed it ... Philadelphia! I was stuck in customs, baggage claim, and re-security for about an hour and a half. Everyone was yelling about missing their connections and it was generally unpleasant. LAME! Then they switched our gate and delayed our flight b/c they found more baggage that was headed to St. Louis. The flight home was a piece of cake. I was greeted by the BEST parents in the world. We headed to baggage claim where ONE of my bags was waiting for me ... I guess that delayed flight did me no good!! I'll leave out the part about the incompetent US Airways baggage employees and fast forward to 3 days later when my bag arrived. YAY!
My time at home was great! Ger-Bear took off all week, and we were able to do some serious Christmas shopping, puppy spoiling, and movie watching! We also managed to hit all of the major food groups (which I was definitely looking forward to) ... MEXICAN, Chinese, Greek, and Chipotle (we all know it doesn't count as Mexican).

Lincoln with Snowman

Topaz with Toys

Josh came to visit and stayed for all the festive Boyer family Christmas traditions. Although, I think the post-midnight mass martinis may have been his favorite (and mine too!). It was great to see all of the family at Jimmy's on Christmas Day. I brought some poppers from London, so everyone could partake in a little multi-culturalism ... or something ;)

Matinis

Popper Crowns

I met up with a few of my friends from high school as well. We ran into a ton of fellow-Belleville/Signal Hill graduates. Although the 2nd round bar crawl never happened, we managed to hit a bar or 2 on Friday night ... gotta love Belleville's revitalization!

Highschool Friends

Saturday we headed over to Fitz's with the Boyer clan. It was great to see Grandma, Connie, and Aunt Jeanne again, and Uncle Dan and Mo showed up as well!! Who knows, Uncle Dan may even figure out how to read this blog sometime!!
Sunday was filled with packing and good-byes, and that brings us to today. I'm heading to Spain to spend New Years with some of my friends from school. They didn't go home for the holidays, so I am meeting up with them in Malaga. We will be there until the 3rd. Then, we're going to Madrid for 3 days and Barcelona for 2 days. If all goes according to plan, I should be in Geneva (my next campus location) on January 8th! Until then, I hope you all have fun on New Years Eve and a great start to 2009!
Love you!Becca