Welcome Home From Down Under Kristen!

Happy (day after) Election Day! I exercised my civic duty only days after returning home from Australia. I hope everyone voted too!

I’ve been home for four full days now. I’m only just starting to readjust. My flight from Sydney to Dallas was uneventful, except for the fact that the personal TVs didn’t work for awhile which left me a bit bored. I was excited to learn that that flight, from Sydney to Dallas, is the longest commercial flight in the world. Cool! I tried sleeping but I never have much luck on planes, so I just watched a bunch of TV shows and movies (“Glee” and the movie “Hysteria”). When I got to Dallas I collected my bags and went through customs, which was a BREEZE compared to customs in Australia! There were no sniffer dogs, no x-rays, no opening bags, nothing. The lady simply asked me about the food (cookies) and a leather Akubra hat from Chris (yes, it was just cow leather, not turtle leather) that I had declared on my customs form and I was on my merry way. There wasn’t even a line! I was quite surprised but very happy because I was running late for my plane (it took nearly an hour for my bags to come through to baggage claim). I was one of the last people on the plane. Luckily they stored one of my carry-ons in a cabin up front since it was too big to fit in the overhead compartments. 

 Goodbye Australia!

 Hello America!

 Look, they're driving on the RIGHT side of the road!

I arrived on time in Cincinnati and met my parents to collect my bags. Of course before I could do anything else I had to stand still for my mom while she took pictures of me coming out of the terminal. I should be used to that by now, and I admit I am guilty of being the one among my friends who takes a ton of pictures, but I still had to sigh and roll my eyes. After the obligatory photos, we headed to baggage claim. While waiting for my bags, my dad informed me that one of our cats, Clyde, had passed away on Halloween, only two days before I returned. Welcome home Kristen...After about 20 minutes of waiting for my bags, I followed several other people who had been on my flight and still didn’t have their bags to the American Airlines counter, where we learned that our bags had been put on another plane (I’m not sure why) and they would arrive the next day. Luckily they said they would deliver them to us, so I didn’t really care. I was home and I could live without my bags for a night. When we arrived back in our neighborhood, my dad stopped the car in front of our neighborhood community bulletin board, which to my surprise had posted on it a big red sign with “Welcome Home From Down Under Kristen” written in big letters. Also written on it were phrases like “Fulbright Scholar”, “Illegal Alien”, and “Bat Researcher”. Haha, thanks Mom! That was only one of the surprises waiting for me. When we got to our house my parents took me to my room which had bat and rat stickers all over the walls, ceiling, and window. It truly feels like a bat cave now!

 Travelin' in style with Chris' Akubra hat.

 Waiting to get my bags...

 My mom's welcome home sign on the community bulletin board.

 Thanks Mom!

 The door to my bedroom. I am now greeted by little rats running around the bottom.

 Bats on the ceiling!

 Rats everywhere!

My three (heavy) bags arrived the next day as promised. I’d like to say a big thank you to Chris’ mom, Bridget, for giving me one of her luggage bags to use. That was SUCH a big help! The last few days I’ve slowly been working on unpacking my bags, although I’m trying to organize my room at the same time which slows the process down a bit. I’ve decided that since I plan on being home for awhile (like a year or more) I might as well have a somewhat “grown-up” room that doesn’t look like a college dorm room. This means I have to go through all my papers, notebooks, textbooks, clothes, knick-knacks, etc. and pare things down, as well as organize my room a bit more. I’d like to get some of my special things from Australia framed and hang them, and also put out some of the souvenirs I got from both Australia and Hungary. I think moving away from hanging posters in my room to hanging framed photos and paintings is a step toward living a grown-up life. A small step perhaps, but a step nonetheless.

While unpacking one of my bags I found a notice from the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) saying that they had searched the bag as part of their random screening process. Thank God it was that bag and not the one I had put all my sand in (I probably would have been arrested for having suspicious material)! Yes, I collect sand/dirt from all the places I’ve been. You can thank my mom for that. I plan on going through her collection and mine and taking one grain from every place I’ve been to and putting each grain in some sort of vial pendant. That way everywhere I go I can carry with me a piece of everywhere I’ve been.

On Saturday evening I had the most amazing experience: I met my little baby nephew, Ryan, for the first time! He was born on October 2 so he was only one month old. He looks a lot like my brother and has the “Lear lip”, the large lower lip from my dad’s side of the family. My Uncle Keith and Andrew have it, and now Ryan does too. I enjoyed holding Ryan and watching my mom coo over him. I hope I get to spend lots of time with him while I’m here.

 

Little baby Ryan Jacob Lear. So adorable!

With my new (and first!) nephew!

 Grandma Lear (a.k.a. my mom) sitting with baby Ryan and our cat Bonnie. I think Bonnie was jealous that Ryan was getting so much attention instead of her!

 

I’ve spent the past few days doing more unpacking, organizing, working on my CV and hunting for jobs, as well as just trying to readjust to life at home. We just went out of Daylight Savings Time this Sunday, so now it gets dark around 6pm, plus there’s a chill in the air that promises snow. It feels so much like the falls/early winters I remember! Today I drove on the right side of the road for the first time in 14 months and caught myself turning the windshield wipers on instead of the turn signal several times, as well as reaching for the shift knob on the left side instead of the right. Thankfully I remembered to stay on the right side of the road! I missed not seeing kangaroos and colorful parrots everywhere, but the squirrels made up for that with their cuteness. I went grocery shopping for a few items at our local Kroger and saw the last of the season’s caramel apples. Unfortunately there were none covered in peanuts (there were plain caramel ones and sprinkle-covered ones). I’m SO bummed that I missed the season for caramel apples! I did happen upon some Krispy Kreme doughnuts but resisted the urge to buy a box of the original glazed ones. Maybe next time...I’ve been going to bed pretty late, which I guess isn’t unusual for me, but even when I’ve gotten 10 hours of sleep I’ve still felt really tired the next day. Hopefully my body clock will get back on track soon. I’ve also been having a harder time than I expected getting used to things here. I am very excited to be home and to spend time with my family, but I still feel a bit unsettled. My home smells the same as it always has. It smells of cats, my mom’s special candles, and home-cooked food. To me it smells like high school nights spent studying for AP tests and college breaks spent at home. These are good memories (well, maybe not studying for AP tests) but it feels off for who I am now. Things feel different. Perhaps it’s not my home that’s different, but me. I have spent the last 14 months on my own, away from friends and family and away from my home country. I’d like to think I have matured a bit from this experience. I look forward to spending time here to reflect on my experiences and moving forward with my life. Right now there are endless possibilities and I can’t wait to turn one of those possibilities into reality.