Back in the groove.

Can't believe it's been almost two weeks since my last post... I had to take a little hiatus to settle back in at home after a less-than-pleasurable trip home. To sum it all up, it was fine in the end, but I was stuck in Newark for almost 24 hours and was alone in the airport for most of it. It wasn't so bad, and if anything it showed me the value in my new-found flexibility and independence, both of which are  positive side effects of traveling Europe for four months. I finally made it home on Friday, the evening of the 16th, just in time to unpack everything and have dinner with my family. 

I was sure to stock up on my favorite chocolates from Europe... it will be awhile before I can go back and enjoy these! Hopefully they last awhile. I haven't had any yet, so that's promising!

I spent much of last weekend just unwinding... I didn't battle much jet lag at all, which I think was helped because I didn't really sleep much at all while I was in transit and stuck in Newark. Supposedly that's supposed to help things! 

I started running right away even though I felt exhausted... love running around my normal routes. I still hold to the fact that it's my favorite way to see a place (even a very familiar one :).

I started work right away on Monday. This was the only "reverse culture shock" type of experience I had. Being in the city again was great, but being there by myself made me very anxious. Normally in settings like that, I had to have my purse locked or hidden, be arm-in-arm with Alex, and have my wits about me. Now, I was dealing with a city setting completely alone and unguarded. It didn't feel right... I found myself feeling unnecessarily paranoid that people (men) on the street were out to get me and that it wasn't safe to walk into Tower City alone. I've walked into Tower City alone dozens of times and these fears have never crossed my mind before. After the first day back in the swing of things, it wasn't so bad anymore, but it definitely took a bit to settle back in!

Driving has also given me a lot of anxiety but I think that's more just because I hadn't really been in a car much for four months :)

Back in the city

Alex and I have been busy this week going through all of our photographs and artifacts from the trip. It took awhile to sort everything, from museum brochures to métro tickets to boarding passes...and we printed hundreds of photos from our trip as well. We ended up making posters for our parents, and a "Europe" scrapbook for ourselves. It will be nice to have a concrete, solid book of things to flip through to remember. I think that working on projects like this helps with closure and the transition.

A fraction of our artifacts

Wednesday was an exciting day... it was my mom's birthday AND I finally got a badge for work (I never was given mine last year).

So official!

Yummy homemade birthday dinner for my mom - mango tacos!

Saturday was PROM for my sister, and I went with her to get her make up done! She looked beauteous. 

I had another project going yesterday as well... Alex's much-anticipated (by me, not him!) birthday cake! He will be gone for his birthday next week so I wanted to make sure he got some good celebrating and cake in this weekend at home. 

In the end, the cake was three layers, with components from 3 different recipes. The top and bottom were both banana cake which was 60% based off of this recipe and 40% completely made-up by me, the middle layer was German chocolate from one of my old recipe books, and the inside frosting was peanut butter from my birthday cake. The chocolate frosting was the heartstopping Betty Crocker buttercream from a can, just because I though that would go best with the rest of the cake. I think that the result was a combination of many very good things. 

Last night I drove over to help Alex with re-packing for his internship (he set off today... he'll be gone for 11 weeks). On my way over I saw a beautiful sunset at the lake between our houses. It's so beautiful where we live.

I stayed busy today... headed out for a run and then to the Art Museum with my family for the Van Gogh exhibition. Felt just like we were back spending a weekend somewhere in Europe (and a lot of the paintings were pulled from galleries that we actually did visit). 

In the new atrium

Spent the evening watching Frozen (finally!!) with a friend - now I feel like I'm getting caught up on all American culture that I missed out on while in Europe :)

Thinking about a hike/trail run tomorrow with the family - I want to soak up the sun and warm weather as much as possible! Happy Memorial Day!