"Home" again

So I'm back in Munich. For those of you who didn't hear, the flight back to St. Louis was an adventure to say the least. I got into Chicago with no problems. The weather was clear despite the previous day's threats of a flight-delaying wintry mix... and then my flight was delayed for five hours anyway due to plane servicing. Turns out the plane was actually there at the gate... the problem was that it had another to-and-from flight to make before it could take me to St. Louis. Thus I took off at 8:30 instead of 2:55. In the meantime, I switched on my computer to take advantage of O'Hare's wireless only to discover that my hard drive had crashed somewhere in the previous 16 hours of travel and my computer would no longer boot. On top of that, my US SIM card had decided not to transfer all my US contacts back when I switched out my German SIM... much thanks to Amy for texting me numbers so at least my phone kept me busy for that long afternoon since I'd finished my book on the previous plane.

But anyway, being home was wonderful, and I did get home eventually. The flight back was uneventful in terms of my planes were on time and the flights were more or less pleasant. I flew through Atlanta. This might be related... ironically, I ran into one of the exchange students from Georgia Tech (who I know in Germany and actually met on my first day) at the airport. What are the chances we'd be flying back on the same flight? I hadn't even known he was going home. Even more ironically, we had seats right next to each other. Go figure.

We came to the depressing conclusion together that it was January 6th, the "Day of the Three Kings" (read: Epiphany), and thus a national holiday and thus everything was closed... so much for grocery shopping. Jet lag obviously sucked. I sat in my room for the next 8 hours and tried to stay awake since it was freezing outside and there was no where else to go...

But today's a lot better. I slept from 8:30-7:00 and feel just fine. Today was the first day of classes. I have no idea what my plans are for the next month other than a lot of studying as it's starting to slip in just how quickly finals are coming up and just how potentially bad this could be...

Oh, obviously I have a new hard drive for my computer now. And luckily the old one was recoverable (thanks Dad!) so nothing was lost for good.