Well, the first trimester is over, and what a trimester it was!
Ha. If you don’t know what I’ve been doing up to this point, you may be confused and thinking I'm talking about a pregnancy or something. Not so…I’ve been teaching some English. Or, rather, a whole lot of English. If you want a refresher course on the past perfect, present continuous or the difference between ‘will’ and ‘going to’ for the future, I can certainly provide a crash course (complete with gestures and slow, dramatic speech patterns so that EVERYONE might understand me clllleeeeearly. For those that know how I fast I usually speak, it might come as quite a shock that I can, in fact, slow it down. A lot. All I can say about that is that you would to if you were trying to teach “Hello!” and “How are you?” on the first day of class, only to receive blank stares back from your students. That’ll teach you to say things too quickly, that’s for sure.
Anywho, as I write this entry, I am in my window seat (32J!) of this Boeing 777 on the nearly 9-hour flight from Frankfurt, Germany to Chicago. There was potential for disaster this go-round for a number of reasons. First, it was raining and windy in Florence when I left this morning, so I wasn’t sure if my flight would even get to take off. Alas, it did. Then, I only had 30 minutes to change planes in Frankfurt, and I was SURE that I would get hassled by the passport control people because I had overstayed my 90-day tourist visa (should I be putting this in print? Don’t turn me in or anything…) And, I found out only after I booked the ticket that the Germans, Brits and French folk care about that kind of thing, while other countries within the European Union are like, “Oh, so you’ve been here for many months, spending money, contributing to our economy? Awesome. Have a nice trip.” Good news abounds today, though, because no one even batted an eye when they stamped my passport. Phew! I’ve learned my lesson, though, and will travel outside the EU before three months are over next time, because then, when I reenter, my tourist visa is renewed. Tunisia, Switzerland or the UAE, here I come! Oh, and I still haven’t heard what the weather is doing in Chicago at this point. I’m guessing it’s bitterly cold with residual snow and refrozen slush that will remain until May. I hope I don’t wipe out as I’m walking about the frozen tundra…
But, it wouldn’t be winter in Chicago (or the Christmas season?!) without the snow and biting winds, so I’ll take what I can get. I think I’ll actually overlook the shitty weather to be able to see my friends and family!
***Oh, and now, please allow myself to interrupt…myself: we are currently on the ground, but not in our final destination of the aforementioned arctic tundra of Chicago. Not at all. We are actually in Reykjavic, Iceland, because a passenger became deathly ill and needed to get to a hospital. But, then she died. So, yeah. Iceland. Nice airport…?***
