Day 61- 26 Hours Later...

Asli and I woke and caught a cab to the airport around 6am for my 8:30 flight. We had coffee together before hugging goodbye, and I passed through customs once again.
The flight to London was great- I had my own row of three leather seats and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on the overhead monitors. We had a typical airplane breakfast, which wasn't exactly gourmet to say the least, then I opted to take a brief nap while the gettin' was good. A few short hours later, we had arrived in London.
My London layover was minimal and I killed some time browsing a bookstore before heading out to the gate. This was a crowded flight, but at least this time I had an aisle seat on the side-as opposed to a center seat in the middle of the plane. It was hard to sleep since the whole trip was daylight, but they played three movies, and this time we had our choice between them. I talked to the nice couple beside me who were returning from Israel and had just seen the River Jordan and Peter's boat (restoration of which was only finished in the past few years-mainly by algae-eating fish). We chatted and had a nice time in between naps, more airplane food and my pomegranate (which had to be eaten before entry to the States, so I split it with a flight attendant who squealed that she loved pomegranates when she saw mine).
My Chicago layover was over four hours long, but I mostly read (un-purchased bookstore books and my own) during my wait. The last flight was on a sketchy American Eagle plane with three seats across and so little head room that I almost had to duck when walking down the aisle. I doubted the safety of this one, but we did arrive safely in Pittsburgh around 10:30 at night.
I saw the red neon circle at the end of the tram getting closer, and therefore, bigger this time and ran down to baggage claim where I found my mom, Casey, and Michael waiting for me and running towards me like a slow motion field run from a cheesy movie. I gave Michael a ride on my suitcase out to the car where Russ and Donovan (sleeping) were waiting for us.
On the ride home, MIchael offered to let me play his Game boy (which is a rarity from what I understand), and we stopped at Sheetz for an MTO, completing the full circle-I stopped there on my way to the airport back in September, since I hadn't bought food all day.
After 26 hours of travel, I still stayed up till 3 am then only slept 5.5 hrs before getting up and starting the day. I was convinced that I was immune to jet-lag, but two nights later, it finally caught up with me in the form of complete exhaustion and emotion at my birthday dinner. The cheesecake (which ended up taking 4 sittings to eat) helped solve that, though. :)