So I have officially been back a week and I am counting the days until I can return to Romania. I knew I would have a hard time leaving, however I never knew how hard it would be. The littlest thing would set me of into another crying jag. I saw a baby that was nice and plump and I would start crying. I went back to work immediately after I got back and that was a big mistake. Everyone keeps asking me how it feels to be back, and as much as I love my family and friends here I left a part of me back in Romania. I keep telling people I want to get dual citizanship. Now I only need to get a green card to Romania. I need to find myself a Romanian husband so I can adopt some of those kids! So on a lighter note let me tell you how we barely made out of Romania. It started in the airport out of bucharest. We were sent off by a bat yes a flying bat was in the runway on the way to the plane. We made it onto the plane (we were sitting in the back row) and as the flight attendant was giving the usual speeches about taking off he reached over and slapped Amy's hand. She gave this look of confusion and started to say something to her in french- and realizing we were not french he- he proceeded to tell her in thickly accented english not to fasten her seatbelt while they were refueling the plane. That got us laughing and as we were laughing he asked Amy if she did not like his accent. As it had been such a long day we were a little punchy and just got into laughing fits very easily. When we landed in Paris we were hoping that during our 14 hour layover our bags would remain checked or at the very least we would be able to check them in a locker at the airport. No such luck. As I was trying to ask at the info booth a Very Rude French woman informed us the lockers closed at 7pm and we would have to take our bags with us because we would not be able to chek the until at the earliest 3 hours before our flight. Now we were presented with a problem of how we were going to spend 12 hours in Paris with 2 bags each. We decided to get a room for the night. So I called to reserve a room- not knowing it was a hostel- and i was told there would "possibly be a room" for us. As we got off our stop on the subway, we were standing on a street corner looking at a map and Amy's borrowed "let's go Paris" book wondering what the next turn would be. An three angels walked up to us to see if they could help. They happened to be staying at the same place and led us to our room for the night. We got there and checked in- and me never having slept in a hostel before- was under the impression we would have our own room. After having to go up 4 flights of stairs, with Amy carrying the majority of the luggage, because I had Issues with the open stairway, we arrived at our destination. To find out there was already two other people in the room and there was an unknown elevator! BTW- the elevator didn't work. We dropped off our luggage and set off to see the Eiffel tower lit up at night, because it was supposed to be lit until 2 am. As we were walking past the Louvre the lights of the pyramid went out. Not to worry- it was 1 am and the Eiffel Tower was still lit up. So we kept walking to our destination. And at 10 minutes after 1 the lights went out. No pictures of the tower lit up. so we snuck back in to our room and made plans to see the tower in the sunrise 3 1/3 hours later. So we got up early, snuck out of our room and walked to the tower to see it in the early morning light. As we were walking to see the other major sights and see if we could find a crepe stand open Amy mentioned the overcast sky, saying "knowing our luck, it is going to rain on us." We made it back to the hostel to get breakfast and check out of our room (still never seeing the elusive roommates) and started on our way to the subway to go to the airport- just as the rain started coming down! We got to the airport with two hours to spare still not having a French croissant or crepe. We planned on getting checked in and getting one in the airport. However it took us 40 minutes to get to the right check-in counter, and as we were standing at the end of a huge cluster called a line we read we needed to be boarded 1 hour before takeoff and the check-in would close at that time. Now is the time to panic! But as the rest of the Paris layover showed us when we have bad luck, good luck followed. All of a sudden a man came out of nowhere and asked if any of us were going to MSP. We said YES and he said follow me- To the beginning of the line. We basically sped thru security to our own check-in counter and were expedited to the gate. We looked at our tickets and noticed there was no seat assignment, when we asked about it they told us we needed to go to the standby area. OK time to panic again. But someone else told them to let us go thru. And we got out seat assignment and got on the plane for our flight back to every day life.
