Home!

At the end of my thirty-five-hour-long Thursday, after six cups of caffeinated tea and twenty-three hours of traveling that took me through four different cities in three countries, I finally arrived at home. Having traveled to a city in a time zone eleven hours behind the one I'd just left, I was still living in the same day that I'd woken up during, even though twenty-seven hours had passed from that moment until the time the plane landed at the end of my last flight.

When checking in before boarding the plane in Saint Petersburg, I dragged my checked luggage onto the scale, hoping that it wouldn't go over the weight limit of 23 kg. And it didn't - the bag weighed exactly 23 kg.

This was very lucky for me, since I'm certain that my already overstuffed backpack (my carry-on item) could not possibly have accommodated any more things than I had already shoved into it. It was also a very unusual repetition of events, for the same scenario had played out when I was checking in before my flight to Russia at the beginning of the semester. Having arrived at the airport hoping that my suitcase wouldn't surpass the weight limit of 50 lbs, I had been thrilled to find that it weighed exactly 50 lbs.

It was unusual enough that this should have happened once, and even more so that it should happen to me again, especially while returning home from the same trip.

Here's where my voyage took me:

Saint Petersburg, Russia

Frankfurt, Germany

Washington, D.C., USA

And finally... Home to Denver, CO, USA!