Hello from AMERICA!!

Wow, I'm home. I can hardly believe it. I can still remember pretty clearly the day that I left for Thailand..driving to the airport, going through security, meeting all new people, EVERYTHING! And now I'm home again. The program is over and so is my time in Thailand.
It's nice to be back home with my family, sleeping in my own bed, eating wonderful food that does not include rice. But at the same time it's still weird that it's all over.
The trip home was lots of fun. I traveled with 3 other people from my program. 4 is a good number to travel with. We had a long layover in Bangkok before our flight to Taipei, so we found a lovely little corner with couches right near the food and just relaxed. Then it was off to Taipei! We had an overnight in a hotel...the hotel was gorgeous! It looked like something out of the Ikea magazine. It was clean and bright and very modern. The TV alone was huge and HD and nice. The bathroom shower was the coolest! The wall dividing the bedroom from the shower was magic glass. It had a switch that allowed the glass to be see through and then you could flip the switch and it would be frosted glass. I thought it was just so cool. So we stayed there over night and had breakfast in the morning. Then we decided to tour the city because we still had the whole day until our flight left. Instead of taking the free tour to the "pottery heaven" and "bird temple" we decided to do our own thing. We all really wanted to go to the Taipei 101...the 2nd tallest building in the WORLD! 2nd only to the Burj Dubai...that super super tall one in Dubai. So we got a bus to the city and went to the top! It was raining in the morning but it stopped by the time we got there. It was still a bit cloudy, but we were going up it no matter what...we only had those few hours in Taiwan. The ride to the top was in the world's fastest elevator. That was pretty cool. Then at the top it was a little cloudy, but we could still see most everything. Mountains surround the city and it was so cool. We headed down 1 floor to see the "super big winder damper". Yes, that is the name of it. Something might have gotten lost in translation there. It's basically, at least my non-scientific understanding of it, is that it is a building stabilizer. It's this huge sphere that looks like an alien space craft. Not sure why they would put that on the 88th floor, but then again I'm not a scientist.
There was a super high scale mall in the bottom of the building. After taking a quick look around we headed back to the hotel to eat our free lunch. We got there 3 min before they closed, but they still let us in anyway. Nice people. Then it was back to the airport to make the next leg of the journey. We were headed to Alaska!
Anchoarage to be exact....and may I say that it was absolutely GORGEOUS! Seriously there are snow capped mountains all over and they were just so pretty. I'll post pictures on dropshots. We got our passports stamped there and then back on the plane for another 7 hours to fly to New York.
Somewhere in there I lived Tuesday twice. (Went to bed Monday night in Taipei. Then woke up Tuesday morning still in Taipei. Toured the city during the day on Tuesday. Got to the airport Tuesday evening to fly home from Taipei. Got on the plane, took a nap and woke up in Alaska...Tuesday morning...AGAIN! Got back on the plane in Alaska on Tuesday morning, took another little nap and about 8 hours later arrived in New York...Tuesday night.) Needless to say, Tuesday was a very long, confusing day!
All my luggage made it home with me. My amazing woven bamboo basket that I made even made it home. I checked my large suitcase and my new "tarp bag". I got the tarp bag wrapped in that plastic wrap stuff and it worked wonderfully.
It's nice to be home with my family again. I was welcomed home with cake and fillet minion, mashed potatoes and peas! Just what I wanted!!
I'll work on posting pictures from the last little parts of my trip!