The Flight Back

It sounds as if I'm supposed to write about the extremely fun day of flying back to St. Louis. In the morning, most of us woke up around 5 AM Prague time (10 PM St. Louis time on Friday). We had to be outside with our luggage by 6 AM. We got a van ride to the airport. It was great not having to carry our stuff around on the subway and buses. There was little traffic at 6 in the morning so we got to the airport in a jiffy. There were also very few people at the airport so we didn't have to do much waiting around there either. A few people did go over the weight for free luggage though. Thankfully the people at the airport in Prague were more forgiving than in St. Louis when we left for Europe. After we got to the gate to wait for the plane, we saw that security was at the gate rather than at the entrence to the terminal. We all then split up to grab some breakfast (some preferred airport food over the free breakfast at the hotel). After going through security, I believe Keaton got patted down, and then we got on the plane. Most of us were in the last three rows. As we were about to land at Heathrow, there was an "emergency" at the control tower causing them to evacuate. With no one in the tower we couldn't land so we had to fly around for a while then land elsewhere to refuel. After waiting on the controllers to get back to back, we left for Heathrow once again. We got in to Heathrow two hours later then we would've but we were going to land quite early any way. At Heathrow we did the normal security stuff and Keaton got selected for a random screening. One machine said his bag had explosives and another said he didn't. They sent him back through security and made sure he was clean. We all went and grabbed a snack (before we had some airline lunch and dinner food) and checked in at the gate. They did some more random checks there where a large group of us had to get out carry-ons checked. Grace had to go claim her luggage because they claimed there wasn't a name tag... even though there was a tag. We then took our fun 8 hour flight across the Atlantic to Chicago. We had to wait on the tower at Heathrow again because they were busy (or some other excuse that I would make up). We still don't know the "emergency" was from when we were going to land. The flight was long but cool. We sat in the middle section near the rear of the plane except for Keaton who sat in his fancy business class. They had some good in-flight movies such as Avatar. Before we landed in Chicago, there was a good amount of turbulence. It was a lot of fun. So people farther up screamed at one point as if we were on a roller coaster. On the approach, we flew just north of downtown Chicago were we could see the Sears Tower (it was rename, yes?) and the Navy Pierre. When we landed, we had some more security and customs. Anna had to remove a lighter she bought for her brother because they asked if she had a lighter or matches. They had to bring up her bag and remove it, but that didn't tale long. We then had three hours to kill at O'Hare. After we left for St Louis around 8, it was dark. The city of Chicago looks beautiful at night with all of the lights. We were flying to the west of Chicago but still could make out the city and some of the big buildings downtown. Behind us on the way back were some SLUH students coming back from Spring Break in China. Hayley liked sitting in front of Pandas (they had cool panda hats). The flight was only around 45 minutes and it was cool to see the Arch and the rest of downtown as we flew by. It is much harder to pick where you are in St Louis than it was over Chicago. We are much more spread out. Well, we landed, got off to grab our luggage and see our families for the first time in weeks. We all went home and got some much needed sleep (well, most of us did)

Now, we are all having jolly, good times in school. It's great fun to be catching up at week of JBS classes!