Day 20...21: Homeward Bound

LIS --> EWR --> ORD --> MLI

Sadly, all good things must come to an end...and our 20 day journey is about to conclude! We have had such an amazing time...and seen some amazing things...and done some amazing stuff... it's hard to believe this journey started almost 3 weeks ago and now we're done...

The above picture is with our friends from Colorado.  It's our human version of the Spanish flag.  :)

After a bit of a delay by a jerk in Lisbon, we made it to our gate in time to say good-bye to our CO & MO friends before our flight to Newark. 

The kids were all seated together across the row from each other. Ready for our long flight.  It was a pretty decent flight with fairly decent food too.   I was up in Economy Plus...score!... and ended up with an entire row to myself...heaven!  All our seats had personal tv's in the back of the seats with movies on demand, but most of us slept thru them .

We had a 4.5 hr layover in Newark during which a huge storm rolled thru, thus when we went to leave, planes were backed up.  While we were waiting, we were allowed to use cell phones and I found out our flight from Chicago to Moline was delayed 2 hours!  Ugh!!

So, once we got to O'hare, we headed to our gate to find our 9:10 flight delayed until 11:10 due to a late aircraft from Omaha, so off we headed to the food court, only to run into a HS classmate of mine that I haven't seen in years, who was also on our Moline flight.  Small world!!

So, our 20 day journey turned into 21 as we arrived right around midnight to an awesome welcome home committee complete with cookies!!  :)  All our luggage arrived adding to the excitement of it all.  :)  A good time was had by all!

Over all, I feel quite blessed to have had the priveledge of taking some amazing kids across my favorite country.  They never once complained. They were up for everything and anything...including many evening adventures for ice cream.  They were the best group of kids for this trip and I couldn't ask for any better attitudes and better kids!!  I enjoyed watching them all become life-long friends as the boys didn't really know the girls, and vice versa, prior to the trip.  It was cool to watch them get along & bond & really enjoy each other's company.  They will always have these memories with each other for the rest of their lives...and I feel sooo lucky to have been a part of the adventure... They will be a hard act to follow for the next group.

~steph :)