Goodbye Austria! What a flight... It's so great to be back in NJ, but it was a long, long way to get here... Although I was quite late at the airport in Vienna yesterday, I luckily managed it to get my flight at 10:15 am. One thing that was good about being late was that I could just get right into the plane and didn't have to wait. However, once arrived in Warsaw where I was supposed to get my connection flight to the States, I had to realize that my flight was unfortunately delayed. It wouldn't have been that bad, but nobody knew when the plane was supposed to depart and the Polish guys couldn't speak English so well, so it was quite hard to speak with them. I also wanted to call Sharon and Kevin, the parents of the kids I'm looking after here, but the telephone at the airport didn't work -- it just told me "to insert another card" which was really weird. After having been waiting for about 4 hours, I could finally board, but it took the Polish guys some time again to decide to which gate the passengers could go. First, they sent us to gate 4, then to gate 3, then back to gate 4 and in the end, we ended up at gate 5; it was also quite confusing. However, finally I was sitting in the plane heading to Newark International Airport. The flight was okay, despite the fact that the Polish guys gave me the wrong immigration form to fill out; they gave me the one only Americans have to fill out. I don't know why they thought that I was an American resident... Later on, when I wanted to pass through, the immigration guy gave me another form to fill out, just because the Polish guys had given me the wrong one, so I ended up waiting at the end of the line again. Later, after the immigration guy had asked me some questions, taken my fingerprints and a picture, I was finally in the States! However, I had to face the next problem... After having been waiting at the baggage claim area for quite a long time, I had to realize that my baggage had got lost. Actually, the "great" airline had lost all the baggage from all the people who had departed from Vienna. The guy who was responsible for the baggage (and was Polish again, by the way) gave us some forms to fill out. As he was so slow and couldn't speak English so well, everything took again a long time. However, I finally managed it to get out of the airport (unfortunately without baggage!) and could luckily leave. Elisabeth (who had arrived some hours before me in NJ) and the family with whom she'll spend the summer had been waiting for me for about 4 hours and we could finally go home to Tinton Falls. Although I was already a bit exhausted, I enjoyed the drive, because everything was so familiar to me and I was really happy to be back. After a 45-minute-drive, I saw Sharon and Kevin and the older kids, Conor and Riley, again. (Finn, the little one, was already asleep.) It was so great to see them again and we had to tell each other so much.