India Follow-up

Luggage for 7 - just barely fits!

What a trip! We thought we were free and clear, having returned to the U.S. with all of the students we took along, aside from the two we put on a plane to New York in Paris. At O'Hare, we stood in a really long line for immigration. Just like last year, I was pulled aside to wait while they made sure I'm not some other James Johnson who apparently ended up on a list. Funny, this didn't happen when returning from Ireland through Atlanta.

Anyway, we breezed through customs and gave the bus company a call. Then we waited while the dispatcher tried to contact the driver. And we waited. After an hour of waiting (remember - our journey home began 31 hours earlier), we learned that the bus company hadn't scheduled anyone to pick us up. Rather than wait another 5 hours for them to send someone, we rented two mini-vans to drive ourselves back to Bloomington. Fortunately, enough students left us at O'Hare that we only had 14 people to take back to Indiana - otherwise, we would have been stuck! An hour later, we pulled out of the Enterprise parking lot. Driving on the toll road around Chicago at a high rate of speed was much different than the roads and traffic we had experienced for the last 9 days in India. We drivers managed to stay awake to get everyone home safely, and I finally made it home at 12:40 am on May 22 - approximately 37 hours after leaving the hotel in Bangalore.

Facebook gave me some challenges, but I've finally managed to post my India photo album. The link is also available in the album list to the right.

I still plan to post some video, but that will have to wait - I'm leaving tomorrow to meet Barry in New Orleans and then take a road trip to El Paso. So far this blog has been entirely about foreign travel, but if I get inspired you may soon find a blog post here from our domestic vacation.