Home Sweet Home

I was really lucky last night. When I arrived in Chicago, I found out that almost all of the flights to the east coast had been cancelled. Because the lady in Beijing hadn't rebooked me on another flight, the first flight I could get a ticket on didn't leave Chicago until 7pm Monday night. Sitting in Chicago until 7pm Monday night was the last thing I wanted to do, and with the storm coming there was no guarantee I would even get out then. My other option was to try to go standby on a flight to Newark. I went for it and luckily I was one of the 10 people who got on the flight. There were over 40 people on the standby list! That flight was one of the worst flights I have ever been on - there was major turbulence so people were getting sick and we had an old man with a medical emergency. None of that mattered though when I finally landed in Newark at 9:40 last night.

When I got off the plane I had to go to the bathroom. I sat down on the toilet and just sat there for a few minutes to take it in. I will never complain about a public bathroom again after being in China. By some miracle all of my bags also made it to Newark so once I got them my ride picked me up and we headed home. Because of the storm, it took forever to get home. I walked in my door at 1 am this morning, ate some wings then immediately crashed. It felt SO good to sleep in my own bed. I only slept until 7 this morning, I had to call my office to see if we were open and the plows in my lot were making a ton of noise. Good news was it is officially a snow day so I have the day to spend at home catching up on email (I have 275 emails in my work account!) and wash my smoky, stinky clothes.

I'm really glad to be home but what an amazing trip. I'm really lucky to have had an opportunity like this and I'm hopeful I get the opportunity to do tournaments like this again in the future. As I said in the beginning, when I started reffing never in a million years would I have imagined it would have taken me literally half way around the world. Thanks goes out again to everyone who has helped me along the way and to Stacey, Matt, Tara and Laura - I could not have had better travel partners for this experience. Having people from home there made things so much easier. I posted the last of the pictures on my website - www.picasaweb.google.com/connolly.kate. I still have a few videos to post but will get to that later. Enjoy the snow everyone!