The long journey home...

I thought I had gotten myself a pretty sweet deal at first. "Only" 15 hours of total flight time, 1 connection and a relatively short stopover of 1.5 hours. Little did I know, how wrong it could get. Let me count the ways:

1. When I'm checking in, the lady tells me that I will have to go thru Immigrations and Customs in Chicago and recheck my 2 ginormous bags, and with only one hour in between my flights that's really sh*tty.
2. Somehow I'm in a mad rush after checking in cuz it's time to board, but I haven't changed money yet, I realise I've forgotten my beloved block of cheese back home and haven't bought anything for my Grandma yet!! -->I run around like a beheaded chicken and get most of the stuff done and run to the gate.
3. I get on board and of course I'm sandwiched between 2 men with a strong preference for elbow space. My stomach's growling like crazy due to my total lack of planning to pack snacks instead of all those godforesaken stroopwafels and 2 totally filling grapefruits. :P
4. I get excited that 'No Country For Old Men' is gonna be showing on one of the channels (5), only to discover that (of course), Channel 5 is out of service. I resort to watching/grimacing thru Alvin and the Chipmunks and Lions for Lambs.
5. The flight lands on time, we get off and walk 2 km (I'm not kidding) to get to a long line for US Immigration, where a cute beagle sniffed me out and I get caught for carrying grapefruits in my backpack. The inspection lady puts a big red mark on my customs card.
6. When waiting in line for the Immigration person, the guy in front of me who is standing with the officer starts to heckle me with sly remarks like, "Hey lady... Chinese... Japanese..." At first I responded with a "Huh?" and when I realised he was just a beligerent fool I looked away trying to ignore him, only to be further harassed with repeated "Lady.. hey Lady..." He was with a whole family of people, sons, and a wife(?) but none of them did anything to stop him, wut da hell!!?
7. Finally after passing thru Immigration, I wait for my bag. One arrives, but the other one is nowhere to be seen!!! I go grab a luggage trolley to kill time, and break off 2 fingernails in the process (Ow!!). Thirty stress-filled minutes pass before my other bag shows up and I roll rapidly to Customs.
8. OF COURSE... Customs sees the red mark and tells me to go get checked. I lug my bags to them and get my 2nd grapefruit confiscated. Damn them!!
9. At this time, I have like 5 mins to get to my gate before it closes, so I run to the other side of the airport and board in time, phew!
10. Sitting in my seat, I'm SO relieved to be on the plane and think 'I made it!! Only 4 more hours, and I'll be there!!' The plane is 10 minutes late (that's cool, that's cool). 30 minutes late (what's going on??). Then 2 hours late (WUT dA F!?!). There's a snow storm and the de-icing machines keep putting us on the bottom of their priority list. AARRGH!!! We finally lift off after about 2.5 hrs delay.

Seriously, I'm never flying thru the US again!!! (Okay except for my flight back.) I totally thought it wouldn't be as bad as flying thru London, but it's way worse!! The being surrounded by Americans thing was also freaky, SHUDDER!