A Long Day's Flight

The only bad part about Thanksgiving break is that is has to end :-( Although I did get a fun surprise when I arrived back in town this evening. I was planning on being picked up at the Mattoon train station by Sister Stowell, but as I was walking towards the stairs, who should appear but Mr. Greg! He had to go down to St. Louis today for work, so I was definitely not expecting to see him there, but he decided to swing by on his way back up to Athens. Come to find out, he and Sister Stowell had plotted out the scenario together--so she was in on it too! :-) It was a very fun surprise and helped me not feel bad about having to come back to school after the long break. I'm pretty pooped tonight--it was kind of a long travel day, but I have decided that I like riding trains around Chicago. I'll get to do it again in a few weeks when I head to Utah for Christmas! This morning (which feels like a really long time ago) Sarah, Joel, and Eliza took me to the airport. Miss Eliza was so cute and smiley the whole way, and it was hard to say goodbye. It was a good flight from Greenville to Chicago, but it was quite a shock to my system when I stepped outside into the frigid Chicago air! It was unpleasantly chilly outside. I caught the CTA train to town, and then walked a couple of very cold blocks to Union Station. I didn't actually get to ride on the Christmas CTA train today, even though the Christmas train with Santa Clause on board was running today. I guess that they only have one Christmas train, and about 5 billion other trains running every few minutes, so the odds of actually getting on the Christmas train are quite slim. Maybe in December I'll get lucky? I boarded the train for Mattoon at Union Station, and had a seemingly long train ride. I realized that it takes longer to take the train from Chicago to Mattoon than it does to fly from South Carolina to Chicago! Air travel is certainly a nice convenience that we enjoy. Well, I'm pretty tired--bordering on delirious--so I'd better head to bed. It has been such a fun week, and I'm not really looking forward to the barrage of projects that need to get done this week, but it's all good. I'm happy to be here, and it was a very fun surprise to have Greg pick me up tonight!