Home, Sweet Home

I wasn't sure how it would be to return to Budapest after almost 2 1/2 months in America. Yesterday, I found out. It felt totally normal. We were truly home. While it was wonderful to see family, friends and American culture, it was great to be back in our house, with our stuff, and our beds. I'm sure the culture stress with come back soon and there have been several signs that we aren't in America anymore:

#1 - In Atlanta, while boarding our Air France flight to Paris, there was a lady in the jetway checking carry-on luggage. Our friends from Budapest, the Jacksons, were in front of us and she started telling them that almost all of their carry-ons were too big and that they would have to check them. They had carried them on because they had breakable stuff that they didnt' want under the plane. Then, they started with us and we had to check two bags as well. Thankfully, they did let us pull out the valuable things. Then, another man started telling us that backpacks didn't count as a personal item (like purses and briefcases). What is that about??? We were pretty irate as we watched others walk by with backpacks unnoticed. All this after Delta let us fly the first leg of our trip with no problems. After an argument, he let us on with the backpacks. Even though, we were on US soil, we weren't in US culture anymore. The customer is usually wrong!!

#2 We went grocery shopping yesterday and to our surprise, they no longer have Diet Coke (Cola Light here) in 12 oz (33 ml) cans. They only come in smaller 25ml cans. Bummer! Obviously we are not the target market of this culture or they would have increased the size to 50ml instead of making them smaller.

Our transition has started. I'm sure in a few weeks, things like this won't surprise us as much anymore.