Home for the Holidays

This holiday season I learned that “home is where the heart is, but not necessarily where the luggage ends up”. I stepped foot on Canadian soil for the first time in 7 months only to discover to my utter dismay that my luggage had not followed suit. Luckily the luggage in question was stuffed with summer clothes, so the frisky Canadian weather wouldn’t do a number on me. Thankfully, it arrived 24 hours later.

I spent my holidays with the Brown ladies, three generations of incredible women whom I look up to with total admiration. My Grandma, my aunt, and my mom (not to mention the princess of a Brittany Spaniel, Darby). Each are very different from one another but possess an inner sparkle that could outdo any fireworks ceremony on Parlement Hill.

Every time I go home, as comforting and familiar as it is, I tend to have a bit of a reverse culture shock. Yes, of course I was made, bred, and beautified in Canada, but the longer away from the track you are the, the more rocky your gallop is upon return (that was an intense analogy).

The first twoonie I held in the palm of my hand looked unreal, I had remembered it being smaller (or perhaps I’ve just gotten way too accustomed to Euros). I had forgotten what a HUGE deal hockey is in Canada, until I saw the results of the Junior League splashed across every newspaper (yes, overriding news of the Madoff scandal) and families gathering around TV sets to watch the game, as though they were circling around good ol' Saint Nick. Even the hum of Quebecois French startled me – it had been so long since I had last heard that strain of French that sounds as though it has gone through a meat grinding machine (not to say mine doesn’t sound like that either..).

I like to think that a little shock does the system good (the authorities at Gauntonamo Bay think so too).

Nevertheless, home was sweet and savoury just like I left it. My dearest family and friends and foods and hobbies (skating) were divulged in.

So now we are into a New Year, and I can’t help but think that if 2009 is as incredible as 2008 was, well then .. let the games begin!

My trip home was disastrous. I was deathly once I arrived to Charles de Gaulle airport. We finally piled onto the plane, and I dozed off, only to wake up what felt like hours later, STILL ON THE PLANE. I must have brought some flakes with me from Canada because it was snowing so much that ALL flights to and out of Paris were canceled for the day. This is essentially a recipe for disaster, since CDG Airport is one of the busiest in the world. Luckily I was furnished with a hotel and meal, but many unlucky souls did not receive this privilege, having to sleep under jackets on the airport floor for the night. To top this catastrophe off (yep, here comes the cherry .. ), the airport “misplaced” 40,000 or so pieces of luggage. NB: As I write this one week later, I am still without both suitcases. [Insert Jeopardy waiting tune].

But, let’s return to the positives of my catastrophic trips. I met some really cool characters on my travels this Christmas, and I’d like to share a little briefing of each of them.

• Cute couple in their 60s: He is French. She is Scottish. When chatting to one another, they go back and forth between English and French. They met on the ski slopes in Scotland (before global warming melted them).
• Hugo: a Brittish guy who studies WWII History in Edinborough. We shared a drink in the JFK Airport, cheersing to our fondness for Europe.
• Man from Indiana: We sat next to each other on a 7-hr plane ride. He was subjected to my bathroom schedule as I frequently squeezed past his knees. He works as an energy contractor on a US Army base in Iraq. His response when asked how he likes Iraqi food: “We only eat Americain".
• Jeremy: a professor at Savannah School of Art. Specializes in comics. Full-out American, decked out in Boston Red Sox gear. First time in Europe. We spent a lot of time together, in lines (waiting lines, canceling flight lines, rescheduling flight lines, reporting lost luggage lines).
  
• Sippi: Half Chilean. Half Brittish. Raised in Geneva. Professional Party Planner. We shared an Air France voucher-paid dinner together. Offered me one of his voucher-paid for coffees. Who’da thought vouchers would bring so much joy to one’s life!?