the long road home.

man, what a week in los angeles! dav, josh and i went to malibu, outlet stores, universal studios, the walk of fame, the taping of the jay leno show (second row seats, shook hands with jay leno, saw james franco in person, and appeared on national tv!), went to disneyland, went for mass and celebrated hanukkah with josh's family right after, watched the nutcracker... and then had one much-needed lazy day on monday.

dav and i were supposed to take the train out from la to eugene, leaving on monday and arriving on tuesday (it's at least a 27 hour ride), but the train was fully-booked. that was disappointing. =( anyhow, we bought flight tickets from la to portland with a stopover in seattle for monday afternoon... and then found out on sunday night that our flights were cancelled because the airport in seattle was snowed in! we spent hours trying to get an alternative route home, but it was close to impossible to get an airlines rep on the phone because the lines were jammed by the hundreds of others who were in the same boat. when we finally did get through on monday, we were told that the soonest flight out of la that had available seats was on the 26th! and the soonest train was leaving on the 27th, arriving on the 28th. i really, really wanted to spend christmas in eugene, but since we didn't really have a choice we decided to go with the flight on the 26th... but we felt really bad about imposing on josh's family (whom we were staying with), because we had already been there for 6 nights and were going to be extending our stay another 4 days. >.< they told us we were more than welcome to stay, but we were seriously considering looking for a hostel or something to stay in til we could leave.

and then... on tuesday afternoon i decided to try calling the airlines again, because i figured it wouldn't hurt. after getting the busy signal several gazillion times more, i got the same answer - the soonest we could get to portland was on the 26th. i hung up, then realized that i didn't ask about flights into eugene, which was where we wanted to be anyway. so i called back, got through on the first try, and found out that two people had JUST cancelled their tickets for the 4.35 pm flight later that day. it was about 1.15 pm then. i decided to go ahead and jump on the tickets before anyone else did, although it was going to be tight getting to the airport on time and i had no idea if we were going to be able to find our way from portland to eugene that night. we rushed to pack, looked up amtrak tickets online and found out that all the buses and trains were fully booked, said goodbye to josh's house and off we went.

on the way to the airport i called amtrak to find out our chances of getting a ticket to eugene that night, and after being on hold for about 20 minutes i talked to an agent, who told me that he could get me on the last train of the day, which left at 9.10 pm. we were scheduled to land in portland at 7 pm so i thought that worked perfectly. we would be getting into eugene at 11.45 pm, and i wasn't sure if the buses would be running, so i called sean and he said he'd be willing to pick us up from the station, which was really sweet of him. =) so now we were all set to be in eugene by midnight, if everything went according to plan. you've all heard of murphy's law right?

we ended up getting to the airport at about 4 pm, no thanks to the la traffic. as if that wasn't cutting it close enough, the service at the la airport was horrendous - it took us about an hour to get checked in and through security! thankfully, the flight had been delayed by an hour, so we made the flight... but then i was worried about getting to the amtrak station on time. there wasn't time to do anything about it at the la airport, so i decided i'd deal with it when (and if!) we landed in portland that evening. thankfully, we made it... landed in a snow-covered portland at 8 pm. i called amtrak while waiting for our luggage and figuring out how to get to the amtrak station from the airport - after holding for about half an hour i found out that our train had been delayed by an hour and a half! that meant we'd be getting in to eugene at about 1.15 am, which we thought was too late for sean to come get us... so we let him off the hook and decided to find our own way back to the ucf house from the station. somehow. we were supposed to take the light rail to the rose quarter, and then catch a bus to the amtrak station; we got the light rail, but the buses weren't running because of the snow. so we had to lug our luggage through the ice and snow, made it to the station on time, and found out the train had been delayed even more. so we walked around looking for food, but ended up having to settle for chips and coffee from a vending machine.

the train finally left at about 11.15pm, and we passed the time watching finding nemo on my laptop and sleeping. arrived in eugene at 2.30am, and decided to walk from the amtrak station to the ucf house. it took us an hour, but thankfully there wasn't any ice or snow on the ground. needless to say, we were exhausted by the time we got home. dav had a peanut butter sandwich, i had soy milk, and then we went to bed at about 4am.

but you know what? it was worth it because the next morning i could wake up early to skype with my family on a stable connection after they got home from midnight mass, and because i got to have a christmas eve dinner with sean, esh and sean's family and then go for midnight mass all together after. it was also worth it because i got to have a christmas lunch with my housemates, complete with murukku, pineapple tarts and coconut candy from home (thank you mommy, daddy and anthea!), go for a walk with dav around campus, watch "the waitress", have a nap, cook curry and bak choy for dinner, and then watch sepet before calling it a day.

merry christmas everyone!

ps: yes, i cheated by backdating this post. =P