Home Sweet Home...

Hi Everyone,
We spent our last day in NYC mostly sleeping. We didn't have to check out of the hostel until 12noon so we packed the night before and stayed in bed until 11am! Was sooooooooo nice! lol!
We then got up, checked out of the hostel and left our bags downstairs. We headed to the Barking Dog Diner on the corner of 94th Street and 3rd Ave (the corner of the road we were on)! I had a burger, and Rob had some kind of breaded pasta thing with a pot of tomato sauce. Never really understood exactly what that actually was! lol! We stayed having lunch until about 1:45pm and then headed across the road to Duane Reade to get Rob some ibuprofen.
After this we went back to the hostel to go on the internet, I had a good look at Obama's website. At 2:50pm we got our bags and started the journey to JFK airport. This should have been easy but unfortunately due to the Pope's visit the Manhattan transport network was a bit messed up and we didn't actually get to Terminal 7 until 4:30pm. Luckily we had checked in online the night before so we just had to check our bags via the 'fast bag drop' queue. This queue was not in fact 'fast' as it had been advertised! lol! JFK airport in general seemed to be EXTREMELY disorganised. We had to queue for ages at security, which at other airports had been quite quick. By this time it was coming up to 6pm. I talked to my parents and Jenny on the phone for about 20mins then we headed for the gate. Weirdly the 19:30 plane boarded before us (the 19:00 plane!). We didn't really understand this. Also when they boarded us, bearing in mind this was a boeing 747-400 which is a huge double decker plane they just said everyone can board instead of staggering the boarding based on seat numbers! This causes the whole thing to be a lot slower! lol! Don't really know why they were being soooo disorganised!
When we finally got on the plane we didn't take off for about another 40mins because the airport was soooo busy, 40 planes had to take off before us! lol! Anyways, the plane journey was fine. The plane had flown from london with a broken entertainment system (poor people on the london to nyc flight for 7 hours), however they managed to get a technician to fix it so we got 21 channels! Which was absolutely fine! I watched Doctor Who Christmas Special, Dragons Den, Ps I Love You and the Golden Compass. It worries me that 7 hrs doesn't seem that long anymore! lol! It was really weird to hear English accents on the plane, I didn't realise how long it had been since people with English accents were talking around me! So weird! lol!
Anyways, we landed at 7:15am (English time) to a cold and rainy England! We managed to drop 11 degrees from the NYC temperature! So annoying! We queued for AGES at passport control and then grabbed our bags. We finally emerged at Arrivals at 8:20am. I met my parents and Jen(yey!!!) and we sat down and had a coffee and 'breakfast' in Starbucks at Heathrow for a while before we headed back home (via the butchers). Was soooooooooo nice to see them!!!! lol! When we got home I saw fat boy!!!!! He looks soooooooooooo good, hes put on more weight and his fur is looking sooooooooo healthy, plus his chest has properly grown back!!!
I've just spent the day chillaxing, I had a two hour nap before lunch (although I didn't just go to bed when we got in). I've been rotating photos for ages, the final photo count for the whole 2 1/2 months is 6369!!! Owwww yes! lol! Tonight, we're having shepherd's pie tonight soooo I'm soooo excited!
I've had the most AMAZING couple of months! I can't describe how good it has been!!! It was soooooo lovely to go and see family and friends in Australia and New Zealand! I hope that it won't be tooo long until I see you all again! I'm pleased that I managed to do it, even all the 9 (!!!) flights!!! I really want to go and see more stuff, I could of carried on for longer but I am very happy to be home and can't wait to see everyone!!!
I want to thank Rob for putting up with me 24/7 for the last 2 and 1/2 months, for waking me up every morning and for always holding my hand as we took off and landed! I'm very glad I got to share this experience with a pain in the butt like him! lol! I think we mutually pushed each other into doing things we would not have done otherwise (although I never managed to get him to go Zorbing!) and I am therefore very very thankful to him for that! lol! Also I want to thank my parents for always telling me that I would be fine! I got into a routine of needing my rents and Rob to all say you'll be fine and to wear the socks that my nan and gramps got me which have now been dubbed 'the flight socks' that I wore on every flight!
I hope you have enjoyed my EPIC e-mails over the last couple of months! It's going to be weird not writing them everyday!
I can't wait to see everyone and hope you all are well! I'll upload all the pics to flickr this week!
I'M HOME!!!
Lots of Love,
Sarah xxx