Well, I'm back stateside now, here in good old California. I missed this place.

I got home last night, landing at LAX at approximately 9:30 pm. The flight from Chicago had been really irritating because I was sitting at a window seat and there were these two guys in the other seats who both had their laptops out and stuff. I had to go to the bathroom through almost the entire flight, but I pictured the ordeal that would be involved in requesting that they stand up, because they'd have to fold up their laptops and do all this resituating, and then it'd have to all be done again once I returned from the lavatory, so I opted to just hold it in and suffer in silence until arriving in Los Angeles, where I took care of the problem right after arrival.

It's sort of unfortunate that people are no longer allowed to meet you at the gate. I guess it's just sort of anticlimatic to have to meet them at the baggage claim now. But anyway, I walked to the baggage claim and there, picking me up as promised, was my little friend Angelica Ochoa, as well as John Antolos, both former colleagues from the Shoah Foundation.

I got home at around 10:45 and went right to sleep. I spent all of today just watching all the shows I'd missed on Tivo. I know- that's somewhat pathetic, but who cares.

At around 8:00 I went to Monrovia and had coffee with Katie and two friends of hers, Roxanne and umm...Stacy, I think, was the other girl's name. I also talked to Alisa on the phone tonight, so most of the people I should contact have been contacted. I still need to tell my parents that I'm home, I guess, but that can wait.

I'm not sure that there's all that much more to say about my trip to Germany. I was pretty sick for a few days. In fact, I was so sick that they sent me from Heidelberg down to Friedrichshafen, where Sonja's parents live, for a few days because they were afraid I might get Sonja sick (she's pregnant) and also because her father is a doctor so he gave me medicine and all that and made me better.

After leaving Friedrichshafen on Sunday, I went up to Bonn to do some quick touring there, then returned to Heidelberg on Monday evening, so I could fly home Tuesday.

I was initially impressed with Bonn, but after a day there I realized it's a pretty boring place. I saw everything there was to see in less than eight hours. It's more or less just a sleepy little college town. It's probably a good thing that the capital was moved to Berlin.