As I mentioned before, leaving Jamaica made me sad. I know that this isn’t going to be the last trip that I take though, and at least I can look forward to planning out the details for my next trip.
It was hard not to notice a stark contrast in location between the international airport in Montego Bay and the international airport in Philadelphia.
As you can see, the airport in Montego Bay is surrounded by homes, while the airport in Philly is surrounded by pretty much nothing. The flight home was relatively smooth until the end. While landing the pilot kept spiraling down to decrease our altitude, and I couldn’t handle it. Flying in general makes me nervous. I hate taking off, but landing is really the part that terrifies me. I assume we had to spiral down because of the buildings and things we were near, a gradual descent like the one we had when landing in Jamaica wouldn’t be as easy or safe when surrounded by skyscrapers. Regardless of the reason, I got off the flight being thoroughly impressed with myself for being able to emotionally handle the landing, as rough as it was.
There was another difference that I noticed between my two flights as well. Leaving the country is as easy as flashing your passport a few times. On the other hand, coming back into the country was a slight pain in the ass. I had heard horror stories about how mean everyone at customs was. One website that I saw warned readers against smiling at customs agents and being friendly, as it would make you appear suspicious and you would be detained. I decided that being polite was more important and I was nice as could be to everyone that I met in the airport, and everything worked out just fine. I didn’t like how back and forth the actual customs portion was. I went to the nothing to declare lane because I didn’t have anything to declare in my bags. Instead of sending me along my way that agent told me to go find a different agent. The different agent told me to go down to a different agent, who x rayed my bags and sent me on my way. I was waiting on my travel partner who did have items to declare, so I took a seat while he was going over things with his customs agent. While I was waiting, a different agent who apparently had nothing better to do decided he might as well check my bags. Surprise surprise, he didn’t find anything, and from then on I was allowed to wait in peace. Even with all of the backtracking and misdirection about where to go, getting through customs was nowhere near as bad as I thought it was.
I always know I’m home when I can’t see anything but farmland and mountains.
Once I got home my dog curled up in my arms and went to sleep. Apparently he may have missed me.
After getting home and settling in a little bit, I headed back out to catch some local fireworks to really cement my homecoming to the states. I had been bummed to miss the 4th of July, so it was nice to still be able to partake in some good old fashioned summer traditions.
ineffable wanderlust 