Back home

I am a flight attendant. For the past 14 years I have gone from one time zone to the next and from one country to another. I have always been able to get back in my own time once back home, if not right away at least in a couple of days. I have been back in San Diego for 4 days now. I am still jet-lagged. I cannot seem to be able to get back in Pacific time. But I think it's more than that. I barely eat, hardly leave the house and have not had a good night sleep yet.
It's been weirder than usual because I stayed longer with my family this time. Usually, I'm there for a week or 10 days max but I was there for 16 days and it made a big difference. The only nice thing coming back home was to find the beautiful weather and feel the sun without the 90% humidity and the sudden tropical deluge. I tend to think that I get along with my family because we are so far away and I only get to see them twice a year. I know better. Maybe that is why I try not to stay too long because it makes it that much harder to leave them. The bond between us is so strong. We care about and love each other not because we are family, but because we genuinely like each other as individuals. I guess I have been down since my return because I miss them.
We have started to work on our family tree and have uncovered some things that we were not aware of. Both because as kids we never asked and because we were never told by the adults. We asked mom and dad lots of questions about their family, especially our great grand-parents and beyond. We have learned some amazing facts completely unknown to us. We saw pictures we had never seen before like the ones of my father's dad and mom when they were young and his maternal grand-mother who raised him. I learned that my maternal grand-mother had 4 husbands and not 3 as I always believed. All this is just fascinating. We are learning about people that we knew as kids but could not tell what the family relation was until now. Pretty sad when you think of it but at the same time normal I guess. As kids you know "uncle this" and "auntie that" but do not really know how they are related to you unless they are your parents' siblings or own parents. We have learned more in those past 2 weeks than we have in 40 years! And we are just starting...

Here are some pictures of my stay.