Groceries

After doing my shopping in France for over a year, I guess I forgot every habit from the rest of my entire life concerning the area... I went shopping with my mom the day after I got home and found out that, apparently, the Sam's Club employees highly object to customers refilling their own carts after check-out.

First Reunion

My family had tickets to General Conference and there just happened to be a mission reunion the same weekend at my first mission president's house.  I went with some of my former companions, excited to speak French again and see people I missed.
I walked in the door and was immediately greeted with a hug from a random guy I'd never met before.  After I finally got away I saw one of my first companions and told her that some guy had just touched me and that was the first time someone who wasn't family had since I'd been home.  She chuckled at me and said "that's my boyfriend." Hmmm, no wonder he knew my name.
The rest of the evening was filled with many more awkward encounters.  I was one of two in attendance who had just come home 3 weeks previous.  Needless to say I was a little shell shocked.
At one point I was looking for a trash can and came upon a past zone leader he gave me a hug and gave me the most interesting introduction to his girlfriend (now fiancee!!!!) and then I just asked where the trash was and scurried off.

#Hashtag

Getting back into the social media world was not difficult for me, my Facebook was up and running within a couple days of being home.  I wanted to stay in touch with members in France and recent converts and past companions who had already returned home.
The only thing different would be a symbol.
--> # <-- this one, to be exact.
Formerly known to me as a number sign, sharp, or pound symbol was now widely being used across cyberspace (and beyond)
With a new and improved name: the hashtag
the dictionary definition being "a mark used within a message to identify a keyword or topic of interest and facilitate a search for it"
My attention was first brought to this new way of communication when I discovered links to a magical place called instagram.
I was mistaken, however, to assume that I knew what these all meant without an explanation.
Someone commenting on a photo may say #imsohawt #nofilter #throwbackthursday, and really does that make sense to you?
So being my prideful self I tried to deduce the meaning myself only to find out that after 4 months #nofilter has nothing to do with the inability to filter comments about yourself such as "I'm so hawt" but, indeed, that you did not edit your photo.  A #throwback was a bit easier to interpret for, back in my day, we called these a blast from the past.

Home

Coming home from my mission was a pretty frightening experience.  Though I was blessed to be able to hang out with a Tahitian missionary on her way to Mozambique in the London Heathrow Airport for my 4 hour lay over, members sat next to me on the plane across the Atlantic, and I was relieved to have the dank smell of cigarette smoke on the shuttle all the way home.
France had changed me.
I was still in a daze when I got home and hugged my family in the dark parking lot where I was dropped off.
It felt like a dream.  That night I sat alone in my room on my queen size bed.
I was going to sleep here by myself?  It was HUGE and my companion had always been a bunk bed away for the past year and a half.
This was going to take some adjustments.
I went to sleep around midnight since my sister's boyfriend was over talking to my mom and I woke up the next morning at 5 pumped and ready to go.  According to my internal timeline I had actually slept in until 1 in the afternoon and that was a big no-no by mission standards.  For the next week I continued to wake up at strange hours like 2 am.  Eventually I got it down and my jet lag went away.