Saturday, July 4th - We're back (our bags aren't) and year summary

We are back in Canada, therefore this will be the last entry for this year; the next one will be after we get back to Muscat at the end of August.

Our return trip wasn't perfect, and we kind of expected it as some of the layovers were way to short to make the connections between flights possible. We left Muscat at about midnight Thursday night/Friday morning and flew to Abu Dhabi. We had about 90 minutes to change planes which might seem like enough time, but in Abu Dhabi, you get off on the tarmac and get bused into the terminal - same thing when you leave. This takes a fair amount of time, but that's the way it is. So our flight schedule for Edinburg to leave at 2:20 am left at 3:15. The problem with that is that we only had 60 minutes between flights at the end of this one, going from Edinburg to Toronto. Obviously, we did not make that connection. And then the fun started. They had to sent us back to London in order to catch a flight that would take us to TO. So they booked us (there were about 10 of us) on a flight with Virgin Airways back to London at 9:10am, and on Air Canada at noon, to Toronto. But first, we had to get our bags, check out at passport control (ie get into Scotland) then go thru security again and get our boarding passes. Our three bags never came out, and by that time, we barely had enough time to catch our flight to London. We arrived in London to late to make the noon flight to Toronto, so we got rebooked on the 3 pm flight, which we made. Our bags, however, never made it. We suspect that they were left in Scotland and that hopefully, they will catch up to us in a day or two (otherwise, we don't have any clothing to wear!). All that being said, it's very nice to be back!!!

It has been a pretty awesome year. The school is a little disorganised, but the people in Oman are very nice and we love the country. We did manage to travel a bit, even though not as much as our first year - we didn't feel the need to leave as often as we did in Kuwait. Here is a quick recap of our travels, our review of the year that was.

Number of ... 

- trips taken: 9 - Kuwait, Dubai (UAE) three times, Salalah (Oman), Jaipur and Agra (India), Petra and the Dead Sea (Jordan), Kitchener-Waterloo twice.

- airlines flown : 10 (Oman Air, Fly Dubai, Air India, Jordanian, Air Canada, Lufthansa, Turkish Airlines, Emirates, Ethiad, Virgin Airlines)

- countries visited: 4 (United Arab Emirates, Oman, India, Jordan; also stopped in Scotland and England)

- approximate distance travelled: over 90 000 km

- things we've seen: a whole bunch

- places like home: none! (but we are still going back next year as we are having way too much fun to stop!)