Psych!

We fooled you! Mwahahahaha! For those of you who don't know, we are back in Bellingham, and have just completed our whirlwind surprise tour of family and friends.

Here are the answers to some of the questions you might have:

• We are home for 3 and a half weeks, leaving again for SE Asia on January 5


• We have had our tickets from Cairo for over a month; everything about India was a lie


• Two people were in on the surprise: Mitch and Cody. They kept us in the loop of family events, and helped plan the surprises


• Even if it had not been part of the plan since September, we would have come home. We miss our family and friends, and are very travel weary.

We will be in Bellingham and Redmond during our time home, trying to spend as much time with people as we can. Please let us know if you want to hang out! I want to meet people downtown at coffee shops to chat and play chess, and I want to play soccer, ultimate or any sport I can. Morgan wants to cook, wrap presents, make fun things and hold babies. Call us!

In the meantime, let me share with you the joys of flying to Seattle from Cairo. Getting on the plane (which was scheduled to leave for JFK 30 minutes after mignight) was a surreal experience. The flight attendants all spoke English! I understood what they said! USA! USA! Then we were held at the gate for close to 2 hours because they "had to check whether the flight plan was legal." How does this happen? I didn't know, but my mood was too good to care very much. We took off after 2 am and got off the plane at JFK 12 hours later, at 7 am. What?

Because of the delay, we only had 1:25 to catch our next flight. In that time, we had to go through immigration and customs. Our first stop was immigration. The Homeland Security officer asked us some questions, and then checked our passports. "You look exactly the same," he said to Morgan. "Are you sure this is you?" he asked me. I explained to him that my passport was issued when I was 17, and I was now 25. "Ok, looks fine. By the way," he added casually, "we have random checks every 30 or so people, and you have been chosen. Follow me." Great. Understanding that they have to throw a token white guy in their every so often, I followed him to another room while Morgan went to see about our bags.

Above you can see on the right a picture of me 3 months ago. Imagine that, but 8 years younger. I looked more like Eminem. On the left is terrorist Tommy, taken 3 weeks ago.

Sitting in the next Homeland Security room, waiting for my opportunity to have a more thorough interview, I reflected on the above images. I looked around and saw a few other white folks from our flight. The vast majority of the people who had been "randomly selected" were arab men and some women who happened to wear headscarves. I found it funny to think that racial profiling was not the official policy. It was clear as day sitting in that room. As I became conscious of my appearance, I realized that I was not a token white person. I was being racially profiled! The beard has got to go.

After getting grilled by another officer for 5-10 minutes, he had me take my glasses off and began a close cross examination between my face and my passport. Eventually I got through, but that beard has got to go!

Meanwhile, Morgan had retrieved all of our bags (almost 40 kilos!) and met me outside. We ran to customs and made it though ok, dropping off our bags and heading to security for the next flight. Tick tock tick tock...

At security, they pulled us aside and searched our bags for drugs. Random again, I'm sure. After testing our bags for drug residue, we eventually were able to grab our things and run to the gate on the far side of the terminal. We had made! Wait, what? The gate has been switched? To the far side of the terminal? Awesome.

More running, but we made it just in time to catch the plane to Seattle. USA! USA! USA!

Mitch got us at the airport and the rest is history! Ah, home for the holidays...