38 hours without sleep hurts

No abroad trip is complete without getting home. So now that I've had time to recover, I'll talk about why it is a bad idea to travel around Christmas.
Monday morning, my host family left for school and work, and I took care of my last chores. I mailed my boxes (which cost $140 for non-express, one-month shipping), cleaned my room, double-checked everything, put the key in the mailbox and took off (bye, demon doggies!). When you carry luggage onto a bus, people look at you funny. But they also look at you as a tourist who's going home, so it wasn't so bad. I took a train to Kyobashi, changed to Tennoji, and then switched to Kansai Airport, arriving at about 1:00, with five hours to spare, plenty of time to check in and get food.
That was the easy part. From there things got worse. Much worse.
I waited until 3:00, which was the check-in time, and got my tickets, but was told that due to a bird strike warning, the plane was being delayed till 10:30. This meant I was going to miss my connecting flight in San Fransisco, so I had to be re-routed through Phoenix. So I waited. Then they told us that it wasn't a warning, that the bird strike had already happened, the plane was too damaged to fly, and the flight was canceled. While the airline made other arrangements, they put up all of us in a five-star hotel. Not bad. It's probably the only one I'll ever stay in in my life. And it let me get some sleep. But now I was waiting for a trip that I didn't know when would occur. All I could do was wait. And that leads to stress.
Luckily, I got a new flight the next night at 10:30, during which I managed to get no sleep. Then I had to layover in San Fransisco for 12 hours, staying awake the whole time to make sure no one stole my bags. I flew to Chicago (first class, which was nice) waited two hours for the next flight while having to listen to CNN (I hate this country's news system, it has nothing relevant to say unless it can bash politicians), then flew to Charlotte (first class again).
I have never skipped sleep. Even if I stay up all night, I go right to sleep afterwards. I've never pulled an all-nighter to study, because having the energy to take exams is better than knowing everything and being dead. Having been awake for 34 hours, I was feeling sick. So sick that I couldn't sleep in the car on the way home, because I probably would have thrown up. Then I passed through that weird state where you're so tired you don't feel it. I had lunch, jumped in bed, and crashed. Which, I believe, is an accurate term.
It's been one week since then. My biorhythm is mostly adapted back to Eastern time, but still has a few quirks to work out. My packages, which cost oh-so-much, won't be here until mid- to late-January. And I go back to school in a little over a week. But it's good to be back, and be where the chips are.
Om nom nom.