Posting again at last

Well, it's been a long time since I've posted, and a ton has happened-- the reason that it's been a long time since I've posted! I'll have to just give you a quick rundown on the final events in Europe......

We took a bus back to Izmir on Saturday night, arriving at about 5:45am. We bummed around all day on Sunday, then spent basically all day Monday driving. We did an 800 km circuit and visited the sites of the churches of Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea, and Ephesus, as well as the hot springs at Hierapolis and Pamukkale. Then on Tuesday we went the beach (the Aegean Sea) near Izmir with our friends we were staying with. We had pizza and ice cream for supper to celebrate Ricky's birthday. Then we left early Wednesday morning for Oslo, flying out about 6:30am. We arrived in Oslo at about 1pm, after a layover in Munich. We took the train back to the school, which proved yet another traveling nightmare. We missed the stop where we were supposed to change trains and ended up heading out towards Stavanger. We finally got to the school just in time to get some supper. For those of you that know Topher, he was there with a Maranatha group, so I hung out with him for the evening as I packed.

The next day started out beautifully and rapidly went sour-- then it got worse. Apparently there had been some miscommunication, and Werner didn't show up to drive me to the train station. Fortunately, Joar was there and he borrowed Robby's car to drive me there. But I just missed the 9:23 train I was trying to catch, and I had to wait for an hour. Then the train took an hour and a half, so I arrived at the airport shortly before noon. I thought I would still have time to make my 1:15 flight-- until I saw the line at the check-in counter. There were (I'm not kidding) nearly FIVE HUNDRED people ahead of me. So I got in line. I mean, hey what else could I do?

So to make a very long story short enough for one post, I missed my flight, got rebooked, spent the night in the airport, flew out the next morning for Copenhagen, spent 7 hours there, then flew home, arriving Friday evening. And it was fortunate I got the ticket I did, because as the lady told me, that was the last day of school in Norway and I got basically the last available ticket to Copenhagen for a few days! So all in all, I spent 19 hours in the Oslo airport, one hour flying to Copenhagen, 7 hours in that airport, then 10 hours flying to Seattle. Then just to top it off, they decided they need to do a "dump search" of all my stuff in Seattle: in other words, dumping all the stuff out of all my bags and looking through everything. Needless to say, I was less than thrilled.

So I got home Friday night, and Steve McMahon showed up at my house later that evening. He spent the night, then we all went to the Washington camp-meeting the next day. Allie showed up in the afternoon with her dad to visit, and we all looked at Turkey pictures. We had a great evening, and I got home around 1 the next morning. Then I spent Sunday and Monday at home, Tuesday was the day that Nathan and his brother Matthew, and Charity and Marion and Sarah showed up, we got the rental van, and Wednesday morning at 11 we set off for Arizona and Immian's wedding. We drove all day and all night, and were coming into LA the next morning. Then we promptly missed our turn there and had to drive all the way down to San Diego before heading east towards Yuma then Phoenix then Tucson. We got the their place at about 9pm, and had lots of reunions with people we hadn't seen for sometime. Then we went to sleep in the Smith's greenhouse, where the tomatoes are grown for Sunizona Farms. The whole weekend was a blast and a half, and it was great to see a bunch of good friends (Patrick, Eric, Ryan, Jeff, Leah, Ceri, Sondra, Vange, and a whole bunch more). The wedding was great, very romantic. :-) And the couple of the hour seemed quite in love, which is a good thing.

Then we left on Monday morning at about 10 and drove to the Grand Canyon, where we did a little hiking around and climbing and picture-taking, then watched the sun set before we left and kept driving. We drove straight up through Utah, and stopped for breakfast the next morning at an IHOP in Boise, ID. Then we continued on until we got home around 9:30pm. The girls got up early the next morning and left, and my dad drove Nathan and Matthew to the ferry so they could go across to Seattle and get a bus back home. I, meanwhile, was hopelessly laid up in bed with a stomach virus that seemed bound and determined to make whatever was my insides become my outsides, through whatever method seemed convenient (convenient to it, not to me!). I dealt with that all morning as my parents packed the Suburban, then we left in the middle of the afternoon to drive down to Hood River, OR, for the Hohnberger Family Camp. Around the time we got to Portland my stomach began behaving and I developed a nasty migraine, so I conked out in the car as my parents set up the tent and my siblings ran and screamed. I felt much better the next morning, but I was really fatigued so I slept all day and didn't go to any of the meetings.

We spent the weekend there, and I was really given a different perspective on the Hohnberger family. I gained tremendous respect and appreciation for the stand they've taken to raising their family to be God-honouring and full of His principles. I left the weekend with new vision for my own future family. I know, time to worry about Matt becoming a Hohnbergerite, eh? Well, that actually doesn't sound half bad if you ask me! I've really learned that all the rumours about them are pretty unfounded. They are human and definitely have made mistakes, but they are totally on the right path when it comes to Biblical families. If only more SDA's could catch that vision.

But this post has grown far too long and it's far too late to continue typing... so I will leave the rest for another day.

Good night all!