From one home to the other

After 14 months in Asia we headed back to Germany on Tuesday. Will be heading to Norway in November and have the baby there before moving back to Asia in February. That's the plan anyways.

It was bittersweet to leave.

We will miss our many friends that we have made through the year there.
We will miss wearing flip-flops year around.
We will miss driving motorcycles....

But we won't miss ants in the house! I can't believe that is has been 48 hours since I have seen or killed an ant :-).

 Some of the people without whom we would not have been able to study language, they taught us or took care of Alia while we had our language sessions - so thankful for these ladies

 saying goodbye to Pak W. at the airport, we will miss him and his family

 Alia was very disappointed that the security guard did not allow her to play on the escalator behind us - how dare he :-)

 happy again on the plane

 built a little tent for her - so thankful that she slept well on our long flight -  

many people must have prayed for that

 Papa picked us up from the airport and we enjoyed the ride home on smooth roads

 Alia has to get used to wearing closed shoes and multiple layers - 

she seems to be enjoying Germany so far

first impressions of the grocery store in Germany :-)

Not wrong, just different #43578

Its been a while since we posted one of these, but we hope that's ok, because today we have a pretty good one:

This guy is transporting 3(!) double bed frames(!) with his motorcycle(!) 

It is quite impressive what people here are able to transport on a bike...

Quiet book

We are up to our elbows in packing and what is the natural way to distressed after a busy day?

Sure, you attempt to make a Quiet book for you daughter to use during the long journey home.

If you are not on pinterest and have never searched for "How to keep your toddler quiet during church or busy during a long haul flight", chances are you don't know what a Quiet/Activity book is.

Well, look it up and then, by all means, DON'T compare it to what I produced last night. (actually, on a proud side note - Erlend helped me make it!)

book cover

 will maybe help with learning how to count?

 button flowers and sensory shapes with tulle on top

 pulling ribbons and zippers

 collecting strawberries in a 'basket'

We finished up the book today while Alia was taking her nap and when she woke up I was so excited to see how she would react to her new book after all the work we had put into it. 

She looked at it for about a minute and then lost interest. REALLY?!?!

But later, when we were packing and we needed her to not mess with the already packed stuff, she played a good 30 minutes with a little lump of sticky tack (or blue tack or sticky stuff that you can hang up pictures with) - oh well, never mind, lesson learned - we are definitely bringing sticky tack on the plane....

home for 12 days

Today we finally traveled to our house which will be our home for another 12 days. When we left over 6 weeks ago, we thought we would be gone about 2, maybe 3 weeks... oh well...

We are so thankful for the house we got to stay at while we waited for our registration to come through. Erlend and Alia had some nice tea times together :-). 

We are so sad that we had to say goodbye to Kristine this morning. 

We got so used to having her being part of our family life. 

In the last 3 months we have lived in 3 different houses together. 

Alia got so used to having her 'nana' around that she asked for her every morning after she got up. 

Tante Kristine, you will be dearly missed and always be part of this family!

Thankful for a smooth journey today, 

gives us hope for the 30 hours journey to Germany in a few days. 

 A must - the family plane selfie :-)

Philippines No. 3

Just a few more pictures from our time in the Philippines

 Alia being very cool

We went to this church several Sundays, they had really good teaching, a coffee shop and ...

 ... lots of people

went to the zoo which was very interactive, Alia got to feed a lamb 

 and pinea pigs 

my phone got stolen while we were riding in one of these

 and on a lighter note: We made lots of awesome new friends like these two 

(this picture is just for you, Sarah!)

aaand we are back - well, almost

Our two week trip to the Philippines ended up being one month long and we left the country (with new visa in our passports - Praise the Lord!) with 3 hours left on our visa for the Philippines.

Now we are back in 'our' country, but not quite in 'our' city. We had to go to another island first to be registered...
The Lord has once again provided in an amazing way as we get to stay in a house of friends of our friend's friends. The place is amazing and the play area they have makes Alia's wildest dreams come true;

can you spot the happy child?

Philippines 2: The island in the lake on the island in the lake on the island...

During our time here in the Philippines we had the privilege to spend the first week with our very good friends Ragnar and Liz. For a while now we have simply referred to them as our third set of parents, and our kids' third set of grandparents. They are really, really cool people, and we are very thankful that they took time to come to Manila to hang out with us.

Since they know this area quite well, they offered to show us some of the sights in the area.
One really cool place they took us to see was the island in the lake on the island in the lake on the island. Let me explain real quick: We are now on the island of Luzon, which has a lake called Taal, in that lake there is a volcano, but the crater in that volcano is full of water, and in that lake there is a small island.

After about an hour and a half's drive from Manila we arrived at lake Taal. We stopped up on a ridge in a town called Tagaytay to look at the view of the lake. This is me and Alia with our third set of (grand)parents

After we drove down to the lake, we hired a boat to take us across to the volcano island

I have tried to stay away from this whole selfie hysteria, but... I guess this counts as one.

Alia enjoyed the waves.. at first at least

After arriving on the island we had the option of walking up to the crater, or riding horses. Because of a certain broken ankle because of a certain accident you might have read about a month ago we chose to ride the horses. Ragnar and Liz wanted to walk, and they were just as quick to the top as us

Ok... so the island in the crater lake is not huuuuuge, but it still is an island...

But, anyway, the sights up there were fantastic, and it was also really cool to look around the shoreline and see all the holes in the ground with the smoke pouring out of them. As you understand, the volcano is still active, and it is actually not legal to live on the island, but with all these tourist wanting to see the spectacular sights, a few people live there anyway.

So that's all for now.

Erlend