I'm going to the US!! ... Oh no... I'm not...

This is a blog post by Erlend again by the way...

So here's what happened...

I was asked by our organization to go to the US to a seminar on a relevant topic to our future ministry in AP.
And that sounded fine with me, I haven't even been to the US for almost 12 years, and the seminar was about a topic that I find quite interesting.

So I booked a ticket, paid and got the booking number and travel itinerary in an email. After that I got bombarded with spam (advertisement) from the online company I used, but that is normal, so I ignored those emails. I didn't really feel like going skiing in the Alps anyway.

So today the big day had arrived. I got up at 4 in the morning, and my father-in-law drove me over 100 kilometers to the airport, dropped me of and went home.

I went to the check-in desk and handed them my booking info and passport.
The lady sat there for a while and looked quite confused, trying to find my ticket on the flight.
She even tried several different ways of typing the special Norwegian letter in our last name, but found nothing.

Then I was sent to a info desk, and was told they could help me. After standing around waiting for quite a while, the lady told me that she could see that there had been a booking, but that it had been cancelled...

I then got my phone out, and started going through all of my emails from the online travel agent, and found, in between all the spam, a small email, with a topic that didn't say anything about its urgency, that basically read "We have (for some reason) rejected your payment, call us within 2 days or your ticket will be cancelled."

I have never heard of anything like this before, and we travel a lot (this year is going to be a hard-to-break-record in amounts of flights for me).

So my only two options were to buy a new ticket over the counter for 2400 Euro (No thanks) or to go home...

So just as my father-in-law came home after driving the 100 + kilometers home, Anne told him what had happened, he drank a cup of coffee (I have been told) and got back in the car for another 200 + kilometers of driving to pick me up.

(Danke für deine Geduld und Hilfe Papa!)

So now, here I am, still in Germany.
But, hey, its a nice place to be :-)

Considering all the things I would have missed this week (and a few other reasons) I'm actually totally fine with not going.

Maybe next year :-)

random

Here are some pictures of the things we have been up to during the last few weeks.

 We got to hang out with lots my siblings (I don't mean the cow!)

which meant lots of fun play time for Alia

 Even drove to Stuttgart to see one special auntie 

and Onkel Ma and Tante Schuli came all the way from Vienna

Alia is enjoying hanging out with her cousins and friends

We got to share about Asia with our youth group

 Also told them how to make Es Jeruk nipis from scratch

 and how to break down garlic without a garlic press 

but with a their bare hands - hard core, I know :-)

adjusting

We have had a couple of really nice weeks here in Germany. We are so thankful for how well Alia is adjusting and how much she loves her "Popa" and "Moma" and her cousins.

On Sunday we got to share in our church about what we have been doing during the last year, but of course I forgot to have somebody take a picture... but here is basically everything else we took a picture of since we came back.

These beautiful welcome signs (in four different languages) waited for us on our first Sunday back in church (Danke, Annegret!)

 Alia's new (and cheap :-)) hobby, going to the store and look at fish

another new favorite thing is the playground at the lake

and of course she is loving the all the bread 

(prefers it with Nutella on it, well, she is her mother's daughter after all)

This has been Erlend's highlight so far, finding a guy who sells not one but two steaks in a bread roll 

(I think that guy is onto something, I mean, why stop at one steak?)

 We also had a check up for little man and everything is fine. Alia thought it was only appropriate that her heart beat got checked as well, so we just pretended and put some wires over her stomach.

 Yes, we are having a good time!

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 :-)