God Jul friends, I am finally getting a moment to add to my blog. We are in Norway now with Tore's sister and niece and family. It's so wonderful to be here. We left Portland early on Saturday morning, Dec 15th. Linda and Annika drove us to the airport at 5 a.m. We met Andrew and Emily there. We tried to pack light, but with being gone for 4 months, and needing winter clothes for Norway, and a few gifts, we had quite a lot of luggage. In fact, I thought I'd counted right and we each had 2 check in suitcases, but in the middle of the night, I realized we had 9. So at 4:30 in the morning Erik and I left a few things at home and consolidated. Whew. It's $100 for each extra bag above the one you get and also, we need to be able to haul them around. We all got to sit next to each other and made it to Boston just fine. Our connecting flight was right where we landed, so we had a relaxing time eating seafood for dinner. Our flight to London was uneventful too. Most of us slept and watched movies, etc. By the time they finished with dinner, etc they only had the lights out for 90 minutes so I didn't sleep well. Maybe for an hour. We went easily thru customs, etc and after we got our bags we only had to wait about an hour and Jared and Kari came. (They'd spent a week in IL with Jared's family.) We were all so excited to be in London. Andrew and Erik took 5 big suitcases to the offices of the company that puts on the program we will be with in London. It's called FIE, Foundation for International Education. The rest of us lugged all the rest of the luggage to our hotel. It was a challenge getting it on the tube (subway) and then walking 6+ blocks. We were drained. We arrived at the hotel about 9:30 a.m. but couldn't check in until 2 p.m. so thankfully they let us store our luggage in a big pile in their lobby. I spent lots of hours trying to find a place for us to stay. I checked into hostels and nice hotels and lots of discount hotels. I finally chose a discount hotel called Comfotel Blu. The reviews said the rooms were small, but it came with breakfast. It worked out to be about $33/night/person. We ended up really liking the place. The rooms were small, but it was clean and the breakfast was good, fried or scrambled eggs and toast and yoghurt and cereal and fruit and oj. We had decided to purchase a London pass for our 3 days there. It turned out to be a great deal. It cost us each $145/pass but that included all the tube and bus rides that we needed for those 3 days. It also included free passes to many museums, etc. It made it a fun way for us to see lots of awesome things. We really liked London and we were so lucky. The weather had been forecast to be rain, rain, rain, but it was sunny and not too cold either. We had blue skies and about 40 degrees the first 3 days. It was awesome. We had some rain our last day there, but it didn't bother us. Next time I get a chance, I will write some more. Hope you've all had a great Christmas Day. Carla

Preparing for our next overseas trip

It's the day after Thanksgiving and we have much to be thankful for. We got to spend Thanksgiving with many family members. We missed Ryan who was in British Columbia visiting his friends. We played touch football in the "Turkey Bowl" in the morning and then ate a wonderful feast and played games in the afternoon and evening. We are so excited about our upcoming trip to Norway and London. Erik and I are leading an overseas trip to London. We'll be taking 25 wonderful Lewis and Clark College students along with us. Bryn and Ryan will be with us the whole time too. (Well, Bryn will come back 2 weeks early to play lacrosse.) We decided to go over early to spend Christmas in Norway. Andrew, Emily, Tore, Patricia, Kari and Jared will join us in Norway too. Such fun! As you can imagine, we're busy finishing up work and school and packing and getting everything set. The next time I write in this blog I will probably be in Europe. YAY.