We're off to Germany!

We took off very early on Wednesday morning, May 17, to fly to Munich, Germany.  Our good friend, Eric Belnap, drove us to the airport in his truck.  We had 4 large checked bags, two carry-on bags, two personal bags, and two bike bags. Phew!

 Unfortunately, it was snowing when we left, so we piled all the bags into the cab of the truck and put the bikes in the back under a tarp.

  It was a little bit of a challenge to get everything into the airport and checked.  But we made it and barely came in under weight with our checked bags.  We flew to Chicago where we had a 5 hour lay over.  (The Church travel department made our reservations!)

Chicago selfie

 Then we flew 9 hours to Munich and arrived about 10:30 a.m.  We were exhausted but excited.  Needless to say, it was quite a chore to get all our luggage from the carousel out to the front of the airport where the President and his wife were waiting to pick us up without leaving it unattended. But we were successful! President and Sister Kohler were warm and friendly and we were so delighted to see them. We loaded everything into the mission van and headed to the mission office.  We met the office couples, the Hansens and the Gildners.  They took care of paper work and gave us instructions.  I'm not sure how much of it we remember because we were pretty much in a fog mentally.

 Then the Kohlers took us to the mission home, where they live, and Sister Kohler fed us lunch.  We were able to visit with them for a little while but then Sister Kohler noticed we were dozing off and suggested a nap.  We took advantage of that idea!  We only slept an hour or so because we wanted to be able to sleep at night.  We met the Kohler's 16 year old daughter, Erica.  The five of us went out to dinner at a lovely German restaurant and sat out on the patio.  I had wienerschnitzel, of course, and it was delicious! Everyone's meals were fabulous.  We were grateful we had decided to stay Thursday night with the Kohlers instead of driving two hours to Ravensburg where we would live.  We looked forward with great anticipation to getting to our new home for the next 18 months but thankfully had a good night's sleep before we left.