Repeated Reminiscing

Now I hope you don't mind humoring me again. You see, as you can very well imagine, whenever you make a huge trip to some far off place that you may never visit again you have the tendency to reminisce when the anniversary comes round. I did that a little bit with Israel, now I'm going to do it with Norway. (*sigh of bliss*) So to celebrate this momentous occasion, I have some of my journal recorded here for your perusing:

Thursday, May 19, 2005

My body struggles with traces of tiredness, as its accustomed time is 1:46 a.m., but as the sun is up I don't think I should sleep too much.

The Sandford family is travelling again, though sadly lacking Chad's presence, and this time we are bound for Norway. I know--how random is that? Of all Europe, why pick NORWAY???! The tribe of Naphtali is believed to be in Norway, and since we're praying for that tribe we're off to get on the front lines for a battle in prayer. Of course this would not do without a little sightseeing too.

We left the airport a little while before 4 p.m., driven by the gracious Uncle Tim. We arrived at the Boston airport without incident and with a sincere hand shake all around Uncle Tim left us. In the meantime we happily reunited with our dear Kendra, and proceeded to check in our baggage. I was proud to produce a simple, compact suitcase that weighed a mere 17 pounds.

. . . . Finally at 8:55 p.m. or so [I wonder if I was a little over-exact, but you must remember that this is for the sake of the factual, not just the interests'] they called us and I scooped up my 12 pound carry on and light blue fleece and prepared to board.

A willing family member relinquished the window seat for me and I perched contentedly in my favorite spot. Kendra sat on my left, Daddy on hers, Mom just across the aisle, then Craig, and then Clyde, who also possessed a window seat. I liked this seating much better than the original plan to have us all sit by ourselves. My mom had exaggerated my mild feelings of dread to Kendra, who had then requested tickets together [I recall that Kendra rather exaggerated it as well, telling the ticket lady that she had a little sister frightened to sit by herself. . . aargh!]

Then came the delightful take off with all its tremendously thrilling speed and I peered out the window to watch the twinkling lights of Boston diminish into hazy patches of light.

As I prepared to settle down, I suddenly noticed streaks of silver darting by the window. My first thought was, "Stars!" as they looked similar to stars blurring by in movies [e.g. Star Wars]. Obviously I quickly concluded that we weren't high enough for them to be stars and realized they were raindrops speeding by. Very cool.

I settled down with my fluffy fleece and Icelandair cushion and just might have been able to catch ten minutes of sleep when at 10:45 the stewardess came serving "dinner." I woke up reluctantly and shoved down. . . . some weird cheesy sweet stuff that looked like cole slaw but wasn't. . .

I settled down a second time and managed to sleep 'till 1:05 (home time), and then I woke to discover that Kendra had opened the shade. Outside the sky was rapidly brightening into a robin's egg blue and ahead a fuzzy pink bar on the horizon foretold the withcoming sunrise. Below I sleepily glimpsed white mountains (probably glaciers), though it took me a second to realize that they weren't clouds. In answer to my confused mutterings, Kendra explained that it was Greenland we were crossing. Shortly we left that behind and as I gazed far below I saw little chunks of white, and soon thousands of tiny white dots speckling the dull blue ocean. Icebergs, I quickly determined, and scanned their numbers excitedly as I had recently studied glaciers.

Over an hour later, we began to cross Iceland. Never have I seen a land so brown and barren. Flat except for several jutting mountains and a very few hills, it was pock marked with ravines and valleys. I didn't see a single tree, but I didn't know if I could have missed a few since we were so high up. Bare and desolate, it hosted hardly any houses besides a city-sized cluster I saw and Reykjavik itself (which holds 75% of Iceland's population).

"Well if you were a hermit, you'd know where to come," Kendra commented dryly. I couldn't help but agree.

Soon, about 6:50 a.m. (local time) we were landed safely and soon tromping off the plane and into the cool fresh air (supposedly 41 degrees F according to the pilot but it didn't feel that cold to me). We made our way with the throng into a thick line of people going through passport control.

Eventually we went on to wait in line to board our next flight, after dodging into the restroom (I left my passport there by accident but I was able to retrieve it with no harm done).

At around 7:55, we took off, soon leaving Iceland's haunting wasteland behind [now in Iceland's defense, I think I did see a little bit of green there on our way back, and it did look like a cool place that I'd like to visit someday, even if it is the perfect habitat for a hermit]

. . . Around noon Kendra thought she spotted white mountains below that were hard to distinguish from the clouds, and soon after [that] the pilot announced we'd be arriving Oslo in 20 minutes. As we went below the clouds I admired the large green or brown (from rich soil) farms with a small cluster of buildings in the middle of each, usually including a red barn. I loved the Norwegian countryside already, and we soon found that it was a mixture of Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. Pennsylvanis because of the open fields and farms, and New Hampshire because of the many hills and coniferous & deciduous forest mix.

Before we knew it we were landed and as we glided down an escalator we could hardly believe we were actually in Norway. It was true however, and the folks around us that could easily have been mistaken for regular Americans proved the supposed assumption false by chattering in Norwegian. . . . Fortunately enough, we didn't have to go through customs or passport control, being only regrettable because we didn't get our passports stamped.

. . . we checked through with the rental car place and wheeled our baggage to the parking garage, in search of our new rental car. We found it eventually and were immediately struck by the humorous hand of irony. We had been told that the back of the 6-passenger Toyota Caravel was 18 cubed feet. I think they must have meant 18 feet squared. Let's just say there was just as much room to put the luggage as to put the seats and people, and even though we did have to sit two seats three in a row, its still saying a bunch.

We loaded up and climbed into our bright blue vehicle with the diesel engine and soon zoomed down the highway. Everything was new and exciting, from the cars, license plates, and Norwegian signs (often hard to pronounce, but occasionally resembling English).

We made our way through the busy streets and it didn't take long for us to realize that bikers were almost as common as pedestrians themselves.

We went to our hostel. . . at almost 3:30. . . and after unloading left [we] left. . . but this time on foot.

Traversing up streets and down others while pausing to snap pictures (we're SO tourists!), we finally arrived at Karl Johansgata (gata as in street). This was a long pedestrian street, crowded much like Ben-Gurion Street in the New City, Jerusalem, with shops and restaurants on either side.

After eating a couple of hamburgers at McDonalds [and rather expensive ones, I might add], we marched up Karl Johansgata in faith. Then we went and took pictures and prayed at Stortinget, the Parliament building. We strode on up from there, pausing for pictures at fountains and such before arriving at the royal palace building in all its finery with a proud horseman statue in front. We took more pictures, watched the royal guard, and prayed for the royal family.

. . . us kids walked further to the Oslo fjord & city hall. Then we made the long trek home across a good part of the city to arrive safe but foot sore at our hostel at quarter past seven or so. We retired into our bunk beds early, myself settling down in exhaustion (with a lumpy pillow that felt like it contained individual cotton balls), at about ten minutes of eight. Thank God for protection!