Touchdown: MN!

After being home now for about 36 hours, here is my attempt to piece together the remainder of our voyage. Mind you, some details may be lost due to jet lag.

The flight from Amsterdam to Minneapolis went well. Sweeti ate from mama's meals and handled the travel pretty well for a toddler adjusting to her new parents and new surroundings.

A highlight of our flight to Minneapolis was chatting with guy in the seat next to us. He was a college student from Jefferson City, MO, hometown of our friend Rebecca Brooks and current home of our friends Rev. and Mrs. E. Gernander. His accent was nearly cajun sounding. He thought we were from a different country with our MN accents. Amy told him we have the same accent as Sarah Palin, whom we never knew had an accent until we heard Tina Fey playing her on SNL. The guy from Jefferson City had gone on a 5 day trip to Ghana, on a trip paid for by an African student who attends University of Nebraska-Lincoln with him. We thought we had a bad experience with security until we heard his story. He was strip searched and even body cavity searched by security in Ghana because they were suspicious of someone who only went to Africa for 5 days. When they did the latter, he proclaimed, "I'm not gay." We told him they were probably searching for drugs. He hadn't thought of that. Poor naive kid, to have gone through that.

Even the landing went pretty well for Sweeti. When we were exiting the plane, a girl mentioned how cute Sweeti is and how she handled the flight so well.

When we landed on American/Minnesotan soil, I felt like kissing the ground. But then I realized that it was so cold that my lips would probably freeze to the pavement.

We had only about an hour between landing and boarding to go to Bemidji. Since our check-in had been two legs ago, we could grab a bite to eat. We had planned on having Big Macs and sundaes at McDonald's, but we had just had ice cream on the plane. Instead, Amy grabbed a Diet Dr. Pepper and a burger from A & W. Sweeti ate off the bun.

We took the tram to the faraway Bemidji departure gate. The girl checking people in looked familiar. I thought maybe she was from my home area. When she came up to me, she saw my St. Olaf sweatshirt, and said, "Oom yah yah!," the greeting you are to give fellow Oles when you meet them. We introduced ourselves and I told her I had graduated from St. Olaf in 1996. So had she. Then I remembered that we had lived in the same dormitory our senior year and had served on hall council together. She had married her college sweetheart. I remembered now how distracted she had been with wedding planning our last year of college.

There were only about sixteen people on our little plane. Sweeti was dozing off during take off. The flight was less than an hour long. We visited with the lady across from us, who lives in Bemidji and is an airline worker. Before we knew it, we were on the ground in Bemidji. Thank God!- no more flying!