Londonderry Aire

Thankfully the airlines took a little pity on us, and without too much hassle, allowed us to exchange our Hamburg-London tickets for Stockholm-London tickets. We have a few more days here in Sweden, and then on Tuesday evening we fly south to London and all that great British cheese.

It's Sunday morning here and in a couple hours we get to go worship with the Swedes at Derek's church. They're also having a potluck today, so we get to sample a variety of homemade Swedish food. Did you know that people here eat reindeer cheese? And last night we had moose burgers. Add that to the whale we had in Iceland, and it's been a gastronomical adventure all the way around.

Making the best of things

Turns out North Park Seminary president Jay Phelan was stuck in Stockholm because of the volcano, too. So we met up for lunch yesterday. Which is a little ironic, because he was supposed to be in Seattle at the North Pacific Conference Annual Meeting. Instead, Derek and I got him all to ourselves.

We took the girls swimming yesterday afternoon. Something I noticed in Iceland was true here, as well. No lifeguards. Is that because these countries aren't lawsuit happy like in America? Or do they just not care if people drown? I should also mention the waterslide was concrete. And I broke my kneecaps and my skull going down. Not literally, but you get the idea. That being said, the girls had a lot of fun and we all got some exercise. In addition we've been out seeing the sights; if you check out my twitter, you've read that we got to P.P. Waldenström's grave a couple days ago. Today we're off to the free museum downtown.

Unfortunately, time passes, and now I have to start the process of figuring out whether or not we can get to London next week, or if we have to head home. More phone calls to airlines. . .

Sweden, lovely Sweden

It was a headache, but we got the last 4 seats on the first flight from Iceland into Stockholm yesterday. I was almost sad to leave Reykjavik behind, seeing as we'd made some friends and were enjoying the adventure of it all. But finally we were in the air heading East. We saw the volcano from the air but flew far enough north that it didn't affect us at all. And then. . .we landed in Stockholm. All aboard burst into applause.

Derek met us at the airport, gave us a nice tour as we drove to his place, and now, having experience the first good night's sleep since Wednesday night, we're all happy to be in Sweden.

It looks like Germany is out of the picture for us, but we're hoping to still get to England sometime next week. For now, we're simply enjoying the moment here in Stockholm.