208 Miles

Last night, after an eight-hour kerfuffle to get Little A’s official picture taken as part of his visa application, we found ourselves tired, but relieved, and located in Covent Garden, a cultural centre of London, full of lovely restaurants, theatres, and shops. We sauntered across cobblestone streets, manoeuvering through the crowds, buying dinner at a booth on our way into one of the city’s largest train stations at rush hour.

A few short hours later, I was just falling asleep as 129 people were killed, shot to death in Paris, in a theatre, in restaurants, in the crowds. 208 miles away.

As an American, I’m used to my buffer. I’m used to that big Pond keeping me safe. 9/11 was horrific because it was a modern-day Pearl Harbor–it reminded us that our oceans can’t protect us from everything. But I wasn’t afraid to die then. Now, children and adolescents and young adults are killed in schools and on campuses in my home country almost daily, but I live in London, where I’m safer and my son is safer because people don’t have guns. Right? 208 miles stand between me and Paris’s 11th district--that’s less than the distance between Chicago and Detroit. Less than the distance between Los Angeles and Monterey, almost identical to the distance between New York and Washington, D.C.

208 miles is not very far.

So tonight, I sit here in the long dark of winter, my little man asleep in his bed, and I try to fight the shivers that threaten to course through my body with every exploding firework, because last week’s festivities around Guy Fawkes Night have given way to Diwali, a celebration of light, and the pyrotechnic displays continue. I wonder what kind of world my son is going to grow up in. I hear phrases like, “act of war” and “terrorists’ new strategy” and I am reminded that I am small and weak and broken and the future is uncertain. So many things are uncertain.

So I must place my faith wisely, and here is where it lies:

“God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” -1 John 4:16-18

The Expectant Traveler: Oslo via Ryanair, Part II

Now that we’ve enlightened you with some of our hard-earned wisdom, here are some highlights of our trip! (Note: Since there was so much to share, Janel wrote about our first couple of days in Oslo, and Soren wrote about our time with his sister!): 

Part II: Impressions and Adventures 

1. Being in Norway.
   
   

   

   We didn't want to leave!

   
   We are each, in a large part, Scandinavian-American, so we’ve dreamed of taking a trip to Norway at least as long as we’ve dreamed of living in London. My first impression was somewhere along the lines of, “The weather here is a lot like Chicago’s, and the forests remind me of Wisconsin...No wonder my people ended up in the Midwest!” I enjoyed seeing rosemaling around, not as a fun cultural accent, but as a normal part of decor. Soren was thrilled when people would speak to him in Norwegian, as if he belonged. He was also grateful that they could switch to English when he told them he didn’t speak Norwegian. 
   
   

2. Being in Oslo.
   
   

   

   Admiring the architecture.

   
   I loved Oslo’s landscape–it drew my mind back to Cape Town, where you dwell in the warm embrace of the mountains and the sea, but the hills were further improved by endless swaths of evergreens. Soren fell in love with the city right away, delighted by the neoclassical buildings and their cheerful pastels that reminded him so much of St. Petersburg.
   
3. Discovering the Moka Pot.
   
   

   

   The best.

   
   Shortly before we left Chicago, Soren’s brother and his fiance invited us to help them settle the question, once and for all: What is the best way to make coffee? How do the espresso machine, the drip coffee maker, the French press, and the pourover stack up next to each other? The only real consensus was that the drip coffee maker loses big-time, but that was before we were introduced to this new contender. I’m sure we would have discovered it here in London eventually anyway, but the Moka Pot was our airbnb host’s coffee maker of choice, so that’s where we found it, and that’s where we fell in love with it. It seems that we’ll have to do a retest. Mmm, Moka Pot coffee.
   
   
4. Visiting the Norsk Folkemuseum.
   
   

   

   A storehouse and guest space, all in one!

   
   Our Norwegian and Danish ancestors came to the US fairly recently, since the turn of the 20th century. Therefore, I loved the opportunity to admire Norwegian farmhouses, storehouses, and barns (every village was some combination of these three) that were originally built in the 1700’s or the 1800’s. My great-great grandparents may well have lived in buildings that looked very much like them, topped with grass and heated by the fire in the center of the room, or later by the fireplace in the corner. When I see a stavkirke originally built in the 1300’s, I know that for centuries, some of my ancestors would have worshiped in such a place, where the eye is drawn ever upward. History is what I share with the people of Norway, whether I can truly lay claim to being “Norwegian” or not.
   
   

   

   Note the dragon carving.

   But then, I can walk through an apartment building built in the 1890’s, and see how different people might have lived between its walls in the decades since, and know that I have cousins who may have lived there, too. I see how Norway has grown and changed since my dear ones left, and appreciate the beautiful, widening gap between my own experience and that of those who stayed. On that day, I was Norwegian, and I was American. There are other parts too, other heritage sites to explore, other stories to come alive, but this was a wonderful way to start. 
   
   

5. Spending a day in Vigeland Park and Frognerseteren.
   
   

   

   Frognerseteren.

   
   Every moment I spent in the city’s center, my eyes were drawn to the surrounding mountains and their verdant forests, and all I could think was, “Why aren’t we up there?” I was not made for the urban existence, believe it or not, and I have an insatiable craving for trees, or rather, to be surrounded by them. So, when holiday closures and expensive internet drove us to unearth a guidebook, my heart leapt when I found a cafe that looked to be surrounded by the forest and boasted an unparalleled view of the city, and then went on to discover that it was right at the end of a Metro line that also went by Vigeland Park, a famous destination that we’d been planning to go to anyway. With that discovery, our plan was set: We would take a walk through Vigeland, and then continue on to Frognerseteren.
   
   

   

   Motherly love :)

   Given that Vigeland is an outdoor gallery full of statues depicting domestic life “au naturel”, we didn’t have spectacularly high expectations. Thus, we were pleasantly surprised when we found ourselves taken in by the complex and beautiful web of familial relationships displayed in the sculpture series, with nurturing mothers, playful fathers, wrestling brothers, moments of discipline and tantrums, moments of affection hoped for or found… We enjoyed a hundred snapshots of the story of life and the relationships that make it full, and came away grateful for the fullness with which we’ve been blessed in our families.
   
   

   

   Be careful!

   From there, we took the Metro train up, up, up the hill, past Holmenkollbakken, the historic ski jumping hill, past many neighborhoods and a house with what was once a grass roof, but has since become a tree-sapling roof. At our stop, we disembarked and walked through the trees to emerge next to a traditional-looking Norwegian building. Inside, we decided to play it safe, given that we knew nothing about Norwegian food, and I had a superb quiche, while Soren had some delicious meatballs. We managed to grab an upstairs table next to a window overlooking the city, and marveled at the view, laughing, as we ate. When we were finished, we found a trailhead and hiked in the snow until Soren’s sister could join us. The aroma of the evergreens was completed by the scent of a recently burned campfire, and I was giddy to take even a short walk through the woods. [Soren interjects: Janel was practically running down these icy paths. I didn’t know I could be that worried…] Since we had enjoyed our lunches so much, we decided to stick around for dinner, and at Soren’s sister’s recommendation, I had rømmegrøt (a traditional Norwegian sour cream porridge) and Soren had a dish featuring Norwegian reindeer. All I can say about that meal after such a wonderful day is that if it had been possible, we may well have stayed at Frognerseteren forever.
   
   

6. Our wonderful Norwegian hosts.
   
   

   

   Brunost: Brown Cheese.

   It’s great to see the tourist sites, but there’s always that nagging desire to get a taste of how the locals live. We had the amazing fortune to spend half of our time in Norway with a young family (the parents are similar in age to us, and have three little kids). Anticipating our first kiddo, we were eager to meet them and to get a picture of Norwegian family life. We were not disappointed. They were wonderfully welcoming and we picked up several useful tidbits about how to raise a Norwegian baby, like using bibs with sleeves and a lovely wooden high chair that adjusts as the baby grows! They also lovingly provided us with ample Brown cheese and reindeer sausages. ;)
   
   

7. Paske!
   
   

   

   Welcoming Spring

   
   
   While Easter (or Paske, as Norwegians call it) did make our touristing a bit difficult, we enjoyed the window our hosts provided into Paske traditions. In anticipation of the new leaves of Spring, one of these traditions is to hang painted eggshells on trees. We experienced this as a public children’s craft, drawing on paper eggs, but our hostess showed us how it’s really done with this dramatic display of gorgeously colored eggs. The other highlight of Paske was the Paske egg. This delectable chocolate egg is filled with marshmallow fluff that leaves you asking “Cadbury who?” We need to find an importer.
   
   

8. Family.
   

   
   

   Of course, our driving motivation and best times were chilling with my (Soren’s) sister. I hadn’t gotten the chance to spend much time with her since I left for university seven years ago, so it was fun to see how much she’s matured and come into her own. She gave us the “inside scoop” on all things Oslo and brought us to some of the more famous sites in the city (like the Royal Palace, the Akershus Fortress, and the Opera House) as well as some of her more local haunts in the Drammen area. Plus, she liked hanging with us so much, she came out to London just a few weeks later! What a gift!
   
   

   

   Overlooking Drammen.

   
   

The Expectant Traveler: Oslo via Ryanair, Part I

It has been exactly one month since we returned to London from our trip to Oslo, so we are commemorating the occasion by telling you about it!

Part I: Our Hard-Earned Wisdom

Are you as excited to hear about our trip as I was to get on this plane?

As we’ve mentioned before, one of our major motivators for moving to London was our love for travel. After all, we are anthropologists at heart–hungry to see the world, understand it, and offend as few people as possible in the process! Obviously, our mental picture of “travel” is still heavily shaded by our youthful idealism, but now it’s time for real talk, friends.

We decided to take the jump over to Oslo so soon after relocating (nine days after landing, to be precise) primarily because Soren’s sister was only there for one more month, and we really wanted to see her and what her life has been like for the past year. Well, that, and it was Easter, and Easter is much better spent with family than alone in a city that is not yet home.

We decided very early on in our inaugural intra-Europe trip that it should be categorized as “a learning experience”. You see, if you call it “a learning experience”, you don’t cry when you realize that you’ve made an expensive/time-consuming/idiotic decision (or two, or five) because of your inexperience. Instead, you write it down and share it with all of your closest friends and the rest of the world. So, these are the things we learned on our trip to Oslo:

1. Getting to the airport is part of the cost of the flight.
   
   This may seem obvious, but we’ve lived our adult lives in Chicago, where the round trip cost from the Loop to O’Hare via public transit is only $10, and a round trip to Midway is $4.50. Neither price is anywhere near what you’d pay for airfare, and the price difference between the two airports is likewise insignificant. London and Oslo each have a handful of airports, most of which require special express trains or coach buses to reach if you don’t have a car. The total cost of going to and from airports for the both of us was roughly $115. We could have saved $10 or so if we’d taken a different coach bus to Stansted in London, but if we’d chosen an airport other than Rygge in Oslo, we could have saved $30 or more to get into the city, which is definitely enough to consider other flight options.
   
   
2. Ryanair is simple enough to deal with, if you’re prepared.
   
   We had done our research on Ryanair, so we had an idea of what to expect. The key differences that you need to know about are: Ryanair’s luggage limitations (their carry-on size is tiny, and companies make adorable little suitcases that fit those dimensions), the exorbitant fee for printing your boarding pass at the airport (do it beforehand), and the fact that you have to do a “visa check” at the check-in counter before going through security (but you can “check-in” up to a week beforehand online). None of these things are a huge deal, unless you’re at Stansted and there are 20 Ryanair flights leaving within two hours and there are hundreds of travelers with multiple bags. Then you might wait in line to get your visa checked for nearly two hours and end up “voluntarily” paying a small additional fee to go through their express security line so that you don’t miss your flight.
    

   

   This is a picture of the line you had to stand in to get in line. #holidaytravel

3. The local “internet cafe” may actually be the back office of a convenience store.
   
   At least it still had a printer. The point is, don’t forget to print the boarding passes at work or at the library if you don’t have a printer at home, because your options at 10pm might be a bit comical, if not shady.
   
   
4. Stansted requires you to power walk for 20 minutes to get from security to the gate.
   
   My pregnant, tired self was not amused by the fact that I had to wind my way through a labyrinth of duty-free shops to get to the other end of a massive room that is reminiscent of a sunlit warehouse, at which point I could go up an escalator and then along another winding hallway to reach the entrance to the terminal, which was only another 5-minute walk from my gate, all while running late after standing in line for two hours and paying that express security fee.
   
   
5. Do your research on the local holidays.
   
   Of course we knew it was Easter–that was part of our motivation in going that weekend! However, what we didn’t know was that Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Monday are all public holidays in Norway, and that half of Oslo shuts down for a week–including many museums, grocery stores, and coffee shops–while the locals travel to the Mediterranean. We discovered this when Soren walked over to a coffee shop on Thursday morning in order to conduct an important business call using their free WiFi, only to find out that it was closed. After frantically adding more vodafone credit and vowing never to leave ourselves without cheap internet in a foreign country again, we found that one of the museums we’d wanted to visit was still open, and we had a lovely time there.
   
   

6. 

   The Oslo Transit Map. What a beautiful thing!

   Guidebooks and transit maps are your friends, but if you don’t have them, you need to have internet access.
   
   I don’t know what we were thinking (well, I was probably thinking about moving to a different country at 6 months pregnant...), but we didn’t acquire a guidebook prior to arriving in Norway. We decided long ago that guidebooks are the way to travel, and yet we seemed to have completely forgotten this for our Oslo trip, relying instead on top-10 lists that we found online. And, of course, we then booked an Airbnb that didn’t have WiFi, so when our plans hit that unforeseen holiday snag, we were dependent upon vodafone and its international rates to find out the information we needed. Luckily, we eventually found an old guidebook, along with a transit map, on our host’s bookshelf, and it led us to one of the coolest restaurants in Oslo, but that only served to confirm that guidebooks are the best and we should never leave home without one.
   
   
7. If you’re pregnant, let go of your idealistic dreams of walking everywhere and buy the transit pass.
   
   
   After our early-morning flight and our expensive coach bus ride into Oslo, I was in a bad state of sticker shock, so I refused to let Soren talk me into buying a bus pass straight away. The bus station was only a 30 minute walk from our airbnb, so we could do it! And it’s true, we could make that vaguely-uphill walk. Once. Afterward, I couldn’t move for the rest of the day, because I hadn’t been accustomed to walking distances, and the baby had entered a stage of rapid growth and my body was a bit behind. Of course, this prevented us from doing any touring on the only non-holiday day we were there, and we ended up buying a pass the next day because everything that might’ve been within walking distance was closed for the holiday. The cool thing about Oslo transit, though, is that all forms of transit within the city proper are included in the 24-hour pass–including the ferry–and while transit is fairly expensive per ride, a 24-hour pass is only about $10, and a 7-day pass is around $30, which is competitive with other cities that I’ve seen. And, they’re pretty easy to purchase, because every Deli de Luca and 7-11 sells them, and Deli de Luca is everywhere (and it’s open on holidays!).
   
   
8. Don’t stay overnight in an airport while pregnant. You will regret it.
   
   
   Rygge is a nice little airport, but if you take a flight at odd hours, it’s a nightmare. As I mentioned, the transit to get there is expensive, and there are no hotels a free shuttle ride away. For us, that meant that, in order to make our 6:30am flight, we either had to wake up at 3am and cross the whole of the Oslo metropolitan area during the wee hours of the morning, or spend the night in the airport. We elected to spend the night in the airport. What a bad idea.
   
   The thing is, I actually got a couple hours of sleep, because the seats are arranged in a bench-like formation and I could lay down, but they are also made of wood, so we had to pull out every sweatshirt and scarf we had in order to provide the necessary padding. No, Soren was the one who suffered the most, because I had to use his lap as a pillow. That meant that he was sitting up on a wooden seat all night. Poor guy. The pain of the situation was further deepened by the cost of airport food–we spent about $45 on a light dinner and pastries for breakfast. Soren still cringes every time it comes up.
   

   

   For reference, this is how pregnant I was when we were in Oslo.

   Part II, comprised of the highlights of our trip, is on its way! Stay tuned!

Further Up, Further In

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now...Come further up, come further in!”

― C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

This passage in The Last Battle changed my life. Something clicked into place the moment I read it–I understood, perhaps for the first time, that while I have the best family in the world, and while I grew up in a beautiful house in a place that has such pretty seasons and I had all of the opportunity that a girl could need, I was looking for home. I was looking for that place where my soul was at rest, where joy was limitless, where life was full and beautiful. It’s not that I’d never caught  glimpses of this on a warm summer’s day, or surrounded by my family or close friends–on the contrary, those fleeting moments, full of love and satisfaction, made me hunger for more.

I saw that I’d sought to find this home in the books that I’d read or in the recesses of my imagination, where I could be free from my own awkwardness and the toils of life, where I could care about what was important to me and not worry about the rest, because consequences have a way of dissolving when we’re stuck inside our own heads. But as my head sequestered me away from the pains of life, I lost the joys as well, and I ended up sitting on the sidelines of reality.

Later, in college, I would spend time searching for home in the people around me, trying to find that perfect balance of caring and being cared for. And this worked wonderfully, as long as things weren’t actually that hard. But when so many things fell apart, I retreated, and I found myself nearly alone.

Since college, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of emotional energy looking for home in my contributions to society–if I could use all of my gifts to full capacity on a daily basis through the perfect job or volunteer work, then surely I will have arrived? Surely then I will be satisfied?

But every time I look somewhere new, I am disappointed, because the fact is, I’m not home.

“But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.”

― Philippians 3:20-21

Where did Lewis’s characters find their home? Not here! Life on Earth had to end in order for them to find the place that they’d never realized they’d been longing for. I spend a lot of time expecting this life to be what it can’t be. I have such high expectations of this world that I so very often miss the beauty that is before my eyes, and I pass over opportunities to be satisfied in my heart and in my soul. At the same time, I grow weary of facing the pains and injustices that I see and feel because I’ve forgotten that there is more than this world. So often, I find that I’ve lost hope.

As we get settled here, I will be sorely tempted to seek out that sense of home in travel and exploration, the building of new relationships, and in being a mom. But while it’s true that a taste of home can be found in the midst of all of those pursuits, this is only because this world and the people in it, with the capacity of different kinds of relationships, were created by the one and only homemaker. He’s the one who can give me that joy and that satisfaction, and he could do so if I never traveled, never had a kid, never made the best of friends. He is the one who gives those things whatever wonder they have. And so, as we write our silly tales of cultural adjustment, travel mishaps and parenting faux pas, we’ll be looking for the wonder beyond what meets the eye–that glimpse of home in a strange, strange world.

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

― Philippians 4:4-8

Hopes and Fears

“Are you CRAZY?!? Why would you want to move to England? Don’t you love your family???”

-My Great Aunt

I’d been wondering where my penchant for direct communication came from! Upon hearing our announcement, most people have said things along the lines of “So exciting!” or “That’s my dream!” or “Will your kid have dual-citizenship???” (The answer to that, sadly, is “No.”), and I love those responses to our news, because they mirror our own enthusiasm.

But on the other hand, what I love about My Great Aunt’s response is that hers are the real questions. The questions that we’ve laughed and cried over, the questions that sit there, staring us in the face, even when we try to avoid them. I chuckle when they’re thrown at me, but the fact is that they are the hard questions.

They’re hard because I have spent periods of my life dancing around the edges of depression, because my love of travel and adventure originated in a young girl’s dream of escape, because there are few things more difficult than explaining to your mother that you love her more than anyone in the world, but that you’re almost certain that you will always be called to live far away. Making the decision to move was simple, but being content with it requires real answers for these questions. Otherwise, my heart will go running off to the next thing before I’ve even properly settled in the UK.

So maybe we are crazy, insane, off our rockers, nuts. But there’s more to it than that! So, we’ve decided to share with you some of our fears and the hopes that outweigh them, so that maybe you can understand a little bit of why we decided to move.

Fears

1)    Loneliness. The first year in a new place is generally...pretty horrible. Exciting, yes, but when the sheen of novelty has worn off, you’re left with something that is unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and sometimes downright depressing. You realize that you have no local support network and that, frustrating though your hometown may have been, at least you knew how to make an appointment to see the doctor or where to go when your car broke down. The deep and disappointing angst that accompanies this stage of a major transition doesn’t last forever, but it’s pretty lonely. And when I’m lonely, I tend to withdraw even more, neglecting to seek out relationships when I most need them.

2)    Being broke and stranded. In case you don’t know, London is expensive. Very expensive—and we’re accustomed to budgeting for Chicago, which has big city budget requirements of its own. Housing in particular is especially pricey, and it’s also the budget item that requires the most commitment. So, of course we’re nervous about having enough money, especially since we’re living on one income with a baby on the way. In Chicago, I always comforted my paranoia by remembering that if Soren lost his job or if we came upon a high-cost emergency situation, we could always try to find a subletter and stay with my parents until we figured things out.

I think we’re going to need a new backup plan.*

3)    Culture shock. Culture shock is a process, and in order to get to the end point (feeling at home in a new place), you have to go through the exciting and painful steps to get there. Sometimes you can move pretty quickly through the low moments, but you cannot escape them entirely. I have to say, as much as I want to be able to call London home, I’m not thrilled about what it’s going to take to get us there. That’s why we’d like to spend a minimum of two years in the UK—one year to do the basic adjustment, and at least one more year to enjoy our new home and to have the time and emotional space to fall even more deeply in love with it.

4)    Not actually getting to know non-Americans. Don’t get me wrong–we are going to love meeting and spending time with other American expats, and we’ll probably rely on them a lot! But given our many hopes for this move, it would be a shame if we left the US only to completely surround ourselves with other Americans. I don’t think we’d necessarily even be able to pull this off, to be honest, but it’s certainly easier to meet and connect with your own countrymen than to actually deal with the difficulty and awkwardness of international friendships.

Hopes

1)    We are excited to travel. London is a travel hub, and from there, it is incredibly easy to travel around Europe! We already have a visit to Oslo planned, and we look forward to being able to take quick trips to Paris or Munich or Stockholm or Rome--and depending on how much travel Soren ends up doing for work, we may even be able to combine work and play!

2)    London is a very green city. Discovering Jackson Park in Chicago was a lifesaver for me–I’ve never been an overwhelmingly “city girl”, but an evening stroll in an expansive park lets you forget, if even for a moment, the claustrophobia that can come with city life. And London has many such parks, with plenty of smaller parks and recreational areas, too. We’re hoping to live close enough to one of these green spaces that we can take walks and breathe some fresh air on a regular basis.

3)    ...And it has such a rich history! Castles, kings, ancient streets, and long-time traditions are part of life in London. As people who love to dig deeper, examining roots and observing changes, there is such an extensively recorded history in London that we could never reach the bottom of the barrel of fun facts, eccentric characters, and life lessons in the pages on London alone.

4)    There are churches and Christian communities that are thriving in London right now, but Christianity is not widely embraced. This bears some striking similarities to what we saw at UChicago during our time there, and we’re excited to see what God does to us and through us as we face these familiar circumstances in a new place and stage of life. We’re eager to get a better idea of how British Christians grapple with their faith and what issues are most important to them. We’re praying that God will give us plenty of opportunities to love our neighbors and to learn from them, that we would be pushed to more fully understand and marvel at and share who Jesus Christ really is.

5)    We’re eager to connect with a new community in London and to become “locals”. Living in London will give us the opportunity to see beyond Buckingham Palace and Big Ben, to have a favorite pub that we frequent or to master the use of “the Tube”. To stop putting “the Tube” in quotes. Because that’s what it is­–not someone else’s word for it, but ours. Chances are that we won’t come back with exciting accents (although our impressions may improve), but we hope that London leaves its mark on the way we think, the way we speak**, and the way our little boy sees the world.  

6)    We hope that spending a few years living abroad will really help us to think through whether international missions is what God has in store for us, because I (Janel) have never actually resided more than 5 miles from the western shores of Lake Michigan. Since I tend to be fairly vulnerable to emotional lows, we really want to see how well we adjust to being foreigners, and how well we handle the difficulties of a new life together. It is our intention for Soren to go to seminary at some point after we finish paying off our undergrad student loans, but we’d love to go in with an idea of whether we’re looking at international missions as a vocation or not.

7)    A British baby. Because why not?

We have never had any real doubt as to whether we would take the opportunity to move to London if it was presented to us. But once the move transitioned from a dream to our reality, we began to realize all that goes in to making such a crazy (yes, crazy) transition. The decision was simple, but the move is not easy. But this is mostly speculation—once we get off the plane (in about 20 minutes!!), the real adventure—with all of the misadventures therein—will begin!

*General Note: You may rest assured that the UK will kindly deport us if Soren does lose his job.

**Note to My Mother: Don’t worry, Mom; we’re not planning to abandon our aversion to using American profanity.