Home Sweet Home

It's so hard to believe that it has been exactly one month today that we left Ukraine!! So much has happened since then and I haven't really had a chance to sit down and fill you in on it all! Our vacation was great - a super quick tour of Western Europe. We were exhausted by the end of it but I was glad that we took the time to explore the sights since we were in that part of the world anyways. Western Europe was amazingly different from Eastern Europe. It was almost a relief to step off the plane in Germany. While in Germany we stayed at The Salvation Residance (people there spoke English!!) and I got to visit with some friends of mine who I met at Booth College years ago. You never know who you'll meet on the other side of the world! They gave us a great tour of Germany and helped us find our way around. It was very beautiful there - so clean and civilized. I wouldn't mind going back to see more of that country again. We saw a lot in 2 days but there is so much more to see there. For one of the days we took a tour to the Dachau Concentration Camp and on another day we took a tour to a castle - the one that was the inspiration for Disney's castle. I took a ton of pics! (of course!). I loved the scenic part of Germany as well - all the red roofs along the country side.

Our next stop was Switzerland, where we stayed with our friends parents who are retired officers. We learned a lot about The Salvation Army in that part of the world and they showed us so much of their country! They were very sweet and treated us to Swiss chocolates and traditional Swiss food - which was way better than Ukrainean food! It rained for our entire time while we were there so I couldn't see the Swiss Alps but that was okay - maybe we will go back to see them some day!

From Switzerland we went to France - which started off as quite an adventure in trying to figure out where we were and trying to use the few French words that we had! We stayed for one night at The Salvation Army hotel - interesting to say the least. We quickly moved on to a real hotel. Not much English in that country at all. But, we did get to go see the Eifel Tower and we sat there until sunset waiting for the tower to light up - but it never did! Oh well..it was still very beautiful and we could not really believe that we were really there! Again, lots of pics were taken there as well. My favorite part about Paris was DisneyLand!!! I have never been to a DisneyLand before so we spent the entire day there from opening to closing. I got to see Mickey and Minnie and even ventured on some of the rides. I loved it !!

Our final stop was England. The weather turned cold the moment we got off the train into London, but we still managed to see all the popular sites of downtown London, finding our way on the transit system ourselves. We saw the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace where a lady literally placed her hands on my hips and moved me out of her way! Our final day in London was spent at Windsor Castel - the Queens weekend home. WHile in England we stayed with some friends of a friend - it was great to meet new people and be welcomed into a strangers home! By the time we left we felt like we had known them for years!

So...that was our vacation in a nut shell. For those of you on facebook you will find many pics posted there on my page from all of our adventures.
I will try to keep you updated about our CFOT adventures as much as possible throughout the upcoming months....so stay tuned!!