At peace with the world

Today flaunted the most incredible weather I've seen in a long time. The wind cooled down, and doing errands was made perfect by that great combination of warm-in-the-sun and cool-in-the-shade. Finally this corner of the South is cooling for autumn, and we are heading out.

Tomorrow we take off for Europe. A few months ago it felt ages away, and with all of our stuff strewn across the bed it still feels like at least days away. Maybe once those clothes roll themselves up and land in our backpacks it will feel like we're leaving tomorrow.

We had to order things in the mail for our trip, and thankfully, everything has arrived. Eurail passes, new underwear, an ultra SD card so that our digital photos will be saved on an ultra fast device. Check, check, check. If we don't forget anything it will be a miracle, but I think we should have the basics covered. And to paraphrase Rick Steve the Europe traveling guru, "either it's available for purchase over there, or ask yourself how 495 million Europeans manage to live without it".

And so we leave with most loose ends tied up. Marcos notified his job over a month ago that he was taking off for three weeks, I finished a busy month of activity with the Primary kiddos at church, and I'm taking a break from my part-time work. The only thing in disrepair is our car She-ra who died last week, and we have been blessed a hundred times in the meantime by the Andersons who loaned us their suburban for the week, and by Ben and Donna and Will and Jamie who are helping us to get to the airport in Charlotte tomorrow. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

And so, we go. The rough plan is to start out in Munich, head west to visit my exchange family in Elsass before heading to Paris for a few days, take an overnighter to Florence and visit Cinque Terra and Tuscan hill towns, and then head up to Switzerland to visit friends and ride trains through what could very possibly be Heaven on Earth. The plan is to post updates along the way with photos, but we'll see how realistic that is. It would be nice if we could spread out the goodness, but I'm not sure what our internet connection will be like.

Lots of hugs and kisses from us! Have a great few weeks and hopefully we'll write soon!

Metta and Marcos

P.S. Just to follow up from my last post about my dilemma finding good gifts to take to Europe from America... I really appreciate your ideas for those of you who made suggestions. Also, I wanted to share with you a response from my German friend when I finally just asked him what I should bring: Beef jerky and Jelly beans!