Randomness...

So, at long last, here is the tiny little bit of the London story that is left: Mary, Em and I got up early and collected breakfast, courtesy of the hostel, and made our way to the train station and enjoyed our breakfast there as we waited for Kate and Anna to arrive. With everyone safely there, we found our seats and headed home. Much less eventful than our trip there, that's for sure. On the way home, Mary and I decided how to get from the tram to the hotel our parents are staying at when they come to visit... so with our HUGE hiking packs we figured it out. Mom and Dad, you will be happy to know, the tram is about a 2 and a half minute walk away from the hotel. Perfect.
When we walked in the door, we were happy to see that the boys had not burned the place down while we had been away. Our euphoria didn't last long because we soon walked into the kitchen to see it literally filled with dirty dishes. There were NO clean dishes left. Fortunately, the boys had done that solely for the purpose of horrifying us. It worked. The dishes were soon washed and the bread and cookies that Kevin had baked were brought out to welcome us home. It was good to be back.
Less than an hour later, Mark Lund from Luther College came by to chat with us about how the program was going and to see if we had any suggestions for future years. It was nice to see a familiar face from Luther, even if he is a professor. That night I headed to campus to hear Aaron in his first orchestra concert. Despite his complaints about the group, Mar, Kev, Em, Anna and myself thought it was an excellent concert.
Fastforward through four days of classes, paper writing, and watching five episodes of LOST (at last!) all in one night, here I am typing away instead of working on the mounting pile of homework. I have booked my flight home, ironically, it is on the same flight that the group is taking home, and have yet to figure out exactly what is going on over Christmas Holiday. Today is Kim's 25th birthday (I hope I get to talk to her... she has been busy so far) and I found out last night that my cousin is engaged, how exciting! In other news, Mom is coming next Thursday (I have the tickets for Rigoletto!),Mary's parents are coming soon after, and John is flying in from Switzerland to spend Thanksgiving with us. All through this I have the most homework I have ever had before... scary, but it will, uh, build character... or something like that. Be sure to look at my London pics, they are up on Picassa now. We leave on Saturday morning for the Southwest (Bath and Wells) and will get back on Monday night, missing yet another day of classes for Luther travel. I'm still not sure how I feel about that. Oh, and story of the week: Emily has a friend who has the same name of a boy I was friends with in kindergarten, strange coicidence... right? It turns out it is the same guy, apparently he moved from Freeport to several other cities and ended up in Decorah and became friends with Emily. Anyway, he remembered me and so the two of us ended up chatting on IM for a while. Small world. So, now, it's time for homework or something. Have a great night and I'll talk to you all soon. Cheers!