The cover picture this week is us out at Lake Geneva, on Tuesday, with Melissa’s group.  We were celebrating a birthday, a paper publication, and Bastille Day.  However, we were told by the French people that only Americans call it Bastille Day.  In France they call it either the national day, or the 14th of July (similar to us with the 4th of July).  It’s only about 10 miles across the lake to Evian, France, so I thought we’d get to see some nice fireworks, but I wasn’t very impressed.  The distance was too far to hear the explosions, and they didn’t seem to shoot very high compared to the Alps which we could just barely make out behind the town.

Except for the day at the lake, we were busy all this week packing, planning, and practicing English for our upcoming trip back to America.  We are looking forward to the time back in the states, but are dreading the long day of travel that we planned to make it there.

We shopped for the cheapest flight, and found Turin, Italy to be about $400 less per ticket than Geneva.  Our travel day will begin this coming Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. when we board a train that requires a transfer in Brig, Switzerland, then another transfer in Milan, Italy and arrives in Turin at 10:45 p.m.   Once in Turin, our plan is to make it to the airport, then wait until 6:30 a.m. for our outgoing flight.  We thought that since we’d want to check in around 4a.m. for our flight, it wouldn’t be worth it to book a hotel, so we are hoping to catch a nap in the terminal.  Our first plane only takes us to Amsterdam, where we have a 1 hour layover , then we board a plane that goes over the Atlantic, but…  lands in Toronto.  We have a two hour lay-over in Toronto then will board our final plane to Minneapolis, which is scheduled for a 2:50 p.m. arrival on Thursday.  It will be 15hours 20 minutes from our first flight, and around 39 hours from when we woke up in bed Wednesday morning.

To prepare for being gone so long, one important thing I needed to figure out was how to water our plants.  I found the answer on the internet, which said to take a big water bottle, poke a hole in the cap, and push it into the soil.  I tried it out today, and it looks like it should work, but you’ll have to ask me when we get back from our trip.