Back from Europe

After two months in Bulgaria, we’re all back in Minnesota. The trip back was amazingly smooth. We flew from Sofia to Amsterdam and stayed over night in Amsterdam, which allowed us to make a short trip there and get a dinner. Our hotel was in this smaller town about 25 km south of Amsterdam.

We didn’t really have time to walk through Amsterdam, just kind of drove through part of it and went in to have a dinner at this Irish restaurant. The next day we had to get up at 4.30 am and so we had to go to bed on time.

The challenge next day was the fact that my green card had expired on August 28th and the Dutch authorities didn’t want to let me on the airplane. Then they called this guy who seemed like he was an American working for the INS. He made a call to the INS office in Minneapolis and made sure we would be able to get back to the US safely. Now I have to renew my green card and also to apply for US citizenship as well. It’s about time. In the mean time another problem came up. KLM couldn’t find three of our electronic tickets into their system.

So we didn’t make our original flight and had to say at the airport for 6 hours and wait for another flight. In the mean time, KLM confirmed our tickets, etc. It all worked well, since our new flight was now a direct one to Minneapolis, vs. the original reservation, which was to take us first to Detroit and then change planes to Minneapolis. I crashed at the airport in Amsterdam (and Jenny took this picture of me), which helped me later on with the flight. When we got to Minneapolis, the INS had to do this check on me and then they let us go. Katherine (Wanda’s sister) was there to meet us and helped with the whole process of getting back home. It’s good to be back home, thanks everyone for your prayers and support during this time.Our kids are so good when flying. We were blessed to have three seats on one row for them.