Adventures in Italy 1: Copenhagen

Back in 2000, I had the opportunity to go to Italy for a conference, way up north in Como (which is where the lake is that Anakin Skywalker and Queen All-a-dollar hung out at in Star Wars, Episode II). It was beautiful there, but Linette couldn't make it that time, and Linette and I always wanted to go and see the more historical parts of Italy like Rome and Venice. Sharon and Roger had been talking about it for some time as well.

With Shaylee and Erika graduating this year, (and perhaps off to missions and such soon thereafter), my go-getter sister Sharon decided it was time to go for it. They had been saving up frequent flyer miles for a long time in preparation. Sharon tried talking me and Linette into bringing Erika and coming along, but at first we couldn't find flights for less than $2000, and our summer already had some other travel scheduled, and we had just gone to Mexico in December, so we just didn't think we could pull it off.

But after spending perhaps far too much time searching, we found that we could fly from Las Vegas to Rome (via Copenhagen, Denmark) on Norwegian Airlines for $474; and fly from Venice to Los Angeles (via Istanbul, Turkey) on Turkish Airlines for about the same; so with that and Delta flights to get us to and from Salt Lake City, it was still spendy, of course, but became theoretically doable for us. So after much waffling, we finally decided to go for it. That was followed by months of researching where to stay, how to get around and what to see. And Linette and I spent quite a bit of time trying to learn a little Italian with the help of a podcast and the Duo Linguo app.

I was pretty nervous about having the whole trip come together, because all it would take would be Delta not getting us to Las Vegas; or Norwegian canceling that flight; and we would be completely hosed. Our experience of getting hosed in both directions on our Mexico trip left me worried. But it turns out that all of our flights were reasonably on time and got us where we needed to go, so that was wonderful.

Finally, the day came, and on Saturday, June 11, 2016, the Kartchners headed out on their flight in the morning.



And we headed out on ours a couple hours later.

We had fun talking to a couple from Korea while we waited for our first flight, and then got talking to a senior missionary couple on their way to Guatemala. So much so that they had to call our names to get us on the flight. Oops.

We had a couple of hours in Las Vegas to relax and read books. We were all determined to pack only one carry-on (plus a backpack) each (partly to avoid Norwegian Airline's $68 per bag fee; and partly to make getting around Italy more reasonable). So we had to pack light.

Norwegian doesn't provide meals or even drinks without paying a lot. Knowing that in advance, we came prepared with snacks and waters and it was no problem.

After 9 hours of travel, I noticed that our Norwegian Airlines flight flew exactly over Riverton. That was a tad ironic.

Finally we arrived in Copenhagen, Denmark. We really liked the cute hats on the Norwegian Airlines stewardesses, so I had Erika pose with them. They were surprisingly excited to oblige.

We liked this twisty bench and its Copenhagen skyline picture.

Hans Christian Andersen was a famous Danish writer, and is the one who wrote The Little Mermaid. Here is a display about him if you want to click and read a bit about him. The airport had a small replica of the famous Little Mermaid statue that is in the harbor.

We had a 6 hour layover in Copenhagen, so Erika and I got bus passes and hit the town. (Linette was happy to rest and read and keep an eye on the luggage at the airport, since we'd been up all night).

So Erika and I had fun wandering around Copenhagen, looking at the fun architecture and the little galleries.

Here's a funky piano we saw in one shop.

We came across this church and took a peek inside.

We thought the ivy wall next to this building was impressive.

We don't know what this is, but it was in front of the "Design" museum, and I thought it was cool.

Apparently they designed this chair for the whole family!

As we continued walking towards the harbor, we came across a cool church by the fortress.



Then we entered the fortress and walked along the grassy ramparts.

Open wide...



I think the sign behind Erika's head meant "stay out" or something, but my Danish isn't so good.

 Finally we reached the harbor and saw the Little Mermaid statue. (In Europe there's a lot of unclothed art, so we just had to come to grips with that).

So of course I had Erika pose opposite her.

And we came across this fountain that was shooting water all over the place.

So Erika joined in the fun.



On the way back to the metro, we walked through a square with a big palace of some sort, and I thought these guards looked cool. (If you can click and zoom in, I love the guard's sideways glance).

This fountain at the airport looked like a dandelion.

We had to have a Danish in Denmark.

And a lot of this was going on throughout the trip, as we tried to eek out some sleep in our crazy, jet-lagged schedule.

After seeing Grandpa Merrill's pictures of Copenhagen, I had always wanted to see it, so I'm glad we had this layover and that we were able to get out and see a few things in Denmark.

A few years ago Linette and I went to the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C., and read about how the Nazis would go into a country, use the post office to get a list of jews, make them wear a star to identify them, then round them up and start shipping them to concentration camps. Well, in Denmark, the post office just couldn't seem to get that list put together for them. And when the jews were required to wear a star, the king and queen of Denmark wore one, too, and then all the people in the country wore one, so you couldn't tell who was who. The war ended before the post office complied, and so the jews of Denmark were spared much of the tragedy of other countries. I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Denmark since then.

In our next episode, we join the Kartchners in Rome!

(p.s. Some of the pictures look better BIG. You can click on a picture to see it big, and use left/right arrows to quickly go through the other pictures now that you've read about them. Just so you know.)

Adventures in Mexico 7: Tuxtla and homeward

In our last episode, we said good-bye to the kind family that put us up in Coita, and headed for Tuxtla Gutierrez, which was a short 40 minutes away.

When we arrived at the mission home on January 3, 2016, we found the same two sister missionaries that we had met a few days before (and hundreds of miles before we had made our grand circle of Chiapas). It was also great to see President and Sister George again. Sister George was so nice! She said, "Well, we need to use these mangos," so Linette and the sisters peeled and chopped them, added water and sugar, and made some nice liquados.

Later the A.P.s (Assistants to the President) arrived, and Sister George said, "Anyone want some quesadillas?" and she went to town whipping up a pile of them. We hadn't really eaten much after fasting, so that really hit the spot. President George asked one of the A.P.s to say a blessing on the food, and I was surprised to feel the spirit so strongly from something as simple as that. It made me believe that the president and his wife and these missionaries were all powerful servants of God.

The president's daughter and her family were in the mission home that night, too. The gals had fun playing the piano and singing with her (she has an incredible voice).

Then suddenly Sister George was asking Kelsi, "Do you want me to make you a skirt? These things are so easy, and they fit great. Here, let me make one for you." And suddenly there was fabric and patterns and needles and thread flying all over the kitchen, and then a trip upstairs to the sewing machine, and before you knew it, Kelsi was wearing a new skirt. Sister George also whipped one up for her daughter while she was at it.

Between the liquados, quesadillas and skirt, I just sort of fell in love with Sister George. It was like having a really great grandma there to take care of everyone.

We spent the night there (Linette and I had "Mr. and Mrs. Beaver" separate twin beds), and then began the long road home. We were all supposed to fly out at 12:30pm, but I just happened to notice the night before that Erika's flight had been changed to 9am. (What? When were you going to let us know?) So we had to get up early and go to the airport.

We tried switching Erika to our flight (Nope), or us to hers (Don't even think about it), or at least swap Kelsi and Erika ("I'm sorry, but that's impossible") since Erika doesn't speak Spanish and we didn't want her off by herself. But, as Kelsi's "meme" captured it, every request was met by this response:

The rental car place wasn't open yet when I tried to drop off the van. Good thing we didn't make it on the earlier flight, or we wouldn't have known what to do with it. Kelsi complimented us on getting the van, because it totally worked out great to have it the whole time. It allowed us to see and do much more than we would have been able to otherwise, and we didn't get a ticket or wreck it, either, so it worked out splendidly. It had 288km on it when we got it, and we added a little over 1000km to before we returned it.

We had a little box the elders in Tapachula had given us to hand over to Rubén in Mexico City on our way through (he was the guy whose family we stayed with on the way down). So we gave it to Erika to give to him instead. It seemed strange for her to carry a cereal box, so we gave Erika a small black plastic shopping bag to put it in. Here are the two girls busting up over imagining Erika walking around telling people, "¡Es mi bolsa!" ("It is my bag!") I think we were just giddy from exhaustion and the stress of flight changes.

I thought I would take one last picture of Erika as she went through security by herself, in case we never saw her again. :/

Then we settled down to wait for our own flight, which was several hours later. We were worried about the short connection we would end up making.

Sure enough, our first flight was delayed. The people at the gate assured us that our connecting flight was also delayed, and that we would be fine. They were, of course, lying.

Meanwhile, we were worried about whether Erika was ok in Mexico City. We also realized that we had sent the bulk of our remaining pesos with her, so we texted and encouraged her to spend them on her and Rubén.

Then we got this picture from her and felt better when we saw that she and Rubén were having sandwiches, french fries and lemonades. "Yeah, she's good." Apparently Rubén stayed with her the whole time until it was time for her to board her next flight.

Just as our plane touched down (and our phones were on again), we started getting text messages from Erika saying, "Where's my family?" and "The plane is moving!" At that point, we knew we were hosed.

Then we got this poignant and hilarious picture from her, with the message, "I will miss you, Mexico."

We were bummed to have missed our flight after all of that, but were glad that at least Erika was making it home all right.

Someone sat us down while they figured out what to do with us. They came back and said that there were no more flights to Salt Lake City, so they could reroute us to Los Angeles and then get us home at 9 a.m. the next day. That wasn't as bad as it could have been, but was still a pretty big bummer, especially since the same thing had happened on the way down. And because we asked to swap flights. And because they could have held it. But whatever.

While in Mexico City we bumped into these three elders on their way home from the Tampico Mexico mission. We have a nephew Kyle Weekes in that mission, and when we asked if they knew him, they did, and in fact the one in the middle had been his companion a year before!

We made it to Los Angeles at 11pm without much trouble, but then our luggage didn't arrive, and neither Delta (who we booked the flights through) nor their partner AeroMexico (who actually ran the flights) would do anything in the way of a hotel or anything, so we had to spend the night in LAX. Which stunk. (Karen was willing to have us stay with her, but by the time we found out we were hosed it was so late, and we had to leave early enough that it wouldn't have been worth the drive).

Airports are of course designed to be purposely uncomfortable and impossible to sleep in. They make sure there are bars between each seat; that the floors are cold and hard; that the lights never dim; and that there are all manner of vacuums and polishing machines that run all night. They also hire a guy to tell someone next to him his life story all night long.

That's all well and good for keeping people from purposely planning to spend the night there to save a few bucks on a hotel. But when the airlines hoses you, you'd think they could offer a $1 air mattress or something.

Here Kelsi demonstrates how one can use two benches to pretend to sleep.

And here is where Kelsi and Linette actually ended up. Kelsi slept well. Linette, not so much. Me, even less. (This setup doesn't work when you're a lot taller, heavier and older than Kelsi). I tried not to be grumpy about it, but it didn't work.

In the morning, another unfortunate passenger came stumbling out with a knowing smile and said, "That was so bad!" (Delta eventually coughed up $100 to each of us for our troubles. It would have been cheaper for them to get us a hotel).

Finally we arrived in Salt Lake City, where we had to face snow and real life again. But it was nice to be home.

The flight problems put a bit of a damper on the end of the trip, but overall, it was a grand adventure. It was great to meet all of these great people that Kelsi had written home about. In fact, when I went back after our trip and browsed through her missionary letters, it was really fun to see those people again after having now met them!

One of the interesting observations from this trip was that there were people at all different levels of how much money they had, and how much of it they spent on making things look a certain way in their house. But the happiness they experienced had so much more to do with who and how they loved. We saw families living in very humble circumstances who you could tell just loved each other and were happy. I could also see the foundation of peace and happiness that came to families as they lived the gospel of Jesus Christ. Each person, family and area had their own challenges, but I could tell that they were also blessed for each principal of the gospel they were following.

We also had a lot of fun enjoying each others company as we drove all over Chiapas. On the long and winding road from San to Tapa, for example, we passed some of the time by Kelsi teaching us the words to Las Mañanitas. Then I had her teach us something nerdy from her college class--in this case, how flowers opened and closed their petals (apparently, they push water into our pull it out of cells that expand and thus cause the petals to move). Then Erika taught us how ants make trails. It started with something like, "They walk along and shoot chemicals out their butt...." For some reason this struck me as so funny (especially after Kesi's more technical explanations) that I went into conniptions, laughing so hard that I could barely see, and had to slow way down so I didn't crash on that winding road. Anyway, we really had fun together.

Thanks for sticking with this write-up. I hear that Craig & Andrea are taking a similar trip with Andrew after BYU lets out in a couple of weeks. I look forward to seeing their pictures of the amazing ruins at Palenque, which we didn't have time for.

¡Adios!

Adventures in Mexico 6: Can you say Ocozocoautla?

In our last episode, we went to the beach on New Year's Day and then bade farewell to Tapachula, driving up to Ocozocoautla de Espinoza, or "Coita" as the locals call it.

We arrived at about 11:30pm, but the family we were staying with said they stayed up late, and, sure enough, they welcomed us in, showed us where we would be staying, and then stayed up talking to Kelsi until 2am. Party animals! They were very gracious, and we appreciated their hospitality. I believe a couple people were sleeping on the couch after giving up their rooms to us.

Cielo Chávez, Kelsi, Itzayana

The family's daughter Itzayana was a great friend to Kelsi when she was there, and continues to be a powerful force for good in the local branch. She was running the young women's organization until recently when she got put into the primary presidency.

Here is a picture of Itzayana from Kelsi's mission:

The next morning was Saturday. Linette was finally feeling all better, but I came down with a sick stomach. (I'm not sure if it was the ocean or Little Caesar's). Cielo (the mom) was kind and gave me one of their little white pills and some warm drink that is supposed to be good for that.

Everyone else was going to go visiting, but I was in no condition to do so. I saw this hammock in their courtyard, and it seemed like the best thing in the world to lie down in it, so I crashed in the hammock while they went visiting. It was a cool, pleasant morning with a little misty rain falling. I lay there under the overhang so the rain didn't get on me, but I felt an occasional bit of pleasant mist. I could hear the sounds of people and vehicles in the streets nearby, and other than feeling gross, it was actually a blissful time. I was able to play an audio book for a couple hours while I hung out (literally).

Chillin' in a hammock.

After their first round of visiting, they came back to check on me, and I was feeling somewhat better, so I went out with them this time. I picked up some Coke and yogurt (both seem to help an upset tummy), and that did make me feel a bit better.

The first place we visited was a couple that makes these awesome things from Oaxaca called "Tlayudes", which are like big meaty quesadillas. (I settled for eating my yogurt).

We also dropped by and talked to a lady that had been baptized while Kelsi was there. She was very quiet.

On the way to visit Kelsi's friend Citlali (seet-LAH-lee, which is fun to say), Erika said that she wanted to try out one of the little motorcycle taxis (mototaxi) that you see all over town. So we let Kelsi and Erika out and let them flag one down.

It didn't take long to spot one.

Kelsi had Erika try to arrange for the ride, and then took over and haggled over a price (since, frankly, they didn't need this ride at all!)

And off they went. When the mototaxi dropped them off, we drove around the block so it wouldn't be as obvious that we had been following them and could have just taken them ourselves.

We had a nice visit with Citlali and her family.

Kelsi and Citlali

Citlali's sister, Kelsi, Citlali

Randy, Linette, Citlali, Erika

As we drove down the street, we happened to pass a lady that Kelsi had once taught, so we pulled over and talked to her briefly.

That night, I rested in the van listening to a guy on a balcony playing random notes on a Chinese flute while the girls visited a couple who had been investigating the church for a long time but had some snags keeping them from baptism. I eventually went in to see them.

The couple gave Erika a Barbie doll with local traditional clothing.

By this time, Kelsi and Erika were both not feeling that well, and although Linette had finally started feeling better the day before, we were all pretty exhausted from the trip. We actually sat outside one house in our van and decided we just weren't up for another visit, so we went back home.

Not too long after getting back to the house, we excused ourselves and collapsed up in our room. Erika came in and snuggled Kelsi, and we all just sat there feeling a little sick, fairly exhausted, and, strangely, really happy just to be together. Kelsi had me give her a blessing, and we had a family prayer. I'm not quite sure why, but this little moment was one of my favorite parts of the whole trip. Maybe it's because I love these girls so much, and we were feeling the spirit together. And maybe it's because it was one of the first moments of the trip where we sat down and relaxed for a minute. But whatever it was, it was awesome, at least for me.

Sunday morning we were all feeling a lot better. It was probably just as well that it was fast Sunday, because I wasn't sure I was ready to eat much yet anyway.

We arrived at church a little early, and Kelsi started playing prelude music in the chapel, since they don't have a pianist there. Later some people came and started giving her hugs and stuff, so Erika took over for her. It was fun being with 3 gals who could all play the piano. They ended up having Erika play the opening and sacrament hymns. Kelsi went up to play the closing hymn.

Then after church I saw that Erika was in there playing the closing song for relief society. You go, girl!

One of the elders serving there happened to be from Riverton! He wasn't in our stake, but went to our kids' high school. So I took this picture and texted it to his sister, which she appreciated.

We had fun visiting with a bunch of people after church (kind of like Kelsi had wanted to do in San Cristóbal, had the planes been on time).

This family had recently moved, but came back this Sunday in order to see Kelsi again.

Lorena, Jacobed, Kelsi, Josh, Hazel, Erika and Linette (possibly in that order)

The primary kids made muñecas (snowmen) out of styrofoam cups (with candy inside). And there were lots of hugs.

After church we saw this horse parade on the way to visit the branch president.

I thought the branch president's granddaughter was adorable.

We also dropped by to see this family, and they were a hoot.

Cepeta, Kelsi, Erika, Linette, Dani

Luz Elba, Dani, Cepeta

Randy, Cepeta, Kelsi, Erika, Linette, Dani

When we got back to the home where we had been staying, we got to hold their new granddaughter, who had been blessed in fast and testimony meeting that day.

It was great visiting with the family and talking with the married daughter. Cielo (the mom) hadn't come to church much for years, but the baby blessing and testimony meeting really touched her, and she said she felt like she was "home" there. So she thought she might try again.

We really appreciated their hospitality and thanked them for putting up with our late arrival, sickness, and erratic schedule. They seemed genuinely happy to have had us there, which was very kind.

Above is the picture we took with the family just before heading out for Tuxtla Gutierrez.

In our next and final episode, we stay at the mission home, visit with President and Sister George, and eventually make it home at various times.