Christmas Travels

For Christmas we went to the States for 2 glorious weeks. It couldn’t have come at a better time – we were more then annoyed with Norway and all of it’s charm (or lack there of). So we took a looong flight from Amsterdam to LAX and spent 7 days with my parents in LA. Funny enough my parents had snow at their house! Not the weather we ordered but it was still nice and warm compared to Norway. My aunt came down so we had a nice family week. I got some good shopping in (I ♥ TJ Maxx and Old Navy!) and ate some good food. After a lovely Christmas day we headed off bright and early the day after Christmas (Boxing Day for the British) and flew to San Angelo, Texas.

We meet Jason’s brother, Chris, and our niece, Sydney in the Dallas airport and were lucky to get on their flight to San Angelo. The flight was literally “Deer Hunter Express”. There were maybe 50 people on board and at least 35 of them had camo on and picked up gun boxes in baggage claim. The weather was fabulous in San Angelo- I got to enjoy direct sunlight every afternoon while I read outside and the day we left it was 75 degrees.

We enjoyed having Christmas Part 2 with Jason’s family and more good food and family. I had the pleasure of getting a massage, facial and pedicure while I was there as well. We did more shopping including a Sam’s Club run for staples like parmesan cheese! Sadly we flew back to Norway on Friday January 2 (we had to pay our first excess bag fee!). The flight was shorter and our seats were better which made us happy. We soon realized how sad coming back was when we arrived to 4 feet of new snow! Thankfully we have AMAZING friends (Matt and Kathryn) who shoveled our driveway so we didn’t have to do that when we returned! After we got all the luggage in we were off to pick up the dogs – which we had been looking forward to for days! The dogs did great in the kennel and even figured out how to use the dog door.

As you know I have not been home for 8 months so I did have some observations while in the US:

• There are lots of obese people- not fat but obese. You see fat people in Norway but obese people are rare. We went to dinner one night and I swear there was a family of 6 who all weighed at least 250lbs.
  
• The roads are huge! Intersections with 5 lanes in each direction plus 2 turn lanes are pretty intimidating.
  
• There is so much choice – not only of restaurants and stores but also at the grocery stores. Aisles and aisles of cereal and canned goods!
  
• People are nice and will go out of their way for you. People actually talk to you and smile and hold doors open! Things that are not common in Norway.
  
• Kids/teenagers are not as rude as Norwegians. For awhile I thought I had put rose colored glasses on American kids since I think Norwegian kids are rude but I was glad to see it wasn’t the rose colored glasses it was real!
  
• Real parking spaces are great
• The cars were huge – I know there really are huge but when you are used to subcompacts and station wagon an SUV (or a parking lot of SUVs) is monstrous.