Week 32 Summary - Tori's headed home and so are we!

This was a super busy, yet fun week with Tori here.  Kim kept the kids busy everyday doing super fun activities like hiking in the forest, outdoor movies, canoeing down a river, touring Luxembourg and finally visiting Verdun and Reims.

I was busy getting ready to head home for 3 weeks.  I'm going to be working from Utah for most of the time, but I'll take a few days off as well!

Emilee and Tori have done a great job blogging the week's activities so I'll focus on the last couple days.

The kids invited members of the ward to come out and play futsal Friday night in Kehlen.  They played for about 3 hours and came home sweaty and tired.  They have such a good group of friends here in the ward, it has been fun to see that develop.

Saturday morning we left about 9:00 for Verdun and Reims.  Verdun is a super famous area in France for WWI battles.  There are several forts, battle fields, destroyed cities and memorials around the area.  It turns out that the battles near Verdun were the worst in the world's history with over 300,000 dead and 450,000 wounded.

The forts and the surrounding area were bombarded so heavily that the damage is still visible today.  The ground is literally pot marked with bomb holes.  There are still trenches and cities that were completely destroyed by the bombing.  Not much is left, just a few foundations and walls.

We stopped and toured Fort Douaumont.  It looked like a bunch of caves, due to the bombing damage, but turned out to be a heavily fortified fort with tunnels and rooms.  The Germans overtook the fort during the war and they described in detail how it happened.  It was very damp and cool.  I'm sure it wa a horrible place to be in the war.  They would even gas the soldiers inside.  Eventually the Germans needed fortifications further north and they abandoned the fort.  It is interesting how men lose their lives defending a piece of ground or a trench and then the need to defend it just goes away.

I listed to a piece on Radio West on NPR about the first world war on the way to Paris this morning.  About 40 million people died in horrible ways.  We were just figuring out how to use gas, flame throwers, chemical weapons, etc.  The very last of the WWI vets are dying now.  The guest they interviewed wrote a book of his experiences contacting them.

WWI was devastating for the French.  We went to an Ossuary where a lot of the bones of the 300,000 soldiers are buried.  It is a big white building that is a big monument to them.  After touring the monument we watched a 20 minute movie.  During the movie we realized that the bones are all visible under the monument through little windows.  As soon as we left the movie we went and looked through the windows.  It was VERY, VERY sobering to see to many bones piled up.  Each one of them had a Mom a Dad and a story.

After touring the Verdun area we drove to REIMS.  It is the town where most of the French kings were coronated. The cathedral there is very impressive.  They are in the process of cleaning it.  Where they've cleaned it is absolutely beautiful.  The cathedrals soak up so much black pollution it was awesome so see this one in its original form.  This cathedral has history with Joan of Arc and all of the kings.  It is about an hours drive from Paris, so I'm surprised they would travel all the way out there to get coronated, but that's what they did.

We also saw a Roman arch.  Wikipedia says it is the largest spanning Roman arch.  Again, everywhere the Romans went they built cool stuff!

After the cathedral we strolled around downtown Reims.  It is a very nice French city.  We ate like Europeans in the town square outside on the sidewalk.  The temperature was perfect and it was very enjoyable.  Of course we finished it off with Gelato!

Two hours later we were home and hit the sack quick as we had to get up at 5:00 am to get Tori to the Paris airport by 8:45.  Everything went smoothly driving to Paris until we got onto the airport property.  4 kilometers took us 40 minutes and we almost missed her flight!  That would not have been good as we left Luxembourg for Switzerland at 7:00 tonight!

Emilee and I drove home from Paris.  It was actually really fun because I usually don't get 3 hours of time alone with my daughter.  We had lots of good conversations which made the time go by quickly!

The rest of the day was eating and packing and squeezing in the last of the Harry Potter movies.  Ashton has been begging us to see all 8 of them so we finished it off today.  I know, we're terrible parents, but we've been worn down and Ashton is reaping the rewards!

We made it to the airport on time, just in time for a HUGE downpour.  I haven't seen it rain that hard for years.  It was pretty impressive.  The flight to Zurich was only 45 minutes and we fly out tomorrow morning.  Our flights were cheaper than normal, but included a 12 hour layover, so we got a hotel near the airport.

We can't believe that we actually are going to visit home after 7 months.  The time is definitely going by faster now and this adventure will be over before we know it.  It has given us all time to reflect on the pros and cons of this decision.  We all agree that we love the travel, but miss Utah, friends and family for the day-to-day.  For the last few months it will be up to me and the guys at work to get this business successful!

Pictures from Week 32