I have returned from Minnesota. It was a good trip and it feels weird to be home; but I think I’ll adjust in a day or two. To describe the trip, here are the positives and negatives:

Positives
-Southwestern Minnesota Synod staff people (they are soooooo cool)
-the zebra hot chocolate at Calf Fiend
-playing some really vicious Uno on Saturday with Nik and Whitney
-our “landkitty” Kaetze
-the “Lutheran guesthouse where we stayed”
-food at call interviews (ye shall know them by their potlucks)
-the tours of the towns
-the call committees greeting us with hugs
-the laidbackness of the call interviews
-seeing my first pheasant
-the wonderful synod picking up the bill for the trip

Negatives
-the screaming kids in front of me on my flight to Minneapolis (of course while I’m trying to sleep since I’ve maybe had 8 hours in the past 3 days)
-getting lost while driving “home” on the pitch-black prairie at 23:00
-almost hitting an opposum on the prairie
-almost hitting a deer while having to listen to the Lars Larson show
-being subjected to the Lars Larson show in the first place (we were only listening to it because hurling insults at him was keeping us awake)
-the realization that after each interview, we had to drive 2 hours to get “home”
-badly marked freeway turns
-the smell of the manure on the fields
-the dead kitties along the side of the highways
-getting lost at MSP while trying to return the rental car