Velkommen to Norway!

Greetings from Stavanger! It's crazy to think that 24 hours ago, we were waiting in line to check in at the Washington-Dulles airport. We arrived as a group and grabbed one last pre-trip photo before heading off to our respective gates. 

Although we are all together in Norway now, each country team took different flights to arrive here. Our itinerary took us from DC to Amsterdam to Stavanger. We arrived in Amsterdam after 7 hours of in-flight movies, uncomfortable naps, and delicious meals. I say delicious meals because KLM airlines makes sure to label their snacks as "delicious" to ensure you fully appreciate the experience. Actually, the food wasn't bad, and I'm including an obligatory food photo so you can all see how classy it was. 

The Amsterdam airport is fantastic, complete with a library, fake fireplaces, and a store that exclusively sells cheese, but we skipped by most of this to make our next flight. 

A little over an hour later, we arrived in Norway! We had a chance to explore Stavanger and get a tour from Tore Laerdal, the head of Laerdal corporation. We'll talk much more about Laerdal later, but suffice to say, they are awesome and we are very grateful to them for hosting us this week. The picture below shows houses in a historic section of Stavanger- no cars allowed on the cobblestones! 

All of this was great, but the best part of our day (and possibly summer, and possibly lives thus far) was the boat trip we took to visit Lysefjorden, an absolutely sunning fjord. The weather was great, the scenery was majestic, and it was great to have our whole group together again. 

Today was a great start to our trip! Thanks for reading!