The Greatest Road Trip Ever

I've been meaning to blog about this for a couple of weeks now, ever since I got back. I went on a roadtrip back to my mission in British Columbia, Canada with some girls that I served with up there. It was a blast. We had so much fun every single day and had a really hard time making ourselves come back home.
Kiddy Bardardottir, (don't even try to say it, she's from Iceland and her name doesn't sound at all like it looks!) my companion of 6 months whilst in BC and one of my best friends, came over to the States to visit for a few weeks so we planned the trip more or less around that. She, Rochelle, and Ashley carpooled up to Rexburg on Friday June 12th, and we headed north! We left Rexburg at about 4PM, arriving in Kelowna BC at 4AM, thirteen hours later (I can add, don't worry... there's a time difference). We drove Charlie, my '99 Mali and he held up super well. I'm glad we didn't have any car problems, that would have made the trip more adventurous for sure, but also much more stressful for me! And we borrowed Lola, a GPS, from some friends. Those things are amazing! I've definitely got one on my Christmas list now.
The first people we saw, and stayed with, were Jodi, Taylor, and Ava in Kelowna. It's funny cause none of us ever actually served in their ward, but we knew and loved them so much we couldn't resist crashing at their place! We had a blast with them!
We spent Saturday in Kelowna. We had a party of sorts at the beach (we also really really wanted to go swimming, but alas, the cold weather didn't humor us). It was still tons of fun seeing old friends. Kelowna is a fairly central place to all the cities we served in in the Okanagan, so we thought it would be easiest if we had people come to us there. It worked out pretty well!
That evening we decided to see what we could do to paint the town red. We went back to Jodi's and got all cutsy for our night on the town. We ended up going to dinner at Whitespot (one of our favorite BC-only restaurants), and driving around to see some old sights. We went to the marina and walked around and watched the sunset. We also drove past the old Sisters' apartment, where Kiddy lived when she served there 3 years ago. We ran into some rather funny French-Canadians there! There was a group of about 5 young guys hanging out on their balcony and they waved at us to come over. Well we drove by and talked to them through the window of the car for a second. Long enough to find out they don't speak very good English. The funniest part was this:
Kiddy: Oh, you speak French? I'm from Iceland!
Guys: From where? Victoria?
Kiddy: No! Iceland! It's an island.... in the middle of Europe!
(At this point the rest of us are dying laughing)
Some other dialouge, I don't remember what else was said.
Guys: Bye! I love you!!
Kiddy: I love you too!!!
Okay, maybe I didn't present it as hilariously as it was. It was one of those things you had to be there for.
Following our Quebecan encounter, we met up with some YSA's in Kelowna to go cosmic bowling! Well, we didn't actually bowl, as we instigated a spontaneous dance party in the bowling alley. Way fun. I'd never seen such an intense bowling alley before. They had projector screens that played music videos! So cool! Plus we might have "cranked that soldier boy" in the parking lot. After bowling/dancing we headed out to Boston Pizza (yet another BC favorite) for dessert.
All in all, we had a fabulous time in Kelowna and were super sad to leave. I love the Okanagan, it's so different from the rest of British Columbia and we all really wish we could have spent a little more time there.
Next stop: Penticton for Church Sunday morning! The adventurous story here? We completely missed the first hour! We waited and waited and waited for Kiddy to do her hair. It turned out fine though, we showed up just as everybody was leaving Sacrament meeting, and we had only told a couple of people we were even coming so the suprise on many of their faces was priceless!
This is Mimi with 3 former Penticton sister missionaries and one current! Mimi's going on her mission soon and we're all very excited for her!
Penticton was my last area in BC, so I was there exactly one year ago. I love it dearly. Here are a few more pictures of the ward and members there.
This is just the beginning of that awesome week. I don't know if I'll ever finish blogging about it, so I thought I should just go ahead and publish this since it's been in the drafting stage for a month. One day I'll add more!