Day 32 & 33

Today (Sunday the 20th) we packed our bags and drove straight to Eugene, Oregon. Definitely not our longest drive—we are becoming accustomed to long drives after 30 days of driving every few days. 

Arriving in Eugene, we went to the first Starbucks we could find—the goal being to hop on the internet and find us a place to stay! As we sat on the plush chairs with that goal in mind, we ended up chatting with the couple that was reading right by us. Nik saw the One Truth logo on Corey's hat and they started to chat. Turns out they are Christians who go to a new start-up church here in Eugene called Ekklesia (means: be the church). Nik and Lizzie were awesome to talk to—we were there for about 3 hours talking away. (the picture is a little dark, but on the right is Lizzie and Nik with Corey being the dark figure on the left)

Nik offered his place to stay (remembering the scripture about entertaining angels unaware... we let him know we were not angels but hoped he would be blessed because of this offer!), so we cancelled the reservation to the hostel we had just made and stayed with Nik and his roommates. Thanks Nik! What a blessing! It was great chatting with all of the roommates and enjoying the fellowship. 

Monday was our day to tour University of Oregon. (Donna thinks they have much better school colors than UW... maybe it is because they are a lot like Cal Poly's!)

We loved the campus. Lots of large beautiful trees. 

After getting to walk around the campus we received information about the architecture program. Oregon is definitely in the running...

Next stop was the downtown area of Eugene. Donna loved going to Buffalo Exchange and shopping!

We had delicious pizza dinner and yummy ginger ales, orange creams and root beers with our new Ekklesia friends. (that is Ian, one of the roomies, on the left, and Lizzie and Nik on the right)

There were lots of laughs and pizza to share.

We then walked 20 feet and were in a gelato place. (you can never have too much gelato!) Even more laughs came from this side! The workers there were great! Corey was showing off his weird "stupid human tricks". It so distracted Donna that she stuck the used taster spoon into the container of new spoons and they had to take all of the new spoons and wash them! Oops, so much for conserving! (the picture below shows the two containers and the fun gelato workers). 

This has been a great way to end our trip... by tomorrow night we will be back in CA and Wednesday we will be home!