D-Day Invasion- "Strange"-ly Imminent!! TRIP REPORT IS UP!!

[All7OfUs]

Great action pics on the slide. They really make me want to go swimming right now.

The slide would have been WAY funner (yes, I like that word) if the water had been warmer! I'm such a big wussy when it comes to water temps!

I love that one slide! They are really getting some great air!

The big guys would hurl themselves down it at breakneck speeds!!

And speaking of breakneck speeds, the big kid going down.... yeah, it was HIS BROTHER that fell off the trampoline a few months back, and he was doing the same thing!!! His mother about had heart failure when she saw what the boys were doing!!!!

Ya'll remember Joseph, right??

So cool! But shades on the wimpy slide???

I can just hear the music in the background.......
I'm too sexy for these shades, too sexy for this slide........oh crap this water's cold!!!!!![/Quote]

Yeah, I'm a wuss, but I look good!

It's a MAN thing.........

That's what I was referring to!!! What else could it be???

Must be, completely necessary for watching a game, and hiking too apparently.

Maroo, glad to hear that your doing better. What a rough couple of days!

Leisa, the pictures are beautiful. The slide just looks like a lot of fun. I'm surprised how high they are flying at the end.

Thanks, Crissy. It was fun to take all those action shots, and just watch the kids enjoy themselves. They were all having contests on who could fly the furthest.

Yep, typical man!

Uh-huh...

 

[winkers]

the last picture...

the mountains are gorgeous! Makes me want to play Maria Von trap!

 

[All7OfUs]

the last picture...

the mountains are gorgeous! Makes me want to play Maria Von trap!

I thought you, especially, Cherie, would appreciate that one.

How do you solve a problem like Maria...

 

[Pollito916]

Poor Maroo! Glad to hear you're feeling better and it's nothing too serious.

Liesa - looks like a fun trip! Those mountains are gorgeous, coming from a place of "flatlanders," I am always amazed by mountain views.

Oh - and I have a spider story for you!! Sunday night my son came home from a friend's house and went up to his bedroom. He called out to me "mom - come up here - I have a spider in my room. Two seconds later he started screaming - mom -get up here quick - baby spiders are crawling all over my wall!! When I ran up to his room there were a ton of clear/greenish baby spiders on one of his walls, his T.V. and on the ceiling!! I felt like I was in the middle of a horror flick!! I sucked them up with the vacuum cleaner and had to spend the next evening vacuuming his whole bedroom - ceiling, walls, furniture,wash the bedding, etc - just in case there were any stragglers left (which of course there were)!! I found out his screen was out of his window and he left it open for days!! A spider must have come in and laid eggs!! All I kept thinking as I was vacuuming these creatures up and creeped out that they might be crawling on me was "the things we do for our kids!! He finally got the nerve up to sleep in there tonight. Thank goodness we haven't seen spiders in there for the last 24 hours!

That is just horrifying. I'm pretty sure that if that ever happened at my house when DH is not home, I would have to run out of the room screaming, shut the door, and possibly even leave the house. What a brave woman you are, I probably wouldn't be able to think clearly enough to get a vacuum.

I grew up in SoCal, and one time walked into a lawn mower shed and a few jumped out at me as I entered the doorway. That was the end of my getting too close!

Seriously, they jumped out at you?!?

 

[eandesmom]

Maroo! what a horrible experience, I am so glad you are ok but oh that just sounds awful.

Hope you are home by the time you read this!

NO HAND MIXER?? Surely that means you have a stand mixer then?? Kitchen aid perhaps?

Yeah, I've slept on a double with my youngest recently, and it sucked! She may be small, but she can steal covers with the best of 'em.

I have a lovely Kitchen Aid stand mixer and 2 blenders and a food processor in 2 different sizes. But not a hand blender.



I am not a baker so it's rarely an issue.

I think kids are FAR worse to sleep with, Kendall kept trying to snuggle and she's heavy! The E's wiggle to death and who can sleep next to that. Jeff and I could handle a double, he's just being greedy. I think it's a convenient excuse for him to justify WL. He is so excited about it, it's adorable actually.



LOVE the fun in the sun (or cold water) pics, really looks like a wonderful time.

Though I wasn't expecting the hip hop grab on a church retreat mens hike. That's pretty darn funny!

 

[Sleepingbooty]

Oh. Wow. That is a view worth hiking for. Did they come back with ticks? I don't see a 'path.'

LOVE the pic of you on the slide. I'm with ya on cold water. I'd rather just watch everyone else freeze their patooties off.

 

[maroo]

maroo, it is so good to know you are home and resting with your puppy beside you. Take it easy, don't overdo now.

Be gentle with yourself.

I am trying really hard to take it easy....there is so much to DO around me...that I am having a hard time, but so far so good.

Maroo - I'm so glad you are home now! I'm so happy things turned out well for you - sounds like it will clear up with the antibiotics and you will be as good as new! And that it will not put a wrench in your Disney trip!

Update on this in a min...Thanks so much for your well wishes!!

Maroo So glad you are home !!What a terrible ordeal !! I had mentioned that my mother hadf ulcerated colitiis !! She had it from the time I was 3 or 4 until she had surgery when I was 12 and she was a very sick lady by then !!She was in the hospital for 6 months !!! But she lived till her late 80's and was basically healthy in body !!!Now her mind was a different story Dementia

Oh my gosh! How horrible! I can't imagine being in the hospital that long! 4 days was plenty for me!

Wow, I think I've FINALLY gotten caught up! Jordan was right.....this thing moves really fast.

Maroo, so glad you are making progress and doing better! Sending positive thoughts and prayers for additional improvement and healing so you will be 100% when the assault on WDW finally arrives.

This thing moves really fast!!

Thank you so much!

MAROO....
I'm glad to hear you are going to be out soon and that your diagnosis wasn't a worst case scenario. Love how you look at the bright side (resting feet) of going through all of that and spending a few days at the hospital. The DIS side of your brain never stops, does it? LOLOL

The DIS is always on my mind somewhere! lol

She's constantly "making Magic" for others; her love for others really shows, doesn't it?

I do enjoy spreading the magic! I figure I have had my share - might as well spread it around!

Poor Maroo! Glad to hear you're feeling better and it's nothing too serious.

Thank you!

Maroo! what a horrible experience, I am so glad you are ok but oh that just sounds awful.

Thank you! It was not fun! But I am feeling better.

 

[maroo]

Quick health related to Disney trip update:

I woke up this morning with the same pain (although a bit less, but still unnerving) on the other side. I have had these pains before and thought they were kidney stones. I have had 6 kidney stones in the past 15 years, but none in the last 5. Anyway...

One of the things the doctor said was that this could be IBS. He gave me some medicine to take if it happened again and basically said if the medicine helps, then you can pretty much be sure it is IBS.

I didn't even get the medicine filled because I already had $322 worth of medicine to buy yesterday (antibiotics), but this morning when the pain started again, I went ahead and got the new medicine filled and took one - and it worked! My pain subsided a lot!

So...I called the doctor to find out what that means and his nurse called me back. She said to finish the antibiotics, but to also use the new medicine as needed. I have an appt to follow up with the Dr, but the nurse said that it sounded like this was IBS. My brother also has IBS, so I guess that makes some sense?

IBS is more chronic than an infection, but it does explain why I have had the pain in the past with no real explanation. I think I feel better just putting a name to the pain and having something available to "fix" it.

Anyway...I will find out from the dr if there are foods I should avoid, etc. My brother said that it has lots to do with stress, so I should de-stress. Which is pretty funny, honestly. Aren't all of our lives stressful??

So...that is the update!

 

[maroo]

I love the update, Liesa!

Your glasses on the slide crack me up! You sure we shouldn't add a water park to our plans?

The mountains.....WOW! Just beautiful! I don't see how anyone can look at scenery like that and not know there is a Creator of it all.

I particularly like the pool shot with all of the mountains in the background!

This thread is moving so fast...has there ever been a 4th thread for a pre-trippie before?!?!

 

[eandesmom]

Quick health related to Disney trip update:

I woke up this morning with the same pain (although a bit less, but still unnerving) on the other side. I have had these pains before and thought they were kidney stones. I have had 6 kidney stones in the past 15 years, but none in the last 5. Anyway...

One of the things the doctor said was that this could be IBS. He gave me some medicine to take if it happened again and basically said if the medicine helps, then you can pretty much be sure it is IBS.

I didn't even get the medicine filled because I already had $322 worth of medicine to buy yesterday (antibiotics), but this morning when the pain started again, I went ahead and got the new medicine filled and took one - and it worked! My pain subsided a lot!

So...I called the doctor to find out what that means and his nurse called me back. She said to finish the antibiotics, but to also use the new medicine as needed. I have an appt to follow up with the Dr, but the nurse said that it sounded like this was IBS. My brother also has IBS, so I guess that makes some sense?

IBS is more chronic than an infection, but it does explain why I have had the pain in the past with no real explanation. I think I feel better just putting a name to the pain and having something available to "fix" it.

Anyway...I will find out from the dr if there are foods I should avoid, etc. My brother said that it has lots to do with stress, so I should de-stress. Which is pretty funny, honestly. Aren't all of our lives stressful??

So...that is the update!

I have/had IBS (which is how I know how the barium tastes, bleh!) lol.

At any rate, a lot of it is stress related and foods definitely trigger it.

If you can start keeping a food journal it will really help a ton as you can then isolate your triggers.

For me IBS was actually one of the best things that ever happened to me as it actually forced me to learn how to better manage my stress. I changed my eating habits to avoid my triggers and have found, over the last decade, that I don't need to avoid them like I used to as I manage the stress so much better. Too much of any of them and I will get some symptoms but too much of anything is bad anyways!

I hope you can get to the triggers soon and am thrilled that the medication helped so quickly.

 

[jenb1023]

All caught up! I really need to try hard to be on the boards more consistently!

Liesa - glad the hand is feeling better and that the puppies have homes. Looking forward to the next chapter!

Maroo - glad you are doing better! My mom had Crohn's until she got colon cancer and had a bunch of intestine taken out which "cured" it. So glad that you don't have it - though IBS is certainly no walk in the park. With my mom's history, I will have the joy of a colonscopy soon! We were at Hersheypark today and I thought of your visit there!

 

[JPFamilyMom]

Liesa- GREAT update. LOVE the pictures. You on the slide and the manly pic had me You of course in the way that someone quoted that song type of laughing. You couldn't even get me on a water slide.

Maroo- glad you are feeling better and have some answers. Food is always the root of some problem don't you think? I know having a special diet for my son has helped a ton. He doesn't have IBS, he has autism, but had stomach issues since he was an infant.

This ptr does move super fast, it has forced me to log in late after getting home from work at night. Yes Liesa, I forgot to mention I got the thumbs up from my dh for a Disney trip, not in the fall as I planned, but for March, which is even better, cause I'll be at WDW on my birthday. So I've been pulling some double shifts to help pay for said trip.

Looking forward to more fun on your ptr.

 

[englishrose47]

Maroo is IBS Irritable Bowel Syndrome .??? I remember my mom was told to avoid vegetables and fruit and see her doctor well she did the avoiding but did Not see th doctor !!!!!Years later she had blind spots in her vision from a vitamin deficiency!! One doctor I told this said the condition was more common in AlcoholicsMom drank about 2 glasses of Sherry a year

 

[that's nice]

Hi Tim!!! ARe you still working these days, or has it just slowed down enough to be on here more!!

Great pics Liesa! Love the mountain pics!

My work schedule has slowed down a bit to be mostly weekends with the occasional weekday or 2 job thrown in. I went through a 45 day stretch with 2 days off and many days leaving the house at 8am and getting home past 12am. There was also a 2 day stretch in there where I left for work Thursday morning at 8am and didn't come home till Friday 5pm. That was a long 2 days.

I am easing my way back in to this DIS stuff. I NEED to finish my TR and I NEED to start Juliana's MAW PTR. I actually spoke to her WISH granter today and found out that we will not be finding out any trip info till OCTOBER!!!!

I also found out that MAW will not extend our trip. When I hung up the phone I was more confused than when I called yesterday with my questions. I guess we can just not show up at the airport for our flight home and just book a 1 way flight home. I donno.

 

[All7OfUs]

Liesa - looks like a fun trip! Those mountains are gorgeous, coming from a place of "flatlanders," I am always amazed by mountain views.

Seriously, they jumped out at you?!?

There were BITS of chocolate squished into mostly a mess of bad tasting oatmeal. The hikes were nice, the swimming fun, and graduation the best, but the rest I could have my whole life without.

Yes, they really did jump out. I think when they saw the light, it triggered them, and I just happened to be in the doorway. I'm sure it was nothing personal.

I have a lovely Kitchen Aid stand mixer and 2 blenders and a food processor in 2 different sizes. But not a hand blender.



I am not a baker so it's rarely an issue.

I pine for a Kitchen Aid. I wonder if my sister-in-laws will let me have my MIL's?? I've wanted for about 20 years, but have always been to cheap to spring for it. I LOVE my blender (for smoothies, bean puree, you name it) and my hand mixer for cookie dough, and the wand portion for soups. OK, I admit it, I obsess over kitchen gadgets.

I think kids are FAR worse to sleep with, Kendall kept trying to snuggle and she's heavy! The E's wiggle to death and who can sleep next to that. Jeff and I could handle a double, he's just being greedy. I think it's a convenient excuse for him to justify WL. He is so excited about it, it's adorable actually.

They are. And the smaller they are, the worse it is.

I think it's very funny that Jeff is Jonesin' for an excuse to get some better digs.

LOVE the fun in the sun (or cold water) pics, really looks like a wonderful time.

Though I wasn't expecting the hip hop grab on a church retreat mens hike. That's pretty darn funny!

The fact that it was a totally accidental shot makes it even funnier. The fact that it wasn't staged somehow proves my point ever better.

Oh. Wow. That is a view worth hiking for. Did they come back with ticks? I don't see a 'path.'

LOVE the pic of you on the slide. I'm with ya on cold water. I'd rather just watch everyone else freeze their patooties off.

Rebecca! I'm so glad you brought that up. There was something I totally missed in the tellling of our first hike back at the yucky sana-sucky-toria!!

When we had gotten back, several of us found ticks crawling on us. So we all immediately did tick checks on each other. At lunch, my son kept scratching his head, so we checked again, and sure enough 2 had embedded themselves down for a long suck on fresh meat, right on the nape of his neck at the hairline!

Mike scraped them off, but unfortunately, the head stayed behind on one of them. We finished up lunch, and headed to the car where we kept our first aid kit, and here's what we did.

There was no scalpel (I seriously remember there being one last time I checked!) so, we wiped our knife off with alcohol and Mike used that to scrape the head out. It was not pretty! Confident he had the nasty thing out, we gave it a good washdown with betadine, and applied the smallest top of our snakebite kit and let it suction some of whatever toxin might have been there.

Then we prayed. Japanese Encephalitis is a HUGE problem here, as is Lyme, so we are really hoping that the bite won't show up months later as something more!! There are vaccines available here, but only in the big city, and you have to get a series of like 2 or 3. So, something not possible for us.

I love the update, Liesa!

Your glasses on the slide crack me up! You sure we shouldn't add a water park to our plans?

The mountains.....WOW! Just beautiful! I don't see how anyone can look at scenery like that and not know there is a Creator of it all.

I particularly like the pool shot with all of the mountains in the background!

This thread is moving so fast...has there ever been a 4th thread for a pre-trippie before?!?!

Those are the very same glasses that will help me look cool on the Poly slide and POR slide too!!! Watch out- cool alert.

I like to look at the mountains, without climbing up them. They are just as pretty to me from down below. And stars do the same thing for me. Out on the steppe, you can see billions of them, and you have to wonder , "How could they not know?".

A 4th part!!?? Please NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

 

[All7OfUs]

All caught up! I really need to try hard to be on the boards more consistently!

Liesa - glad the hand is feeling better and that the puppies have homes. Looking forward to the next chapter!

Yes, you should be here A LOT MORE!! J/K! You be here when you can, and we'll welcome you with wide open arms when you come.

Hand is SO slow to heal. REally! It's been like 8 days, and I still cannot open a carton of milk. Someone thought there might be some nerve damage, that actually may take a long spell to heal. I am frustrated.

Liesa- GREAT update. LOVE the pictures. You on the slide and the manly pic had me You of course in the way that someone quoted that song type of laughing. You couldn't even get me on a water slide.

This ptr does move super fast, it has forced me to log in late after getting home from work at night. Yes Liesa, I forgot to mention I got the thumbs up from my dh for a Disney trip, not in the fall as I planned, but for March, which is even better, cause I'll be at WDW on my birthday. So I've been pulling some double shifts to help pay for said trip.

Looking forward to more fun on your ptr.

Those were my favorites too! So funny!! No water slides for you?? If the water is warm, they are a blast!

You get a TRIP??! That is so awesome, Jessica! I'm so happy that you'll get to go for your birthday! I know you were shooting for earlier, but hey, March is a GREAT time to go! Will you do a PTR??

More fun, coming up soon!

Great pics Liesa! Love the mountain pics!

Thanks! You know I had this PTR in mind when I took every one of them. Well, except for the hike- I wasn't invited on that.

My work schedule has slowed down a bit to be mostly weekends with the occasional weekday or 2 job thrown in. I went through a 45 day stretch with 2 days off and many days leaving the house at 8am and getting home past 12am. There was also a 2 day stretch in there where I left for work Thursday morning at 8am and didn't come home till Friday 5pm. That was a long 2 days.

That's some nutty hours, Tim!! Yikes!! But hey, every dollar earned, is another dollar for Disney.

I am easing my way back in to this DIS stuff. I NEED to finish my TR and I NEED to start Juliana's MAW PTR. I actually spoke to her WISH granter today and found out that we will not be finding out any trip info till OCTOBER!!!!

I also found out that MAW will not extend our trip. When I hung up the phone I was more confused than when I called yesterday with my questions. I guess we can just not show up at the airport for our flight home and just book a 1 way flight home. I donno.

YES! YOU NEED TO FINISH!! After all that cake drama, we need a change of pace.

And you KNOW we all want to follow Ana's MAW PTR!! I can hear your frustration! I wish you could get some clear answers so you can start planning!

 

[eandesmom]

I pine for a Kitchen Aid. I wonder if my sister-in-laws will let me have my MIL's?? I've wanted for about 20 years, but have always been to cheap to spring for it. I LOVE my blender (for smoothies, bean puree, you name it) and my hand mixer for cookie dough, and the wand portion for soups. OK, I admit it, I obsess over kitchen gadgets.

The Kitchen Aid is a slice of heaven. I don't know that I'd have sprung for it, it was a combo bday/xmas gift one year from my mom. Now that I have one, I couldn't imagine life without it.

I think it's very funny that Jeff is Jonesin' for an excuse to get some better digs.

Me too. Even funnier as I'm going through the ADR's when he interrupted me to say..."I haven't heard Margaritaville yet!"

The fact that it was a totally accidental shot makes it even funnier. The fact that it wasn't staged somehow proves my point ever better.

Yes it does!

Rebecca! I'm so glad you brought that up. There was something I totally missed in the tellling of our first hike back at the yucky sanatoria!!

When we had gotten back, several of us found ticks crawling on us. So we all immediately did tick checks on each other. At lunch, my son kept scratching his head, so we checked again, and sure enough 2 had embedded themselves down for a long suck on fresh meat, right on the nape of his neck at the hairline!

Mike scraped them off, but unfortunately, the head stayed behind on one of them. We finished up lunch, and headed to the car where we kept our first aid kit, and here's what we did.

There was no scalpel (I seriously remember there being one last time I checked!) so, we wiped our knife off with alcohol and Mike used that to scrape the head out. It was not pretty! Confident he had the nasty thing out, we gave it a good washdown with betadine, and applied the smallest top of our snakebite kit and let it suction some of whatever toxin might have been there.

Then we prayed. Japanese Encephalitis is a HUGE problem here, as is Lyme, so we are really hoping that the bite won't show up months later as something more!! There are vaccines available here, but only in the big city, and you have to get a series of like 2 or 3. So, something not possible for us.

oh WOW Liesa! How scary

Those are the very same glasses that will help me look cool on the Poly slide and POR slide too!!! Watch out- cool alert.

too cool for school!

 

[yinyanggirls]

Wow! What a view! Looked like a fun vacation. (except for the food....)

Tim - get back over to the wish trippers' thread and ask about extending the trip.

 

[All7OfUs]

The Kitchen Aid is a slice of heaven. I don't know that I'd have sprung for it, it was a combo bday/xmas gift one year from my mom. Now that I have one, I couldn't imagine life without it.

Well, if my SILs want it, then I'll have to save up for one, I really want one for the bread dough factor! I LOVE to bake bread! And plan on buying some wheat when I get back.

Me too. Even funnier as I'm going through the ADR's when he interrupted me to say..."I haven't heard Margaritaville yet!"

I wish my DH was even 1/20th as enthused about a trip to Orlando!

oh WOW Liesa! How scary

It was concerning, and continues to be. I need to read up more in Lyme...

too cool for school!

You know it!

Wow! What a view! Looked like a fun vacation. (except for the food....)

The food wasn't bad..... just far too monotonous!! The same things over, and over, and over, and over....

 

[All7OfUs]

After 4 sweet days of sunshine, water and cabbage, we once again loaded our car for borderline destinations. We thought today would be a “normal” long day of driving dodging sheep, getting stopped for little chit-chats with road police, and listening to International Harvester with the iPod. We figured out a way before the trip to pipe music all over the car with a snazzy cable- muahahahaha…. yeah baby, my country playlist blasted loud and clear to all passengers.

With all silliness and dancing aside, all of that happened, as you may have guessed, and more.

Here are a few of the “road blocks” we encountered along the way:

Wisely, I did NOT take a picture at the military road block that was at the junction where the road from Osh and Jalalabad came up. The machine guns were a bit overwhelming, and scary, and the pokey is not a place for me.

WDW vs. Waiting on the Border: Road blocks come in the form of tape on the street and quaint little white ropes manned by (mostly) polite, costumed, happy workers.

Just after that road block, through the canyon that leads back from Bishkek to the Lake, we traveled along “Tomato Soup” River- at least that’s what WE called it. I think it fits. I also think that rafting it would be a blast!

Sorry for the blurry photos, Mike took them super fast, as he only quickly pulled off the road so the truck we had just passed didn’t pass us. We’ve already discussed passing on a 2 lane “highway”.

We should have stopped for dinner. In fact, we should have just stopped in Bishkek.

After driving for 4 hours, we came to the border crossing- the only one open- and we heard rumors that around 45,000 refugees were trying to get out. Most went to another country, but a fair amount were trying to get through here too. When we arrived, the guy in front of us said from where we were it’d be at least 4 hours. Yeah, right, Buddy. Sure….

Well, ok, maybe.

6:00PM…

8:00 PM…

11:00 PM…

Just after I took that last picture, the kids and I had to get out of the car to go through the passenger checkpoints- remember, there are 4- 2 on each side of the border. There were scads of people- Uzbeks, Kurds, Kyrgyz, Kazakhs, Turks, Russians, Iranians, you name it! But the lines were moving quickly, and it didn’t take us anytime at all to fill out new registration forms, get our stamps, and be on our weary way. To the sidewalk. Going in the “sidewalk” was filthy; going back, it was WAY better! OUR side had clean toilet rooms, REAL sidewalks to sit on, and COLD Cokes to buy. We, and a few hundred other folks, found what space we could (we happened to score a bench after about an hour and a half), and started our respective waits. How long that would be, we had no idea. For all we knew they could close the border at midnight, and then we’d be sunk.

WDW vs. Waiting on the Border: Sidewalks get washed daily at WDW, maybe once a century at the border, but the Cokes cost 10 times as much.

However to entertain us, there was a crazy lady (who begged some food off of us from the car a few hours earlier), a fall-down drunk woman and her boyfriend, and several almost fistfights over line cutters. The crazy lady was showing the toilet room staff that she took great amusement in lighting live grasshoppers on fire with her lighter, the drunk lady stumbled around and hung onto her pal, all while trying not to hurl, and the Mercedes seemed to have Front of the Line Passes, as the cars jockeyed for position to save 15 minutes off their trip.

WDW vs. Waiting on a Border: I hear EPCOT provides some drunk entertainment once in a while, and WDW DOES have Front of the Line passes.

After a couple hours, the group from our country’s bus came over the border to our side and pulled up their own piece of sidewalk with us. I forgot to mention earlier, that the bus pulled up to the line about a ½ hour after us, so we all found a roadside café to eat at together. Thank God for greasy fried bread patties and boiled buckwheat. The drivers stayed with the car/bus, and we brought them dinner when we finished. In all, there were 21 of us, and I felt especially bad for the family with 5 kids! The father had just recently gotten back from Thailand where he had a small brain tumor taken out and is still re-learning balance and is yet very weak and tires easily. He has lost total hearing in one ear. He, no, the whole family, deserves a MONDO hero badge of honor! Remember those riots in Bangkok?? Yeah, they were there during those, and had to flee ON FOOT 3 times WITH their 5 kids and luggage to different hotels because their hotels had become part of the riot zone!!! All while trying to LEARN how to walk again. Can you imagine?? !

OK, anyway, back to THIS story… Someone from the bus group had brought a dombra along, so Mikki and the 2 others who could play took turns strumming. It was especially cool when a local guy (also VERY drunk) asked if he could play and sing for us. And so we passed another 3 hours on our side- making a total of 10 hours at the border. We took off when Mike finally made it through around 2:00AM. I can now say I’ve spent the night on a border…

WDW vs. Waiting on the Border: You don’t HAVE to wait in any line if you don’t want to.

Driving on, Mike told us that EVERY car was being inspected very thoroughly for about 15 minutes. They were making everyone open all their baggage, they scanned the cars with flashlights all around, and hounded the drivers about where they’d been, what their business was, who they met, etc…. Apparently, they were looking for any weapons, drugs or illegal immigrants trying to make it over. I guess they were also looking for anyone on their wanted lists from the recent riots. He said the most stressful thing was NOT the inspection process though, but the fighting over the places in lines. Angry men were getting out of cars threatening each other, there was no place to pee, so drivers were letting loose right there in line beside their cars, and the exhaust fumes from the trucks were overwhelming.

WDW vs. Waiting on a border: There are near fist fights over places in line, but no one pees on the sidewalk.

And now for that “Terminal” story I had promised. While we were at the conference, someone told me a story about something that happened at this very border 6 months ago. The director of the International School in Bishkek went over to the other side with his basketball team to play in the regional tournament (Andrew’s school participated). When he came back to the border, AFTER having gone through the Blankistani side, the Kyrgyz side told him that his visa had been revoked! Since he only had a single entry visa for Blankistan, he could NOT simply turn around and go back! And Kyrgyzstan would NOT let him in. Between the borders there is a river and about 20 yards of bridge space. They put him under car arrest right there with armed guards, only letting he and his wife out of the car every 12 hours to pee. They let him sit there for F.O.U.R DAYS!!!!!!!! 4 DAYS, people! Finally, someone got a lawyer who was able to get a new Blankistani visa for him, and he was able to enter again. Yes, these things still happen. In 2010.

WDW vs. Getting stuck on a border: I’d LOVE for them to tell me I couldn’t ever leave WDW!!!

Mike could only drive a couple hours before he became too tired to keep the car on the road, so another field it would be to rest. It was chilly, so we piled extra dirty clothes from our bags onto us, and slept until dawn. That’s when a cow woke us up.

We only had a few hours to go until we reached the next major city where we planned on getting the DAY BEFORE, so we pressed on towards there. Along the way, we stopped to buy a jar of honey. All along this stretch of road for miles and miles there are beekeepers with their wagons of beehives and honey stands- dozens of sellers working the hives and selling their sweet wares to passersby. You can buy mountain honey, meadow honey, spun honey, honey comb, “grechka” honey. We chose some lighter tasting field honey made from some of the flowers I’ve shown you along the way. Mmmmm!!!! Already we’ve eaten about ½ of our liter that we bought on pancakes, bread, and crepes!

And now, my friends, it’s time to wrap up our tale of “there and back again”. I can tell you we did get home safely the next day after driving many hours. Our househelper had a huge pot of plov ready to eat, ice cold Cokes, and fresh bread. We were glad to finally be home, where we could begin the recovery process from…


the trip of a lifetime.