We're coming home...

Yippppeeee!

We got Griffin’s travel Visa today and we’re coming home!

I'm so excited to embark on the journey home… well sort of. The journey home starts with waking at 3:30 a.m., a 7 + hour flight to Amsterdam, a 5 hour layover, a 9 hour flight to Detroit, a 3 hour layover, 1 hour flight to Cincinnati… oh and an hour drive home. Seriously!

If the Travel Gods are with us we’ll be landing in Cincinnati at 10:35 p.m. Wednesday night.

Tired Cowboy

Preface to story: When ordering a meal at a restaurant in Kazakhstan you usually seat yourself at a table and then are presented with a menu. A minute later the waiter is hovering to take your order. They don’t take your drink order and then come back for food order. They take your complete order all at once and then bring food and drinks at random times. The side dishes and entrees come separately and each person at table just has to wait until their food arrives. You always have to ask for the bill, they will not bring it until you ask. We’ve been here long enough to know the routine and it’s really no big deal.

So Monday night we meet the Finney’s for dinner and decide to go to a “bar and grill”. This saloon has a serious cowboy theme. Cowhide, horse shoes, wooden benches and post, bull horns, even the waitress wore a cowboy hat. The restaurant decided to carry the cowboy theme onto the menu. They had dishes named, The Big Horn and Saddle Stew. We all chuckled as we read the names because we’re quite right. For example, one dish is named the “Tired Cowboy”, the description says “beef that will melt in your mouth”. Everyone places an order and we sit and wait. Finally the first entrée arrives, the waitress puts the plate down in front of Ben (see photo above) and we all start laughing. You’ve got to be kidding me… is that sausage? So Jesse is in hysterics and really starts giving Ben a hard time about his dinner. “Where’d they get that sausage from Griffin’s diaper”, “Isn’t that cute, it has a peace sign. Have peace on your digestive tract”, “What was that dish called, Alpo?”, “I need a picture of that gross looking stuff”, and on and on and on and on.

The completely none-English speaking cowboy hat wearing waitress comes back a few minutes and appears to be apologizing about something. We have no idea what she’s saying. She finally just reaches in front of Ben and grabs the untouched plate from him and places it in front of… Jesse. That’s the Tired Cowboy dish that Jesse ordered, not Ben’s sausage. The laughter that exploded from Ben, Kerry and I could be heard in Ohio! Jesse was speechless.