Josh and Becca Thrap and Family

I’m never gonna get through our whole trip at this rate and I can tell that I’m already forgetting some details! Not that I write all the details anyway, but whatever, moving on! So! When I stopped last time we had just visited the school and all the teachers were asking why they never hear from their American friends anymore. We walked home from school and briefly checked in with Tania before heading out again to be picked up by a friend that I hadn’t heard from or been able to contact since 1996! GALA!!! She and her husband Garik picked us up and drove us to a cafe in nearby Essentuki. Her English was still really good and I learned that she had been a teacher for a while but now she runs a children’s shop in Kislovodsk just up the street from the bazaar! Garik didn’t talk much, but he made sure that we experienced all the best that the cafe had to offer! I know I can’t even remember everything that we ate, but I do have pictures of most of it! After lunch, we drove back to K’vodsk very quickly and Gala showed us the places where we used to picnic and Josh got to experience another Narzan site. We had to get back for our evening plans but we arranged to get together again before our departure.

Gala dropped us off back at Tikhonenkos and we were just in time to catch our next ride! We squeezed into Teacher Tanya Azova’s car along with Alla Dremluga and her now tall teenage son and they drove us to the Castle of Love and Betrayal. Tanya regaled Josh with the story behind the name and now he knows why men say “ladies first!” The whole castle area is much more developed as an “attraction” than I remembered it, but we still had our picture taken on the bridge where all the wedding parties go. It was dusk by now and my camera really doesn’t like taking pictures at dusk so many of my pictures from this trip are blurry. We stopped again for more Narzan and then we headed back into town for some ice cream! We ate at a nice little place right behind the grand theatre overlooking the shopping street below.

am I forgetting anything important?