Then with some food in our tummies we were ready to hit the Goodwill! Colleen was not prepared for what Goodwill shopping can mean in our family, so after about an hour, maybe hour and a half she and Sarah walked around outside for a bit before coming back to hurry the rest of us along. We found some cute things for “Baby Gaga” and Jan got some porch furniture. I found a fun t-shirt that had the flag of Kazakhstan on the front and above the flag it said “Kazakhstan” and below the flag it said “it’s nice” which made me laugh, but it wasn’t a size that would have fit anyone in my family so I did not buy it. Purchases made, the next thing to do was figure out how to fit back in the car along with all of our Goodwill goodies.

After dropping off all our new treasures as well as Sarah and Colleen, Jan, Mom, and I went on to the grocey store to pick up supplies for dinner and breakfast. We had squealers and grilled veggies for dinner and shared some laughs when Mom kept talking about “Mike & Ike’s hard lemonade” and Jan asked for some “ice clubes.” After dinner we played a very long game of Apples to Apples (I won ) before zoning out to “Say Yes to the Dress.” Saturday morning Jan made her famous stuffed french toast for breakfast complete with fresh blueberries to get us all geared up to go berry picking! After breakfast, with buckets and sun protection (and in my case, a solid dose of bug spray) in place we headed off into the fields for some marathon blueberry picking. The bushes were pretty full and the buckets seemed to fill quickly at first. (As did some people’s tummies.)

But the sun was awfully hot and we’d left all the water back in the car, so after about three hours I took the first load of full buckets back to the car and had a break. Not long after I’d stopped, Sarah and Colleen came out with several more full buckets and it started to rain. After another 10-15 minutes in the rain it became obvious that the mommas were not coming and so Sarah and went back to retrieve them. While I waited in the safety of the car a little yellow airplane buzzed just overhead and cropdusted the fields of corn surrounding the blueberry patch. I tried several times to get a good picture but failed. With blueberries picked and sorted and stored we took turns showering and decided that there was still enough time to drive up into Michigan and visit some wineries. Although I remember visiting wineries as a kid on vacation with my family, this was my first experience with the “wine tasting.” The first place we went gave us small samples of 7 wines each of our choice and one vodka made entirely from grapes.

The next stop was beer tasting with 6 varieties to choose from. I smelled them but I just think beer is gross so I only tasted the tiniest amount of one which had intrigued me with its name of “Cocoa Stout” but it too was gross so I didn’t bother with any others. Then we drove to another winery which offered not only 6 more wine samples each, but also a sparkling grape juice and chocolates.

On the way back to Jan’s it stormed some more and we discussed what kind of pizza to order from “Country Folk’s.” This time we dropped Mom and Jan off to walk the lane while Sarah and Colleen and I picked up the pizza.

After dinner we watched Mama Mia. Despite my meds, all the outdoors and “hairy girls” (Jan’s dogs) were really doing a numer on my nose and eyes. But all was well Sunday morning when Jan made uber yummy cinnamon rolls for brekky. After a leisurly morning of rolls on the porch, watching Colleen go off to run her 7 miles, we divvied up the blueberries and loaded up the car. On the road we listened to the final game of the World Cup between Spain and the Netherlands. The AM radio station that seemed to be the only one broadcasting the game was faint and so we listened for hours through lots of static and just as we pulled into Mom’s driveway and Sarah was about to run into the house to catch the exciting overtime on the tv, Spain scored a goal in the last minutes of overtime and it ended, so we didn’t see any of it.

On St. Patrick’s Day of course we all wore green and Josh took part of the afternoon off so we could go shopping and we took the kids out for a fancy fondue dinner at the Melting Pot. They all tried lobster and filet mignon for the first time and mostly enjoyed it! On our last day there we went to the Children’s Museum. The kids of all ages enjoyed the ball room and the construction zone! Then we found some costumes and sat through a puppet show.

On our way home, we made a detour up to Ames to see Percy Jackson and the Olympians the Lightning Theif. We’d been warned it was not great but the kids wanted to see it anyway. Jacob is reading the book. The movie exceeded my expectations, but Jacob agreed that the book is way way better and therefore the movie stunk. LOL Completely unrelated, yesterday we made the kids swap bedrooms. It was quite an undertaking and I don’t have any pictures yet, but I’ll take some when the process is finished. I do have some pictures of what I did today, here, enjoy!

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?

In the morning, the trolley picked us up at the hotel and we had a little tour around Muscatine/dance party–80’s tunes blaring! (Courtesy of Danaka’s and then Sarah’s ipod hooked into the trolley stereo system!) We stopped up at the Mark Twain overlook for some pictures–one overlooking the Mississippi River, and one overlooking downtown Muscatine. After a few more errands we stopped at my parents’ home for warm soup, cold sandwiches, and some knitting lessons!

Of course I’m leaving out several of the details, like why Danaka has that awesome blue streak in her hair but what can I say, we like to party!

Ok, so we left home on a Wednesday and I’ve posted up to the next Wednesday which was the day that we went to the school. School No 2 is the sister school of the Muscatine High School, where Josh and I attended. I spent the entire second semester of my sophomore year as an exchange student at School No 2, and I visited again the summer between my junior and senior years, and went back for the entire schoolyear after I graduated 95-96 to help out in the English department at School No 2.

The building hasn’t changed all that much, and many of my teacher friends were still there too!

We just had a moment to meet with Nonna who is now the principal, and then we were taken up to a very large classroom where students of many ages were already gathered and seated and waiting relatively quietly for us. We answered questions for about a half an hour or so and then were swarmed with requests for autographs and short messages in english. We felt kind of like rock stars! When the teachers had finally cleared the room we were taken to another room to have our pictures taken with the senior class, and then we had a small visit in the teachers lounge.

Josh seemed to really enjoy the experience at the school. It was really cool for me just to be back there and to see so many familiar faces, it made me sad that the teachers there–who work so hard for practically nothing, explained that Americans don’t come there anymore and that for most of the students we were the first Americans they’ve ever seen. They are still very interested in all of the friends they’ve met through the years of exchanges with Muscatine, and hope to continue and expand the relationships in the future.