R.I.P.

I would like everyone to take a moment of silence in reflection of the accidental disposal of our sacred lemonhead.


And then take a moment to yell at OttoBock for trashing it at his birthday luncheon. I ingeniously hid the lemonhead in his cupcake and he swallowed it whole--wrapper and all.

Psych! He forgot to grab the lemonhead after we left the restaurant and now we must find a new game to entertain ourselves with on the clock.

Maybe Bear can bring us back a defective treat from the UK?? One can only hope.

xoxo,
Bushbaby

Forget Bull Riding

GOLDEN MAN!

The team arrives in Astana. I slept the whole way. It is 5am here. This city is amazing. All the major buildings, actually all the buildings, have been put up in the last 10 years. Before that the city was just a potato farming community. Now it has sky scrapers and Golden Man.

The first day we visit some museums and take a look around the city. Nothing to funny happened.

I am put to work on Monday. Once work starts there is not really any excitement. We go out to eat. I am tricked into thinking I ate horse meat. Thank goodness I didn't.
The funniest thing that occurred was on Tuesday. We all go bowling. J sees it as a good group building exercise. One of my teammates, we will call him R, says he has never bowled before. No big deal. I am up first. I get all nervous and roll two gutter balls. Dang it. R is after me. He finds the heaviest bowling ball the place has. Picks it up and raises it above his head. R then proceeds to move the bowling ball in giant circles above his head and runs full speed at the lane. He more or less shot puts the ball down the alley. I can't remember how many pins he hit because I was doubled over from laughing so hard. R turns around laughing and gives me the thumbs up and we high five. R's next time up he dances with the ball before hurling it down the lane. Every time he gets up he has a new move. During one of his performances he is so into it that as he lets go of the ball he slips and fall face first on to the ground! It didn't bother him at all because that throw got him his first strike! I do not think I have ever had so much fun or laughed so hard.

Golden Man is some guy that died in Kazakhstan a long time ago. The picture above shows what he was buried in. He has no ties to Kazakhstan other than being buried here, but he is everywhere. There are tons of statues of him all over the city standing on a tiger. I don’t get it.

Someone On Our Team Almost Goes To Jail

We arrive in Vienna. I am on no sleep. We have a twelve hour layover. I am excited about grabbing some shut eye. Instead the group decides to go for a walk about and grab some lunch. Then we would come back to the airport and have a nap with a full belly. Sounds good to me.

We take the train into the city. J says that he has been to Vienna tons of times and takes the lead. We walk around and look at some buildings and statues. After about an hour the group realizes that J has no idea where we are or where we are going. We are lost. We ask for directions and I think that the people in that city were screwing with us because they would always tell us different ways. The map we had did not have individual street names. It was a subway map. After walking for, no joke, 3 hours we arrive at the area in Vienna that J wanted us to see. We walked all that way to see a church. Are you kidding me! We came here for this!? I put on a good face and go inside and prayed that the group would want to go back to the airport soon. We visit 3 or 4 more churches. If I wasn't so tired I am sure I would have appreciated them more. For lunch we stop for at a cafe for some coffee. I wolf down some small sandwich they had on the menu.

J says that we really should go see the rose garden. Vienna is famous for it. I am starting to think this guy is crazy. We head off in the direction J thinks is the rose garden. Along the way we come across the Vienna Spanish Riding School. This place looks cool. If we had stayed the weekend here I would have made someone come with me to see it. We keep walking around the building. Out of the corner of my eye I spot the stables where they keep some of the horses. There were giant windows for people to look into the main area of the stables. There was also two giant french doors. One of the doors were open. I was not sure if this was on purpose of if someone had just forgotten to shut the door. B walks straight through the doors and starts getting close to the horses and checking them out. I am not sure he is suppose to be in there. The rest of the group, including myself, stay on the outside and watch B walk around the stables. All of the sudden we hear a bunch of noise behind us. There are 6 men coming our way with horses. It looks as though they just finished practicing with them. Oh no. B is about to get in trouble. The first two guys enter the stable with their horses and don’t notice B. The third guy sees him right away. He starts scream at B! B is totally shock. I can barely stand from laughing so hard.


We find the rose garden. There are hardly any roses in bloom. It is still too early. I sit on a bench to rest my feet while J goes around and smells the roses that are in bloom. The thing I did notice is that all of the birds in Vienna are freaking huge! The pigeons look like little piglets. The crows are so massive I am astonish they can even make it off the ground.

We convince J to take us back to the airport. The whole group has seen enough of Vienna. We get lost on our way back to the train. J says "Put me in the woods and I can find anything. Put me in a city and I get lost in two seconds." He is not joking. We find a police officer and ask him where the train to the airport. He informs us that we are on the totally opposite side of Vienna. We tar and feather J.

We arrive back at the airport with 4 hours to spare. I decide to stay away and just sleep on the plane.

Why does no one wear shoes on a plane?

I get to the airport and go to get my tickets and check my luggage. The lady at the counter says that we have a full flight and she will have to weigh my carry on. It is 3lbs to heavy. I have to check my carry on. I tried to plan my luggage so that if my checked bag gets lost I will still have back up clothes in my carry on that can last me one or two days. Now I am screwed. All I take on the plane is my cell phone and a laptop.

I am kind of excited to see if both pieces of luggage make it. If they lose both I will be shopping for a new suit in Kazakhstan.

The plane is huge, three rows. Two seats on the sides and three seats in the middle. I get an aisle seat in the middle and it is in the emergency row. I have no seats in front of me just a wall. Tons of leg room. This flight is going to be a cake walk. Then I see her, and her baby. They plop down right beside me. We have not even shut the door to the plane before the baby starts to cry. The mom, a German woman in her early twenties who speaks no English, tries to console the baby. It is not working. So she goes ahead and starts to breast feed the child! Really. I am sitting right here!

We take off. It is just me and the German mom in our row so she moves to the other isle seat. Once the seat belt sign has been turned off a flight attendant appears with a crib that attaches to the wall in front of us. Goodbye leg room. The German mom gets up and tries to arrange the crib comfortably for the baby but she doesn't have enough hands. She hands the baby to me. Awesome. I am holding this baby at arm’s reach hoping that she doesn't get sick at that exact moment. The baby and I stare at each other while the mom works on the crib. I try to make the baby smile by making funny faces but I don't think she got my English humor. She just kept staring at me and gives me weird looks. Once the crib is set up to the mother's liking she put the little baby in it. The baby hates it. It won’t stop crying while in the crib. The total amount of time that baby spent in the crib was about 30 minutes.

For the rest of the flight all the other little kids on the plane, there must have been about 20, stopped by to see and touch the baby. For the majority of them this meant that they had to crawl over me. Where are these kid’s parents? Why are they letting their children run up and down the aisle and why do they think it is okay to let their children crawl all over me?

As it gets later in the flight the hooligans come by less and less. I finally am able to lye back and close my eyes. Only 3 more hours to go. Right as I am drifting off to sleep the baby wakes up and starts to cry.

This is pretty much how I spent my nine hour flight. Holding a little German baby while her mom ate or went to the bathroom, had little kids crawling all over me, and when I wasn't doing either of these I was listen to the baby whale or staring the other direction while his mother feed him. I got no sleep.

I took a picture of the mom and her baby but I have it on my phone. I am not going to be able to post it until I get back into the states. Sorry.

Drugs

After talking with many co-worker I decided that it might be a good idea to go see a doctor and ask for some medication in case I get sick. I go to my doctor and tell him my travel plans. He suggest I take three different medications. One to help me sleep, one to stop the hershey squirts, and one to help me if I can't stop throwing up. I leave the doctor's office thinking I am in good shape.

I call my mother on the way to the pharmacy to pick up my medication. I let her know what the doctor prescribed for me. She said I should probably only take half of a sleeping pill. She then asked me about the medication he gave me for if I start throwing up. I tell her and she says, "You should read the label carefully on the bottle because I don't think those are meant to be swallowed." WHAT! He wants me to do WHAT! No freaking way am I going to do that!

Those 30 minutes it took for the pharmacist to fill my order were the longest minutes ever. He finally calls my name. I grab the pill bottles and read all of them. They all read take by mouth. What a relief.

I really did run away and join a traveling circus!

All in all there are 14 of us, including myself and my BFF. Yea, it’s awesome! And I am not being sarcastic either. It’s truly amazing. I am meeting some of the most interesting, intelligent people I will ever have an opportunity to meet. And they are a riot too!

So let’s see. You already know about Baby Ruthe, JJ, Mr. –italy, and me. So let’s see if I can briefly describe the other 10 folks. You might want to check out a copy of the schedule for this course so you can figure out the initials and titles I’m using. (I am going down the list alphabetically…type A personality at its best.)

Scottsman #1: AD a.k.a. Angela’s BFF (although I am trying my hardest to win him over!!) He is a trip! He and I have gotten along pretty fantastically. He has quite a sweet tooth , loves late 70’s/ early 80’s music, and has worn a pink shirt I think almost everyday! His sense of humor is top notch.

BoSox fan: BF. We all know him and saw him two weeks ago with all the other part-timers who were in town. He is very well-known by many of the Croatians and other instructors even though he is new to our crew. Nicknamed him my Uncle.

Italian princessa: CF. Very talented Doctor/Professor from Milan. Young, chic, speaks a myriad of languages and has traveled with some of these guys before.

Obama: KK. Get this! He is a younger, very handsome replica of our president. For real! Works where Freddy used to work. Funny and down to earth guy who I took the tour of Diocletian’s palace with. I tried to steal his encrypted flash drive, in the end I just let him borrow my puny little boring flash drive so he could present some videos to the participants.

My resident David Otto: RL. I told him before the end of the trip I was going to shove him into the pool, or perhaps even the Adriatic. He keeps messing with my stinkin’ badges and everything else! He works for JJ’s old organization. Super funny, could definitely hang with our crowd, recently back from his honeymoon in Barbados. He also toured the palace and city of Split with me.

AP. This is sad, but I have no idea where he is from. From his title, I’m deducing that he is from the UK--Ireland, perhaps? He sort of looks like a leprechaun with the pointy features and that strawberry blonde hair. In my defense, we have only spoken about the course material and other work-related things AND he lacks an accent (or it’s so slight in comparison to AD, JW, -Italy, PS, DY and all the Croatians’ that I hardly even notice it). He is very polite and personable, and really knows his stuff!

The Admiral: PS. I was incredibly intimidated by him at first, but he is a sweetheart! Very polite, courteous, and thoughtful. Once you crack the tough exterior, he is a very kind-natured man. He often comes up to Schmitaly and me and offers suggestions on things, but we have already done the things he has suggested. I hope to get to know him better before the trip ends!

The Judge: RS. I wish I had a title like his! Could you imagine: Honorable Valerie? Nah, me neither. He is quite the wine aficionado. And he reminds me so much of someone but I can’t quite put my finger on it. I hope speak with him more in depth before the course is over.

Scottsman #2: JW. T-R-O-U-B-L-E! A retired Colonel from the UK (used to be AD's boss' boss) who dabbles in bee-keeping, judging my choice in footwear, a genealogy expert on his last name, and teaching me history, chemistry, biology, and random factoids. I love this man. He is fantastic; if he really could adopt me I would willingly let him. Gives great bear hugs too!

DY. Not only is he a retired General from Israel, but he can also practice the art of Chinese medicine! He knows all about pressure points and how to cure just about any ailment you may have by simply listening to your symptoms and applying the appropriate amount of pressure to the specific location to treat your illness! It’s awesome! He’s fixed the Doctori and RK! No joke!