Friday night we went out for Joe's 32nd birthday. We'd seen a bowling place near one of the larger and more tucked away hotels in the area, and he decided he wanted to spend the evening there. We walked over around 9 and met up with other people from the program. Mina had invited a grounded Belgian military unit - their plane broke down on the way to Afghanistan; I don't know where she met them - as well as a few other people, so we had a lively international group going after a while. It was nice to have a large part of the group together again, especially since we all realized it was our last weekend with everyone in town.
The next day, we headed to our second day of rest (esteraahat) at Varzob. Varzob is about an hour away from the center of the city, a bit higher up in the mountains. We took a chartered bus, which made it over the thinnest bridge I have ever seen on a roadway. (Someone has a picture; I will try to get one. It was nerve-wracking, but we survived.) The house where we stayed for the day has two very large cots which are built over a section of a river. We also had access to a swimming pool, an unstocked bar, the most disgusting outhouses I have ever heard of (I refused to actually go and see for myself), and the surrounding area. Some of the people went hiking; others went swimming; I play GameBoy Color and chess. I thought about going to explore, but honestly, we'd been going strong for 10 weeks at that point without any breaks or rest and I was TIRED. Thankfully, Jill didn't have a camera that day and so she took pictures with mine. After lunch, I took a swim in the freezing cold pool, and then we headed back to town.
Sunday we all slept in, and then met at the school at 4-ish. (Actually, every time I list in here is an "ish" time, so just keep that in mind.) We went to the newest amusement park in the city, which everyone calls AquaPark but I'm pretty sure has a different name. At any rate, most of the park was shut down - restaurants because it's Ramadan, roller coasters and the ferris wheel because it's Dushanbe and they can - so we were basically stuck in the kids section. I thought that meant we were going to have a bad time and wasted our program fee. Oh, but wait:
BUMPER. CARS.
So each attraction cost a number of Som to get on. They ranged from 2 Som to 10 Som. The bumper cars were 10 Som per go. Nodir Aqa had given us each 20 Som (thanks to me having 200 in 20's to change out for his 2 100's) and that went STRAIGHT to the bumper cars. We gathered a crowd because we're a bunch of Americans, and much of the group was speaking English (the part I don't like), but we had a great time and just rode twice since there was no wait for the ride while we were on it (the part I do like).
After bumper cars, we went to a haunted house, which turned out to be scarier because of the guy who worked there and led us through than the actual attractions. He stood really close and kept touching us trying to guide us in the right direction. If he would have just spoken Tajiki I could have translated. Oh well.
Afterward, we went back to bumper cars.
After bumper cars part 3, we decided to paddleboat before heading out. Bobo (Zac) and I got on one boat with one of the local program employees and her baby sister. (Bobo, where are the pictures of that adorable child?) We paddled around while singing Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" which was one of the 10 songs that played in the park all day. I forgot how much hard work paddleboating is.
For dinner, we went to a Mexican restaurant which also had Italian food. We were all really excited that we finally found a place with real tacos and burritos...and we were all sorely disappointed. The burritos were not what you can get at home at all. To be fair, the chicken alfredo was actually pretty good, and the chicken empanadas were excellent, but everything else fell short. To be honest, the real issue was the spicing of the meat and the beans. I'd rename that style of food from Mexican to Mexijiki.
Nick and I returned to AquaPark to be with our host family, who had taken the kids there. We bummed around with them for a while and got some pretty good pictures before the park closed. I was happy that the kids got a chance to hang out in the park with us; they and we all had a good time. All in all, it was a fairly restful weekend.
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