Home (and just in time for my birthday....maybe)

7/27/2007
Well we are back and adjusting to life in America again, enjoying the benefits of being able to have ice cubes anytime we want, drink red wine, eat fattening cheese, sleep in our own bed on a pillow that doesn’t feel like an overstuffed sausage, eat a steak (yes Murli, we are thinking of you!) , etc.  Jet lag hit fairly hard for a few days but we are back on American time now and wondering what to do next.  Two days after we got back, we went out to dinner for my birthday at La Cave compliments of my Mom and Jerry.  La Cave is a fantastic restaurant in Newport that has been here since the early 60’s and we love going there.  The steaks are great, martinis big and the cheese bread is awesome!  We also spent a very nice weekend on Suladan, our friend’s Paul and Jason’s “almost mega-yacht” which was great!.

Cindy’s birthday is coming up too so we figure we will have some R&R until then and after that start seriously thinking about gainful employment again.  It has officially been 448 days since I have had a paycheck so, unless we find a winning lotto ticket or an unknown, wealthy, generous distant relative, I suppose it is inevitable.  Not sure what my better half is planning on doing about the whole no work, no money thing (to paraphrase Odd Todd…)

Anyway, all in all we have had a fantastic 15 months off and really enjoyed all the travels.  Hope you all enjoyed reading about them and we are always open for visitors!

Namaste!

Cindy and Larry

August 22, 2008 - More Epilogue

Well a few weeks back I logged in to LinkedIn and saw that Kencho who was our travel agent for our visit to Bhutan was a suggested contact so I added her and the next day she e-mailed me telling me that Tashi who is her younger brother and was our driver in Bhutan is in the US on a tourist visa and is living in New York.

   We called him and told him he should come visit us in California and, after many conversations, convinced him to come out here where we could show him around as well as help him figure out how to apply for a visa extension. 

He came out Saturday August 16th and stayed until Friday morning and ended up running around Southern California including dinner parties here in Newport, tromping around Balboa Island and coincidentally running into my step-sister and her family, visiting with Paul and Suladan the almost-mega-yacht in the picture above, Universal Studios, IMAX for the new Batman movie (where he was duly impressed since he told us that there were only four movie theatres in all of Bhutan, none of them quite so massive as an IMAX theatre...) and of course Disneyland (I escaped from that adventure by working instead....). 

That was the fun part, the rest of the week was spent navigating the morass of the US Immigration Department trying to figure out what we had to do to help him extend his tourist visa and look into changing it into a Student visa so that he can attend hospitality or travel school here.

  What a pain in the ass!  I will never bitch about what a pain it was to get into Burma or China again!  We had to read tons of confusing websites, download and fill out forms, try to decipher arcane terminology and generally pull our hair out - that's in addition to Tashi having to pay $300 for the extension!  At the end of the week we did succesfully at least submit his B2 extension and talk to a few schools about how he might go about getting accepted and getting a Student visa. 

All in all I told him it would be MUCH easier if he just married a nice American girl (so anyone looking for a 24 year old Bhutanese husband feel free to apply here...)  If anyone on here knows much about transferring a B2 into some kind of student visa or has suggestions on where he might be able to find a relatively affordable hospitality/hotel school, please comment here.  I know he would appreciate it!

Thanks everyone and Happy Travels!

Larry and Cindy (patiently awaiting our mini-excursion to Nicaragua in November 2008)