Before visiting any place, I google about that place and make so many assumptions about it. Never do I find my expectations coming true. Every place has its own peculiarities and culture and google and its images doesn't help much in coping up with the challenges you might face there or the fun time you gonna have. So was mine. It was my dream going to Houston, not because I like that place, but because my most beloved and most precious ones live there. Those people in my life who are my blood yet I had only spent days with them that I could count on fingers. Three of my nieces and one nephew and their parents.
After becoming a mom, I am almost always starving and cooking has become a real challenge for me. Food is not that big trouble but my sleep has significantly reduced and its quality is pretty bad. The purpose of going there was to stock up on food and sleep so that I can cover up for 1.5 year of sleep and food. Luckily, I got both in over abundance plus one thing more in bonus: the Love!
Coming to the food, after being there for 2 weeks, I have realized that "You can only enjoy and appreciate food when you have an empty stomach". In there, I never really had an empty stomach. It was always full with all kinds of junk food, drinks, sweets and what not. American especially Texans care only about food in their life. Eating out multiple times a day is quite normal but food is so spicy- burning hot as hell. Although I liked it but initially it was a challenge to adapt to the food.
The second thing is sleep. I guess when you have a stomach that is full and mind free of worries, the only thing you want to do is to bed down. I have had best of my sleeps there. The amazing thing was that Ebrahiem and I had the challenge of jet lag for only 2 days. Me and my son are otherwise insomniac.
Talking about the bonus part, I was impressed with the love that I got from everybody especially from crazy babloo (Eaman), Mamoo M.. (Mahrukh) and R.. Bhai (Manahil also named brother MAC- Manahil Asad Chaudhry). I could not imagine how they could have so much love for me when they only saw me four years ago for only 7 days. I would never have gone there if I did not have repeated assertions from babloo, threatening calls at middle of the night whether or not I am coming.
How can I forget fitting into the backseats of car with four of us and one little Ebrahiem, singing and dancing in the car and then their father scolding us, sitting in the most garbage full car of my nephew and site seeing with him and his mommy, the sudden calls to come to a certain restaurant, being forced to eat all the heavy spicy food, fights with babloo and mahrukh for who will I sleep with, fights with Manahil for going out with my nephew, babloo hitting me with apples and stick because I decided not to sleep with her on my last day in Houston, Manahil bothering Ebrahiem and Ebrahiem choosing midnight to take his revenge by beating her up, babloo causing Ebrahiem to start to hate cola by filling him up with too much of it, writing crazy things on bhai's white board, fights between the cousins and all my nieces standing up against my nephew, babloo doing crazy things in the restaurants and saying: "I have no idea how that happened", babloo preparing bowl of ice cream with lots of whipped cream and oreo biscuits for herself; the bowl was enough for the whole family, babloo hiding whipped cream in the closet to eat it all, encountering and witnessing a jinn in a supermarket, babloo leading a prayer session for me with her sisters and aunt that I may find a job in Amreeka and stay with them forever, Ebrahiem learning lots of things there especially one little monkey rhyme and falling off on the bed, Ebrahiem seeking forgiveness from his sins saying Toba Toba all the time while he actually meant Tablet Tablet (the samsung one to play), babloo's cute questions about heaven and her prayers that she may get a house full of nutella, and she making the graph of her good deeds vs. bad deeds and her good deeds were always more than the bad ones, watching movies together and Mahrukh making parental settings on almost every scene, Manahil only letting us watch the beginning and end of the movie because she thinks its too long otherwise and because she has watched the movie already, singing songs at 4:00 am, all five of us, doing puppet show at night, acting and copying some funny relatives and making a performance show all the time, dropping and picking up babloo mahrukh from school, babloo and Manahil faking illness to stay at home, and finally the best one from Mahrukh by coming back from school early by faking illness and able to reach to the airport to drop me and Ebrahiem off. The puzzle was then solved why only Manahil and Eaman were crying when they were leaving for school and not Mahrukh who did that only at the airport!!!
From the diary of a proud phoppo and khala!
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