Around the World in a Couple of Days

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” – Robert Louis Stevenson


Spring fever has hit in the form of temporary school brain loss for my children and, rather than suffer with three days of state mandated tests last week, we decided to run away.


And guess where we went?


Branson.


I know! We’re going to wear that place OUT.


WorldFest is going on at Silver Dollar City and having the foreign husband and all has always made it a draw for me, but I’d never gotten to go before. They have their festivals at the same time each year and this one is just after Spring Break, but before school lets out for the summer. Perhaps the Missouri summers are too hot for some of their internationals? I don’t know. They are too hot for this girl, for sure. Thank goodness for the water rides.


But, we didn’t have to worry about that this time.


We got there on Thursday and spent, oh, about SIX HOURS, at Silver Dollar City. We watched a Russian circus act (I love how they are denoted on the website with an asterisk pointing to pending visa approval), a musical and dancing and fire limboing group from Trinidad and Tobago…

I still don't know how he did this:

Another musical group from Rajasthan…

They were jamming out to rhythms I couldn’t quite hear. Unlike any music I’d ever heard before.


We walked around through the different vendors from all over the world. Our favorite stuff was from China (definitely not the stuff you find at Wal-Mart), and we had to return the next day to take home dragon marionettes that would surely bring the kids good luck as the lady told them.

I personally liked the puppets she had and secretly wanted to buy one of each. But I didn’t. Maybe next year.

One of them kind of looks like me in the morning. I’ll let you guess which one.


Such a good time was had on Thursday, we returned on Friday for more, more, more. We watched a Russian band:

You haven’t lived until you’ve heard a Russian sing Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.” Or maybe that was “Vat a Vonderful Verld.” And we’re still singing their rendition of “I scveam, you scveam, we all scveam for ice cream!”

It was awesome! Probably only paralleled by my own Russian singing Willie Nelson songs.


Rain and cold weather on Friday drove us out of Silver Dollar City and into the outlet malls and swimming pool of our hotel, but not before we had German apfel dumplings with cinnamon ice cream, Irish stew in a sourdough bread bowl, and black forest cake. We truly felt we’d really been somewhere!


And there was more that we missed. We missed the Irish. We missed the Canadians. We missed the Ecuadorans.


I have to say, though, that this was my second favorite festival for Silver Dollar City (my first being KidsFest and previous second being Christmas), and that we’ll probably be skipping school every Spring to attend for at least a few days!