Amazing Race

[Karen]

Scandinavia is on my list of places to visit some day, as that's not only beautiful, but where some of my great-grandparents are from! Sweden, not Norway, but not as far North as they were!

[cassiesmom]

Please correct me if I'm wrong - but I think the teams that have been eliminated the last two weeks have previously finished first? I hope the same fate befalls the team that finished first tonight!

It's the wrong time of year for paczki! Now I am craving one! I'll have to go to the doughnut shop and buy one with cream or jelly filling. Fat Tuesday is still five months away. I loved how happy the lady was who had the rose filled ones in her flat - she was so cute when they got it right!

[Karen]

It's the wrong time of year for paczki! Now I am craving one! I'll have to go to the doughnut shop and buy one with cream or jelly filling. Fat Tuesday is still five months away. I loved how happy the lady was who had the rose filled ones in her flat - she was so cute when they got it right!

This was probably filmed near midsummer, given that the sun never set when they were in Norway - they must have gotten someone to make the paczki out of season!

[cassiesmom]

Another team that I was rooting for was the last team to arrive at the pit stop. I was hoping this would be a non-elimination week. The team I'm NOT rooting for did pretty well, unfortunately.

I wanted to jump right through the TV and take a turn at trying to sing Schubert with the Vienna Boys' Choir! Some day I hope to visit Schloß Schönbrunn! Wow! (Actually ... one of my "Bucket List" trips is one my parents took about 20 years ago - a guided tour visiting Prague and Vienna.)

[Karen]

I wanted to jump right through the TV and take a turn at trying to sing Schubert with the Vienna Boys' Choir! Some day I hope to visit Schloß Schönbrunn! Wow! (Actually ... one of my "Bucket List" trips is one my parents took about 20 years ago - a guided tour visiting Prague and Vienna.)

I felt truly bad for the non-musicians in this one - one of the rare challenges that I would have done well at! I don't know the German language but have sung in German, so I would have had fun! I thought the doc had the best singing voice, even if he didn't sound great in the lower octave! And thought it was okay that they didn't try to make the tone deaf people sing the note correctly - when the pronounced the words okay, got the timing right, and went vaguely up or down as the notes did, they got through, so it was more fair that way!

[cassiesmom]

I don't know much about mosques, but the one the teams visited in Abu Dhabi looked really interesting. (No pews, though - do people sit down when they go to a mosque? Do they sit on the floor?) I noticed that the teams were a little more plainly dressed, no tank shirts on the men and no very short sleeves for the women. The cousins only got there 10 minutes ahead of the other teams but that was a good head start for them.

I'd be okay with any of the teams winning except the woman with the pink hair. Yikes!

[Karen]

I was a little annoyed that the baseball wives thought they should keep the location some of the dates secret, to the point that they were annoyed when the Afghanimals found it and were loud about it ... and so was okay with the fact that they still finished where they did!

I do like the team that came in first this week for the fact that they are going through the race with pretty much unabashed glee. Even when they bicker, it is over pretty quickly!

All the footage I have seen, people bring their own personal prayer rug and kneel in mosques. But we need Popcornbird to weigh in on this! What a gorgeous building, the stonework and ornamentation was just breathtaking!