Charla and Mirna

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The Amazing Race contestant
Charla Baklayan Faddoul and Mirna Hindoyan


Resides	Phoenix, Maryland and Towson, Maryland
Season(s)	Season 5 and All-Stars
Teammate
Finish	6th place (Season 5)

Charla Baklayan Faddoul and Mirna Hindoyan were contestants on the fifth and eleventh (all-star version) editions on the American multiple-Emmy Award-winning game show The Amazing Race.

1 Background
2 The Amazing Race 5
3 Post-Amazing Race 5 and Pre-Amazing Race 11
4 Amazing Race All-Stars
5 See also
6 External links
7 References

[edit] Background

Charla, a manager and co-owner of ten sportswear stores across her home state, is from Phoenix, Maryland and was born in in the country of Syria of Armenian decent. She has a form of dwarfism.

Mirna was born in the same hospital a month after her cousin and is also Armenian. She works as an estate planning attorney in Towson, Maryland, and stated that, prior to her first race experience, she had to wrap up about fifty cases for clients before she left.^[1] Her participation in The Amazing Race led to speaking engagements as well as an invitation to the Emmy Awards. Her first speaking engagement was at Towson University, of which she and her cousin are alumnae.^[2]

Both Charla and Mirna are well-traveled and claim to speak several different languages including Turkish, Arabic, Armenian, French and Spanish.^[3]

[edit] The Amazing Race 5

Charla and Mirna doing a detour in Russia during the Amazing Race 5

The Amazing Race 5 started off in the Californian city of Santa Monica. Though slow off the starting line (because of Charla's dwarfism), the cousins still managed to get onto an early flight out of the city to their first destination, Montevideo, Uruguay. Throughout the first leg, the cousins performed unusual tasks, such as the much-famed 55-lb beef-carrying, which indicated to many that the cousins were capable of grabbing the one-million-dollar prize. Continuing their adventures across South America, Charla and Mirna blitzed through the legs claiming 2nd place (out of 9, 10 and 11) after setting the pace by quickly winning a Roadblock in Buenos Aires.

All the teams then flew to St Petersburg, Russia where a caviar-eating challenge was easy for Charla. She managed to eat nearly two pounds of salty fish eggs and her team came in fourth in the leg. In Egypt (legs 5 and 6), the cousins managed to get an early flight connection to Cairo to claim yet another 2nd place finish. After that leg, the cousins' ranking went downhill. In Luxor, they only managed a 5th-place finish (of seven teams) and in Lake Manyara, Tanzania, a delayed flight ultimately sealed their fate as they lost the leg by less than 10 minutes to the second-to-last team, twins Kami and Karli.

Throughout the series, Charla tended to complete the eating Roadblocks whilst Mirna completed the more physical challenges such as leg 2's Buenos Aires Roadblock, consisting of grabbing a red bandana off a running bull. Also during the race, two more dominant teams -- Colin & Christie and Marshall & Lance -- were in conflict with the cousins; neither the cousins nor the other teams came out of those conflicts looking very good. In legs 5 and 6, Charla and Mirna developed an alliance with bowling moms Linda and Karen, which lasted until the moment Charla and Mirna were "philiminated," which surprisingly brought the host to tears.

[edit] Post-Amazing Race 5 and Pre-Amazing Race 11

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Between the two races the cousins participated in, both Charla and Mirna got married. At the age of 30, Charla is planning to have a baby with her husband through the process of IVF. In an interview for The Amazing Race 11, Charla said if they won the all-star season of The Amazing Race, she would use the money for the IVF process. Since both of the cousins had noticed that Charla's speed had slowed them down in the first race, in the All-Star race Charla would be using a secret weapon: "Heelies," which would hopefully improve her speed in footraces.^[4] Outside of The Amazing Race, the cousins have appeared on numerous game shows and interviews. These include the 'Price is Right', on which neither Charla nor Mirna made it into the contestants' row; MADtv, in an Amazing Race parody; and Bravo TV's Battle of the Network Reality Stars, on which they appeared with fellow season 5 contestants Chip & Kim. Charla & Mirna were both eliminated, but Mirna returned and ended up on the winning team. Charla also appeared on HBO's The Comeback starring Lisa Kudrow as well as the "reality stars" themed first game of Season 7 of Celebrity Poker Showdown. Charla & Mirna were both featured in recaps on various episodes of The Soup on E!.

[edit] Amazing Race All-Stars

Charla and Mirna were picked as one of the eleven teams that would again race for $1 million. In the first leg of the race, the teams began in Miami where surprisingly, Charla beat Drew (of Kevin and Drew of Season 1) in a footrace off the starting line (in fairness, Drew was suffering from various medical problems, and Kevin and Drew were eliminated in the second leg of the race). Though they got out of the golf course in 10th place, their navigation skills proved to be worthy and they managed to get on the earlier flight into Quito, Ecuador alongside Season 3's John Vito and Jill and Teri and Ian as well as Season 2's "Miami Boys" Oswald and Danny and reality stars Rob and Amber from Season 7. Charla and Mirna had been in the front of the pack for the first few tasks (encompassing the Plaza de San Francisco and Pim's Restaurant), but on the next day, they slid to the back of the pack after going to the south entrance of Hacienda Yanahurco rather than the specified north. In a race with David and Mary or "Team Kentucky" of Season 10, Charla and Mirna finished 8th (their lowest ranking yet) and David and Mary finished 9th. The race then flew to the Atacama Desert in Chile with a stopover in the Chilean capital, Santiago. In the Santiago museum, Charla performed the Roadblock. To everyone's surprise, all ten teams were gathered at the Detour, the only activity prior to the pit stop. It was "Beauty Queens" Dustin and Kandice, Teri and Ian, David and Mary, Charla and Mirna, and Kevin and Drew who drove through the dead desert to avoid elimination. Dustin and Kandice, Teri and Ian, Charla and Mirna, David and Mary and Kevin and Drew arrived 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th respectively with Kevin and Drew eliminated.

The race then went to the Southern Chilean town of Puerto Montt and Petrohue, where things went to the extreme. Battling from elimination, Charla and Mirna, Joe and Bill, and David and Mary had to whitewater raft through the river to avoid elimination. Luckily, the cousins managed to grab another 8th placing with former allies David and Mary subsequently eliminated. In Leg 4 in Punta Arenas (Chile) and Ushuaia (Argentina) the cousins fell behind the 7th-placed Rob and Amber. The roadblock at Isla Redonda, the southernmost point of South America, proved critical as the cousins and season 7 winners Uchenna and Joyce battled it out to avoid elimination. Uchenna and Joyce managed to snatch a 6th place finish while Mirna/Charla and Rob/Amber fought intensely at the Roadblock, held at the Isla Redonda post office. Mirna managed to finish the Roadblock earlier than Rob and Amber, so the cousins reached the mat in 7th place, leading to the elimination of Rob and Amber (winners of all three legs of the race up until that point). In the fifth leg, Charla and Mirna achieved their first leg win at the pit stop in Maputo, Mozambique, following their Detour choice to paint nails in a marketplace, rather than the much more time-consuming option of filling bags of coal. The cousins held onto their first place status in the next leg, finishing first in Zanzibar in a leg that saw all other teams fall far behind the cousins due to troubles getting a flight to Dar es Salaam during the Hajj.

However, their streak stopped in Poland on Legs 7 and 8, problems completing their detours led to delays, and they managed to finish fourth.