Tuesday, December 23, 2008
A Paucity of Cheese
Cheese is a troublesome thing. The pizzas here would be fine if they had some decent mozzarella and parmesean. A sharp cheddar would be nice, and maybe a few more exotic styles just to try from time to time. It is, of course, entirely possible that there are some really good cheeses, either imported from more bovine areas of the world or produced in the area served by the trains and rolled across the steppes in great herds of curdled milk, but I haven't found them yet, and it has been suggested that the 'cheese' that I have so far located is, in fact, not cheese at all but rather a milk derivative similar to Kraft. I remain optimistic and will continue my pursuit of cheese everywhere within a 10 minute walk of where I live, although often the assorted cheeses aren't really labeled.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Post Office Anecdote
I have missed all of November. Woe! Thus far I haven't really hit my post per week target. Nevertheless, I will valiantly continue to try.
The weather at the moment is much warmer than I was led to expect. It has been hovering around 0 degrees Celsius for a week or so, with only one day of minimal snow. My heavy faux-fur coat has been sitting unused, although we had one day of -15, which while fairly cold, still did not merit the big coat for the walk to and from school. I have also learned where the post office is, and improved my general understanding of the layout of the town.
The schedule for my school still evades my complete understanding, but my fourth form students will not have classes with me again until March, which means that I need to acquire a few more classes to make up the time, although that will probably be difficult since I think the rest of the courses are winding down for the winter break, although I don't know when that will be and suspect that it will be different for each group of students. I likewise don't yet know when the Lyceum students will end for the year, but I am told they will continue for now.
You may or may not know, but Kazakhstan has a standard 6 day work week. Everyone works from Monday to Saturday, including students, and rests on Sunday. On holidays, however, it looks like they sometimes work on Sunday as well to make up the day they lose when they have a 2 day holiday like the 15th and 16th. It seems strange from an American perspective that looks forward to plenty of 3 day weekends.
I also have now a great deal of time to read, for which Project Gutenberg has been helpful. I am still really thrilled with my E-Reader, though I'm not sure how much I would want a stylus with it as the new model has. Also I am still waiting for the price of ebooks to descend to a reasonable level.
I search for anecdotes, but suspect my life lacks a certain pizazz. I also have only been here a month or so.
Today I went to the post office to try and get a package that had arrived. The package slip listed only the P.O Box number without any name and it was my first time trying to do something with the post office. I filled out the back of the slip and waited patiently for someone to pay attention to me, and after standing in the wrong line for a while, I managed to get the attention of one of the blue-clad workers (all women, of course). She wandered off into the back for a while, then wandered back and asked to see my passport. I showed her and she wandered out back again. The second time she returned she told me that the package was for someone else and then dismissed me from her mind. I tried, but failed, to convey that I wanted the package slip back, so after a few moments, I too wandered out, saddened by the absence of a package. O great woe!
My story lacks something. Maybe I should fictionalize it. It could be a love story, or, in light of recent political events, a war story. Or both, of course, though I wouldn't want to get too ambitious. I could make it a serialized choose-your-own-adventure for my readers, like the Ctrl-Alt-Del comic.
At any rate, things are still going well, though I have misplaced a galstock, or tie. My green one specifically and my light blue ties look strange with my dark green shirt. Nobody has commented yet, however, and I choose to assume they are too overwhelmed by my obvious competence and self-assurance.
The weather at the moment is much warmer than I was led to expect. It has been hovering around 0 degrees Celsius for a week or so, with only one day of minimal snow. My heavy faux-fur coat has been sitting unused, although we had one day of -15, which while fairly cold, still did not merit the big coat for the walk to and from school. I have also learned where the post office is, and improved my general understanding of the layout of the town.
The schedule for my school still evades my complete understanding, but my fourth form students will not have classes with me again until March, which means that I need to acquire a few more classes to make up the time, although that will probably be difficult since I think the rest of the courses are winding down for the winter break, although I don't know when that will be and suspect that it will be different for each group of students. I likewise don't yet know when the Lyceum students will end for the year, but I am told they will continue for now.
You may or may not know, but Kazakhstan has a standard 6 day work week. Everyone works from Monday to Saturday, including students, and rests on Sunday. On holidays, however, it looks like they sometimes work on Sunday as well to make up the day they lose when they have a 2 day holiday like the 15th and 16th. It seems strange from an American perspective that looks forward to plenty of 3 day weekends.
I also have now a great deal of time to read, for which Project Gutenberg has been helpful. I am still really thrilled with my E-Reader, though I'm not sure how much I would want a stylus with it as the new model has. Also I am still waiting for the price of ebooks to descend to a reasonable level.
I search for anecdotes, but suspect my life lacks a certain pizazz. I also have only been here a month or so.
Today I went to the post office to try and get a package that had arrived. The package slip listed only the P.O Box number without any name and it was my first time trying to do something with the post office. I filled out the back of the slip and waited patiently for someone to pay attention to me, and after standing in the wrong line for a while, I managed to get the attention of one of the blue-clad workers (all women, of course). She wandered off into the back for a while, then wandered back and asked to see my passport. I showed her and she wandered out back again. The second time she returned she told me that the package was for someone else and then dismissed me from her mind. I tried, but failed, to convey that I wanted the package slip back, so after a few moments, I too wandered out, saddened by the absence of a package. O great woe!
My story lacks something. Maybe I should fictionalize it. It could be a love story, or, in light of recent political events, a war story. Or both, of course, though I wouldn't want to get too ambitious. I could make it a serialized choose-your-own-adventure for my readers, like the Ctrl-Alt-Del comic.
At any rate, things are still going well, though I have misplaced a galstock, or tie. My green one specifically and my light blue ties look strange with my dark green shirt. Nobody has commented yet, however, and I choose to assume they are too overwhelmed by my obvious competence and self-assurance.
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