To Whom It May Concern:

It snowed here yesterday. I went with the University Group to the Lake for a picnic and it snowed and hailed, and was generally pretty cold. I also made Spanish rice, and I think it may have given me indigestion. Oops.

I have also decided on a new apartment. It is closer to my school, though it is further away from the rest of the volunteers than my current location. It is also further away from the library, but it looks good, is a reasonable price, and the owner is known to my CP.

I have pictures of food, and I hope to post them once I charge my camera batteries. Not much else of interest. I am going to try to budget myself for 12K tenge per month for food, which is about $80. That probably won't count the special food items I buy in various other places in KZ where certain items are cheaper. I want pine nuts, for example, but they are very expensive in Petro since there are no pine trees. I'm hoping they are less expensive in Karaganda since there are pine forests there.

My summer is also filling up more quickly than I had expected.

I was awarded a grant by PC to give a presentation at a national teacher's conference at the end of May, then I have a summer camp, and a language camp for the next two weeks. After that I will prepare projects, I think, then go on vacation to Kyrgestan, then another summer camp, then maybe an English seminar thing in Almaty, then finalize plans for classes and my schedule before school begins again on the 1st of September. In the middle of all that I'll study Russian. I hope to get a history textbook directed at very young students and try and read my way up to more advanced stuff.

I hope you're all well and living the life you had always dreamed you would.

Cooking Day

I had only two events today, so I spent the morning and afternoon cooking. Just now I had what is very nearly the most flavorful thing I have yet eaten in Kazakhstan: A felafel with baba ganouj. I am very pleased with how they turned out, though I might put the felafel back into the refrigerator again tomorrow to try and get them crispier.

I also made 3 side dishes, so that my meals can have a more mix-and-match flavor. The first is cole slaw, though next time I will need to chop the cabbage more finely. Adding lemon juice is very good. The second is Korean Carrot Salad, which had too much vinegar the first time I tried it. It has been diluted with some water, but I haven't tried it again yet. I might add some garlic and horseradish, though I may also save those for the next salad I make. The final side dish is colcannon, which is an Irish dish of mixed cabbage and mashed potatoes. I tried it immedaitely after I made it and was very pleased, but it remains to be seen how well it will store in the fridge.

Tomorrow I will make a potato pie, which with the pasta in the freezer, will give me 3 main dishes and 3 sides. I earlier made latkes, which were going to be my breakfast (with the colcannon), but they failed miserably to store in the fridge. They turned black, probably because the potatoes were very old that i used. I have newer potatoes, and I may try to make hash browns, but I don't really understand how to fry things, so I might wait until I can get someone to teach me that skill. I will try to remember to take pictures.

I am in the process of looking for cooking lard or vegetable shortening. I believe I can make lard from Sala, and may do so later, since I've never used lard and I would like to try and make pie/pastry crusts with it, but not in the immediate future. Nobody seems to know what shortening is, and I may have to try and buy it in Almaty, or a Ramstore somewhere.

In other news, the snow is now melted, and this morning was characterized by huge wet puddles and acres of deep, sticky mud. It was a warm day, however, almost 10 above, so a lot of the water has evaporated or otherwise drained, and some of the mud has stiffened to the point where it can be walked upon.

My attention was drawn earlier this week to men in bars who order [sto gramm], which is 100 grams of vodka, or about 2 full shots, drink it at the counter, and walk on. The seem to be mostly older folks.

Anecdote:

A few students were speaking with me this week.
"Where are you from?"
(me)"I'm from California!"
"Ah, no. Um, motherland?"
"I was born in Ireland."
"Ah! We knew you weren't American"
"Why am I not American?"
"Americans are aggressive, yes?"

Winter is... STILL HERE!

Yesterday we got 4 inches of snow.

It had all melted and despite occasional snow flurries, it would melt almost immediately upon reaching the ground. Now, however, the snow has fallen and stuck, and the city is white again. I prefer the white to the brown, and I especially prefer the frozen ground to the sticky muck that will return as soon as the snow melts and stay to the end of May.

Nevertheless, things are going reasonably well. I am contemplating the purchase of a food processor, and I might buy one tomorrow or Tuesday, since the shop currently has a sale, and I'll want to use one starting in May when I will hopefully move out.

I still don't have an apartment lined up, but I have a lead or two, and I will ask my counterpart and co-teachers again this week and see what shakes out. I am still optimistic.

Until another time, or something.

Funny Anecdote

I have returned from Naruz in Schimkent and In-Service Training in Almaty, however I don't want to write about that just at this moment. Instead I offer an (hopefully) amusing anecdote from yesterday. Additionally, I noticed that comments were restricted to registered users before. Comments are now open to the general public, so if any of you were repressed before, you now can be rehabilitated.

I was teaching a class for future teachers of English and we were working on vignettes. I had them list answers to the W questions (Who, What, When, Where, Why) in preparation for the actual paragraph. The assignment was to write about a "little man(person)" and one student chose a village school teacher, and others chose doctors, actors, etc.

At the end of the class as they were reading their paragraphs, the student with the village teacher described how the teacher died and the narrator heard that the teacher had died penniless and sick and nobody except the minister came to the funeral. At this, another student burst out laughing and said, "That will be us!"