Also Backdated

I have returned from my summer travels. I spent most of July in Almaty for the annual medical check and then with a Professional Development Institute where I helped teach English to a variety of non-English teachers. After that I went to Lake Balkash for a summer camp and where I became quite ill.

It was interesting to spend so much time in Almaty. I feel like I have a much better sense of the city now that I have spent some real time there. I didn't have much in the way of cooking facilities so I ate out every evening for dinner which was very expensive, although it was good to try out since I don't eat out very much at site. The students, unfortunately, had limited interest in working really hard to learn English in the summer, but they were very nice and overall it was fun. I didn't improve much at all in my Russian during that time, which was a bit of a disappointment, though I did improve my chess game, which is also something I am working on at the moment. I also got to eat at the new Pizza Hut, which tastes just like America, and costs the same.

At the end of my time in Almaty I ate some fruit which I hadn't washed, and the next day I traveled to Balkash. I wasn't feeling particularly good when I left Almaty, and by the morning after I got to Balkash I was feeling distinctly bad. Later it got worse and I spent most of my time resting in bed and so didn't participate in any meaningful way in the camp. Once I was mostly recovered I took the first transport out of the city with probably impolite haste and went home to site.

Now, of course, I am home, and on Sunday or so I will leave for a 4 day hike from a village to a lake a ways south of here. We are hopeful that it will turn out well. The weather is very changeable here. The last two days it has been quite cold and it hailed briefly yesterday. Now it is sunny and a bit warm, but it is unlikely to stay so for long. The clouds will probably return soon enough and we will probably get at least a little wet on our walk.

Other than that I have no set plans at the moment, though I hope to hear from my landlady in the near future about getting Internet in my apartment and from my counterpart about me teaching some classes before school actually starts. I don't have any details yet on my future schedule, although I'm not sure how likely there is to be an actual schedule until the middle or end of September. I also hope to apply to be a presenter at the new volunteers' counterpart conference in October.

In the meantime we have a pair of guest volunteers here at the moment who are working on a mural with yet another volunteer, so there is much meeting and such among us. I'm improving slowly on the violin and in Russian. I still hope to get Intermediate Mid or Advanced Low on my test in January, but there is a lot of work before I get there.