Week #2

My second week here has been full and crazy and I have enjoyed every minute of it – well, I’ve enjoyed this week more than I did last, as I still feel like I’m still learning every thing and figuring out what life in Kazakhstan is all about! I made spaghetti for my family – I’m unsure of how they felt about it, but I loved it! Even if it didn’t taste like it would if I had had Ragu – Three Cheese flavor!

There is a Bowling Alley here!! It’s 3000T (it’s like $30) per hour so the more people we have the less we pay, of course, the less we bowl also, but I think like 5 is a good number? Kaz-20s WHEN you come visit me, we are definitely going! I found gummy bears at the bazaar the other day! They were cheap and they were SUPER good! Still no diet coke though – I think I’m over my addiction! I have had regular coke, but only like 1 per week since I’ve been at site!

I did laundry at my family’s house this week! I needed to! I wanted to throw everything together, it’s faster that way, but my host mom did not like that! So I split it up into 3 groups, but only did 2 because the 2nd one was unbalanced so began to make a crazy noise and my host mom got nervous and said I could do the rest tomorrow – I got nervous (because I don’t wanna break the thing) and said that I didn’t need to do laundry .

I’ve watched a few American films dubbed in Russian here – the most recent was Material Girls with Hilary and Haley Duff – it was on TV the other day and I have learned that if I listen closely enough I can hear the English behind the Russian – I’m told that watching TV is a good activity and fun way to learn Russian but if I can’t understand what they are saying, it would be difficult for me to regurgitate what I hear in the correct context.

School here is Monday – Saturday, which is totally crazy and I have a difficult time adjusting to being at school on a Saturday, even though during PST we had language classes on Saturday and all the days are short (school is 830a – 2pm), I just cannot get used to it! Anyway, I went to the bus stop where I normally catch bus #12. I stood there for what seemed like a REALLY long time and the bus never came, so I said to myself “I’m going to get on the next bus that comes.” It was bus #11, which I have seen 11 near my school before, so I thought it must be safe…right? WRONG! The bus went out of town! Not really far out of town, but nevertheless, out of town. It went to the local factory here which makes metals and lets lots of smoke off into the sky. That’s where a lot of people work so my bus was kind of crowded. We get there and everyone gets off – mind you, I know that this bus is going to go back to where it picked me up, so I stay on the bus and people getting done with work get on. They charge me a second time to continue riding and we head back into town! I get off the bus where I got on and decide that it would be a good idea to walk because 1) I can’t find bus #12 and 2) I was a little irritated. So I walk like 25 minutes to work – talking to myself and deciding that I was not going to have a bad day because of the bus mix up. I reminded myself that I want to ride all 4 buses here just to see where they go and now I do not have to ride #11 because I know it goes to the factory

It snowed here last week! But now enough to stay – it has, however, been incredibly cold and I’m still trying to figure out temperatures that are Celsius! Like -5 C sounds REALLY cold, and it is cold, but not –degrees Fahrenheit. I’m told that it gets really cold here – colder than Michigan, but in January / February – I’m told it can get as cold as -40 C – when I realized it was Celsius I breathed a sigh of relief and looked up with -40 C would be in Fahrenheit – yea -40 C = -40 F!! AHHHH!!