Dear Mom, March 30 It is a gloriously warm, spring day! I have walked all over the city; Joan and I even walked from our apartment all the way to the center of town. It is still muddy as all get out, but the sunshine is drying out the mud and packing it down. Also, with all the people walking, paths are being created that offer a somewhat dry footing. We have been without water for quite a few days now. Paul has had none, and Dixie's has been sporadic, but ours had been very reliable and constant. Well, not now . . . We have to walk to an outdoor spigot that runs constantly because someone stole the handle to turn it off. The spigot is in front of a building that is behind the building that is directly opposite our balcony, so it is a bit of a hike. As I did some laundry this morning (what I good husband am I), I had to make two trips to replace the water we had stored up in buckets. Going to the spigot is no big deal, but coming back with two 5-liter bottles in my backpack and a four-gallon bucket in each hand is a bit tiring, especially when the last part of the journey is up five flights of stairs! Joan is leaving me tomorrow to go to Almaty for the WID (Women in Developmemt) conference that Peace Corps and the UN are organizing. She is going with two local, young women as the representatives from KO. She should be back around the sixth, so I see lots of hanging around with Paul, watching videos, farting and scratching ourselves. Domestic bliss! Oh yeah, here is the phone number of Mr. Norman Beauchamp in Michigan: (810) 987-4111 in Port Huron. If you could give him my e-mail and ask him to contact me ASAP and/or get it from him and send it to me, I would be much obliged. Joan and I had lunch today with Kurt, the non-missionary, who was very bummed out about their library. Apparently about 400 books have gone missing/been stolen. They put three months of hard work into getting the 12,000 volume library running, and the university was supposed to help and provide a librarian and all kinds of other stuff that they have, of course, not followed through on. The problem is that the English library is attached to the reading room of the Russian library and is mostly out of sight of the librarians who sit at their desks all day. Get this, to check out a book from the Russian library, you have to either know what book you want or look through the card catalog to find one - no browsing the shelves here. Then the librarian goes and gets the book for you. If you want to read it, you must hand over you passport as collateral and then go in the reading room to read it. The taking home of books is strictly FORBIDDEN. The librarians claim the are too busy and overworked to do what the university promised, even though Kurt says all he ever sees then do is drink tea and sit around. Ah, the work ethic here . . . So people apparently are wandering into the English part and stealing books. Since you are technically not allowed to carry a bag into the reading room, they are apparently stuffing them down their pants or in the tops of their boots or so claim the librarians. Students from the Turkish Lyceum (or some kind of high school) use the library the most and are therefore suspected of book stealing. So Kurt and his cohorts are in a bit of a bind. They had wanted the library to be self-sufficient and run by locals. However, that may not be possible if they want to keep the books. There may be many reasons for stealing them: because you can, because they're interesting looking books, maybe you can sell them at the bazaar, etc. I get the feeling here that it is very important to own things, to have things. Hopefully it is students who really want to learn English but just don't understand how a library like this works Kurt et al. may have to move the books to another location and run it themselves. They may have to reduce it to one room and find a reliable person who can sit at the entrance and monitor all comings and goings, to wander around and keep an eye on the patrons. According to the records, approximately 250 books a week are checked out, which is good. They may ask Hurricane to help out with the money to pay for a library specific librarian since many of the people who come in are Hurricaners. It is quite disheartening. However, I guess it is a bit optimistic to try to create a western style library that operates on trust and honesty since they don't and can't have the bar code and security system that we have in the states. In a country and an economy were things are falling apart and it is everybody for themselves, it is understandable why people might be stealing things like English books from a library. They have nothing and here is a library with way more books than they need. But it still disheartening. Just like it is disheartening to be walking down the street to the bank today, enjoying myself in the sunshine, when I pass two young men in their 20's, and one of them says, "Fuck you" as you walk by. It is amazing that people will say these things to foreigners walking by on the streets. Often times when walking past people, usually younger, they will cry out random words and phrases in English. The most common series of them is - Hello, how are you? I am fine. What is your name? My names is . . . At least they are retaining something from school. It makes it hard to not think of the people here as uncultured losers. Luckily there are many more people who are nice and normal and who make it all worth while. April 6 Back in the saddle. The phone is still not working after at least a week. Karlygash, our new manager, is very nice but not very quick to get things done. Valentina, the former manager, moved to Almaty as her husband got a job there. Karlygash is a recently graduated university student and is rather young, or at least acts young. However, she is good egg, and we enjoy her company a great deal. We teach her all the bad words and phrases, and she teaches us the Russian ones. So far we've taught her 'pain in the ass,' 'smart ass,' and 'dumb ass.' Good to see I'm putting my master's degree to good use, no? So the impact of the phone not working means no e-mail. I may try to hit up Dixie to send this one that I started last week. She got back from Greece on Friday. She went there for some R&R in the sun. Ha ha ha ha . . . It snowed almost a meter there. They had no electricity, no heat; it sucked! She was not too pleased with the whole thing. When she was changing flights in Vienna, she was tempted not to come back. I think that if it wasn't for her Siamese cat, Paloma, that she would have kept on going back to the US. She is a bit down on the whole scene here. Her job is very frustrating with lots of problems that people can't or won't deal with/fix. She seems quite depressed, and I hope that Joan coming back will cheer her up like it will me. It's been fun playing bachelors with Paul, but it's no where near as much fun as playing married with Joan. Eating meals by yourself sucks. Sitting alone in your apartment reading a book and listening to music sucks. I want my Joanie back! Luckily she arrives this afternoon. I am going to meet her at the train station at 2:30. I talked to her two times, and it sounds like she had a great time seeing all her friends, working on the conference, and partying to all hours - hmph! - while the hubby sits alone at home, sniffle, sniffle . . . I spent most of the morning cleaning up the apartment, airing it out now that we have warm weather and lots of sun. It is absolutely incredible how quickly the weather has changed. It is even more incredible what a difference this makes in my/our attitude! Now that the weather is warm, life is OK. We have been playing basketball outside in shorts and t-shirts. I need to buy myself a real pair of basketball shoes; I bought a pair of Chinese 'Keds' that wore out in a ridiculously short amount of time. What do you expect when you pay only 300 tenge? April 7 Right, now the phone works! Here is the e-mail. Also can you send Michelle Gigot's e-mail for Joan? She should be on your list of e-mail addresses. If Michelle is not available, get it from Pete Roeffers. Joan wants to go to Turkey (gobble, gobble) with Michelle this summer and leave this poor hubby all alone again - just like Mexico! If you include this stuff in the general letter, they will contact us on their own. Tell Michelle to call if she wants to to talk about stuff. Talk to you soon! peace and love, Rich