Sunday, June 1, 1997 Wow! Where do I start? We're in our first meeting in a greenish classroom in the PDI (Professional Development Institute. The weather is quite warm and most of the windows are shut. We just finished our first meal in KZ. There was a beet an mayo salad with a glass of fruit juice. The main course was a beautiful borscht, warm, rich and meaty. There was also a side dish of mutton and cabbage with a thick cinnamon flavored sauce. And the best -- the bread. Al I will say is that it's delicious.The food was served in some sort of dining hall, dark and red. There are four big padded booths on a raised level with large stained glass windows next to them, all blue, red, and yellow geometric shaped. Behind a counter was a large Russian wearing a huge hat who was yelling at the other cooks. Dirty dishes were taken to another counter where stout old toothless ladies in colorful head scarves took the dishes. Joan and I are sharing a room in the PDI on the second floor. There are a few communal bathrooms (showers downstairs with the hot and cold knobs reversed!) with toilets that can't handle paper, so you have to put the used paper into a trash can next to the toilet. Oh joy.... Our room has a door onto a long communal balcony and has large windows that open onto an overgrown backyard and a noisy river rushing through a concrete canal. We have a desk, bedside table, free standing closet and tow separate beds. Quite lumpy, I might add. The sheets and pillowcase were so starched that they almost broke when I unfolded them. We have seen very little of Almaty as we got in around 3 AM [today] This afternoon we are taking a field trip up a cable car system to a scenic overlook on a mountain. You should have seen us playing hacky sack at 4 AM, waiting for our luggage, underneath a huge mural map of Kazakstan on the wall; all the security personnel were eyeing us suspiciously. [Note: the time in KZ is 11 hours later than in the Eastern US, so 4 AM Sunday there is 5 PM Saturday here.] It still hasn't truly sunk in yet; we all agree that it doesn't feel real. Haven't seen the mountains yet as the buildings around us are too tall, although I've heard there is a good view from the fourth floor. Gotta go. Love, Rich. Monday Nothing much has happened yet today. It's only 7:15 AM. Many of the volunteers have been up for hours already, due to jet lag. Jim fell asleep before dinner (5:30 PM) and slept all the way through till 3 AM, then got up, read, wrote, studied and went jogging along the canal. He is far too bright eyed and bushy tailed for his own good. Another funny story about Jim is that he did not wake up his four roommates vigorously enough and they slept through lunch yesterday and a good portion of our first meeting. They came skulking in with disheveled hair and rumpled clothes from the flight amid catcalls and hoots from the crowd. The Peace Corps staff seems really nice; the local staff are all friendly and helpful with language tips and just answering questions. The Assistant Peace Corps Director (APCD) and the Country Director (CD) are fantastic-very approachable and seem like great guys. Some current PCVs are helping with training and are a valuable asset as well. There were two things I wanted to write about before the "filled up with news stuff." The first is our initial brush with crime and standing out as targets. Around 20 of us decided to walk down to the cable cars and ride up to the top of the hill as compared to being shuttled in a PC van. We had two current PCVs to chaperone us there as the walk was about 20 minutes into the city. As we were blithely walking down the main street, we noticed this man in black slacks and a white shirt and tie with a sport coat draped over his arm shadowing us. I didn't think too much of it until he came alongside Chris (PCV) whom I was walking next to. This man got very close to Chris's side and did a sort of slump/dodge toward his pocket. Seeing this, I quickly dropped back a step and to the right to get behind him and sandwich him in. A quick peel off to a phone booth to pretend call to someone was the result. I quickly warned everyone about this, and a lot of wallets and money were quickly moved to more secure locations. Surprisingly enough, the pickpocket wanna-be followed us all the way down the street and even up in the cable car, wasting 100 tenge of his own well-stolen cash in the bargain. The peel-off to the phone routine was repeat two more times and when he started mingling closely among us while money and wallets were produced to pay for tickets, we all kept a close watch on him. All the men just kept turning to keep him and his hands in sight. Unfortunately this meant I missed most of the view on the cable car ride as I was one of the closest to him and had to keep watch. He finally realized that he was not going to score with us, not for trying though, and frustratedly bought another ticket to go back down. We were very relieved to see him go as the situation was tense and created a vague sense of unease and anger in me and others. We talked about it a lot and shared various stories of brushes with crime and the like. Believe me, I was quickly relieved of my naivetÄ gained from the security of Fiji, although I was pickpocketed of some $80 Fijian at a crowded bus station as I was pushing for a popular bus. Oh, yes, the money. Called the tenge, it looks like monopoly money with pictures of fierce, Asiatic warlords and Khans. We are given $2 US a day walk-about money -- about 150 tenge. To give some scale, a one-liter bottle of soda is about 75 tenge and a single beer (European) can run from 80 to 110 tenge. I have only bought beer so far (no surprise there) which tasted oh so good after a long hot day. While Joan napped, I had a beer or two and played cards with Cap, Ben and Chris (not the pickpocket incident Chris) in one of the fire guy rooms. It was great to kick back, play cards, tell stories and drink a cold beer. The Budweiser here is authentic Bud from the Czech Republic and is nothing like its US counterpart. It is actually very good. I hope we get more time to hang out like this because it is in this way that we really get to know each other. On Wednesday we head for Kapchigai and our host families. It would be too bad if we are all separated and unable to hang out together in the evenings when we need a break from the foreign culture. Well, I slept from 11 PM to 6:30 this morning and feel pretty much acclimatized but will have to see how the day goes. Peace and love, Rich