November 6 Dear Mom, I'm such a slacker! It has been far too long since I last wrote, and I felt it all the way. However, these past two weeks or so have been incredibly hectic what with going to Taraz (formerly Zhambul down in the south) for the big PCV Halloween party, but I am getting ahead of myself. I will now attempt to backtrack and get you up to date, but this will be a doozy! At least three weeks ago, we went to the horse races out at the fairgrounds with thousands of other locals. One of Paul's students invited him to go and Paul asked us to go along for support. It felt a lot like a county fair with lots of people milling around, although most of the refreshments with vendors selling sunflower seeds - semech-kee - soda pop and a few people who had set up shaslik (bbq) stands or big pots of boiling oil to cook monti (a kind of dumpling thingy that is quite popular here). For 50 tenge, we squeezed through the turnstile (I mailed the ticket in the last package) and worked our way along the front of the bleachers - definitely standing out in the crowd. The bleachers are made of concrete, yet still managed to sway and creak in an alarming fashion with all the people on it. The opening ceremony was a bit long with speeches; it was part of the celebration of the end of the harvest, so the minisiter had to congratulate Boris, the supervisor, for squeezing more rice or grain out of the already taxed land, and then give him a t.v. or a vacumn cleaner. The nice part of the ceremony were the 400 plus women dressed in bright, colorful traditional costumes (don't worry; we took pictures!). After all that was cleared away, the races began with a marathon 24 kilometer one. Many of the jockeys were little boys - maybe seven years old and up - riding without saddles or helmet. A huge pack of them thundered off around this 1.5 mile dirt track in a cloud of dust. As the race dragged on, a ragged, whistling cheer with wave down the stands as the horses passed, and horses slowly began dropping out on the back curve where is was less embarrassing than in front of thousands. The last two laps were exciting, bringing the crowd to its cold feet - it was suprisingly cold that morning. The top three got prizes: tv, vcr, and vacumn cleaner. Unfortunately we got there too late to see the more traditional sports like wrestling and a game which is some kind of mix of polo and rugby, and involves a stuffed bag as the 'ball' - from what I hear, the carcass of a sheep used to be the 'ball' back in the good old days... After some shorter yet just as boring races of horses, out came the camels. Of the three runners, three came from Hurricane's camel farm. I think the one we rode the weekend before was the one that bowed out of the race; maybe I haven't lost that much weight? A running camel is a dignified yet ludicrous sight. You can tell they are designed to walk forever, not scurry around a track at a human's demand. These guys had floppy humps that bobbed back and forth as they hoofed (or is it padded?) around the track. The sprint races were last - only two laps - and those were pretty cool with the horses going all out. And then it was abruptly over. I took some shots of these interesting old men for color, so when I am done with this roll, I will send it home. I found out that there are Hurricane people going home every two weeks instead of four. I also think we will be able to send home the footlockers with some of them at the end of our two years as they only commute back and forth with a small bag usually. Fighting with the crowd to get on a microbus home was a treat. I am always reminded of those clown cars at the circus.... The following week was of nothing special to remember. I'll try to ask Joan to look in her journal to see if anything worth writing about happened. On Friday we had Paul and Dixie over for dinner which was very low key and pleasant. Paul had been invited by his students to go out and party as they had all got their 'student money from the government. As per usual, he invited us to go along as back up. Hey, don't tell Paul's mom that Paul is a party animal! I'm sure she doesn't know... Hi, Mrs. Kaplan or may I call you Hannah? The microbus had just passed from the apartment building desert where we live to the nicer suburbs with individual house when suddenly there was a large explosion and the front of the microbus filled with a cloud of smoke or dust. The vehicle bucked to a stop in the middle of the road, and I made ready to elbow the babuska next to me in the head to escape the burning vehicle. But then I noticed that everyone was just sitting there, and it turned out that it was just a tire blow out. They use and reuse the tires here so much that this is not uncommon. After a delay, it was fixed and we got out downtown but couldn't find Paul and went home to bed. We found out later that the group had gone to another place. Saturday was the Day of the Republic (da-da-dah!) and was celebrated by a big event in the square near the institute. We got a late start and missed most of it but saw some singing and other stuff. We all ran into students from our various educational institutions who insisted on being in photos with us. One thing I have not mentioned about Kazakstan is the large amount of people who, in front of a memorial or in a park or in front of a government building or wherever, set up a stand with a poster of all the beautiful photos of people they have taken. They will gladly take your photo with a Polaroid or take your picture and info, and you can pick it up later, all for a low, low fee. It seems to be an national habit to have your picture taken with friends on holidays and such. Some photographers even bring in props like lawn chairs, fake flowers, carpets, huge teddy bears, carts without the horse, and my favorite, which we have a picture of us standing next to it (I can't wait to see it), a person in a big duck costume with a large top hat on! A life is good... Speaking of photographers, I have to laugh sometimes. There are people here who claim to be photographers; they have camera bags, the vests, etc, yet equipment-wise, all they have is a cheesy Polaroid or a little point and shoot. Whenever Joan's school has a function, they have a photographer come and take pictures. When I first saw him, he had this big, nice camera bag, but he opened it and pulled out this dinky little camera and started firing away. He also just stood in one place and took photos of the people who came up to speak or present awards. He didn't move around for different angles or perspectives, no close ups, nothing. My amatuer photograper soul cried out at the horror! We ran into Dixie downtown and gave her our keys to go hang out at our house since she is going crazy living in the dormitory for the Hurricane Oil people. She also needed some 'cat time' as her's is still in Almaty. We were on our way to go 'ghosting' or 'ghos-tee' in Russian - from the word for guesting. I guess we would call it guesting: going to someone's house to visit and eat - the major activity here, and something we lack in the states. The director of the chemistry and ecology department at the institute, a woman named Bronyea, had met Paul and found out that he was Jewish and had invited him over for the Jewish holiday that celebrates the end of a year long reading of the Torah. She is Jewish by heritage but lost it when her family was forcibly deported to Kazakstan back in the 40s or 50s by Stalin. Her father was called a 'fist' which is idiomatic for an exploiter and sent to Sibera for four years. He returned to his family in Kazakstan after four years, but never regained her health and died soon after. She has two children: a daughter in Ukraine and a son in Russia. She made us a Jewish meal based on an old book she had about observing Jewish customs. The food was ..... interesting, but not bad. Timur came along to translate and harrass Paul to drink more shots of vodka even though he doesn't drink due to a bad stomach. The woman's assistant from the institute was there to help but had to leave to take care of her own Republic day celebrations. Her apartment was very small, but cozy with a small dog that was smaller than the monster of a cat she had. Not fat, just tiger-like and beautiful. Her apartment was full of books, especially this collection of children's encyclopedias from Soviet times, full of fascination pictures and information. They had all of the flags from the Soviet Repubilcs which were all of different colors and patterns of broad stripes and single stars or cresent moons. She had this homemade cherry juice or 'compote' as they call it that was heavenly. We drank most of her supply that day, the poor woman. We went home to roust Dixie out from the depths of the sofa where she had spent the day with her book and the cat. We met at Paul's house for a quick snack and a few beers and then on to the Kizabek to meet people from Hurricane who had just returned from the west. The Kizabek was closed, so we headed over to the A frame restaurant bar/cafe which I think I took a picture of. There we found them and the man who carried our first package over who says he mailed it (by now) at least three weeks ago, so hopefully the mail is just slow. We saw him last night at the Cafe-Bar up the street from the Kizabek, and he said that you (Claudia) had talked to his wife for about 45 minutes. The party at the A frame was a bit flat - the music was that really bad dance stuff , shudder... - so we headed back to the square because we had heard there was supposed to be dancing and celebrating, but nothing was going on, so we headed home. An English teacher that Joan had met stopped by earlier today to try to hit Joan up to teach at her school, yaddy yaddy ya, the same old song and dance, but had brought, as a bribe, a box of chocolates made in Karagandan, a city north of Almaty. Chocolates are very popular here, but unfortunately most people buy these boxes of crappy, stale chocolates from Germany or Turkey. These locally made chocolates were incredible; dark, rich chocolate and one of the few inoffensive creamy fillings I've run into. On Sunday I went with Paul to the house of the Jewish people he has met in town. He met the mother in her hair salon where he got his hair cut and noticed a Jewish star there which led to him going over there to tutor them English (like everyone else, they are planning on going to America, and I think they will actually do it), eat food and banya with them. He invited me along for the ride, and who can pass up a chance at a banya. They live back in the burbs between the bazaar and our microregion in a beautiful, old fashioned house. I have wanted to see the inside of these houses; I pass by them all the time and have seen them all over Kazakstan. Single story, whitewashed houses with tall wooden fences surrounding yards full of mysterious stuff and outbuilding. Well, I can say that they are as interesting as I hoped, at least this one is. It a big house with many large spacious rooms full of beds. I'm not sure of how many people live there, but I'm sure it is a lot. Mom, remember those books about the English family that were very sensuous in their eating and lifestyles? There is a series of books that we have or have read, and the covers are mostly cartoon-like. They're sort of lovable English rednecks. Well, these people remind me of them in some ways. At first they look like Kazaks, but once they are away from the crowd and by themselves, you can tell they are different- more gypsy or swarthy looking (although those terms could be considered degrogertory). They fed Paul and I in this large room at a communal table, stuffed us full of borscht and these amazing breaded and fried potato dumpling thingys. They pulled out this incredibly beautiful wooden chess set that had been hand carved by the grandfather. The pieces are tall and spindly but of beautiful blonde and dark wood. Paul beat the pants off one of the sons, and then the patriarch stepped in an showed Paul a thing or two. Here's something for Uncle Bob and all those wood burners out there. The house is divided up into nine rooms by four interior walls (a 3 by 3 grid). Where the walls intersect, there is a huge, vertical, maybe three foot in diameter stove built into the walls, so approximately a quater of the circumfrence is exposed in each wall. They build fires in these stoves with either wood or coal to keep the house warm. I will be curious to see how they work and should have ample opportunity as they want me to come back and bring Joan too. The mother cut Joan's hair awhile ago - you should have seen how short it was; it shocked Joan a bit. This is also the family that gave us Goobi. Then we headed out to the banya to get naked with the men and be whipped (vigoruously hit is morelikeit) with bundles of hot, fragrant branches. It had been July since I last banyaed and it felt good! Howevery it did get to be a bit much and I had to leave before I either passed out or threw up. After the banya, we went back in a had a cold beer - yahoo... - and then Paul and I tutored them for about an hour. They had taken a table top and propped it up against the wall on top of another table. With piece of chalk in one hand and a glass of beer in the other, I taught the mom, son and daughter how to conjugate the verb "be" and to use in in basic sentences. Unfortunately it was cut all too short by our need to take off to the Hurricane building to catch the Hurricane bus to their sports center to play badminton. We bid them adieu and hope to see them this weekend. I met a Canadian at Hurricane who plays badminton and had four high quaility carbon graphite rackets. We were going to play badminton but never got around to it before he went home on rotation. He loaned me his rackets, and Paul and I showed up at the sports center maquarading as clueless Hurricane people. There were some people playing - some older guys who were incredibly good and a couple who more at our level - who invited us to play doubles. They said that they thought we were Turkish when they first saw us. It has been at least seven or eight years since I last played, but I think I did a pretty respectable job of barely losing three out five games with Paul. They just about begged us to come back and play, and I hope to this weekend. We played in an old basketball gym with a wooden floor that had lots of new two by fours set edgewise into the floor to replace old broken ones. This gave the floored sort of a mullato appearance of old wood and bright new ones. The old floor also had some interesting dips, bends and waves in it that the new one often could not match which resulted in edges and ends that stuck up, sometimes in a very splintery way, and liked to trip the unwary. I got a good work out from it but wacked myself pretty darn good in the shin bone with the racket head. My knee started to hurt after playing and while waiting for the bus but then it settled down. However, later that night at home, it really started to hurt to the point where I couldn't stand and had to lie down in quite considerable pain. I was also unusually cold and was shivering. I spent most of the evening on the sofa under a blanket. I think my leg caught the flu. I can you hear you now making comments about playing sports on a bum knee, and I know it's true. I'm going to try it one more time to see if it happens again, and if it does, then I definitely will stop. I am pretty dumb, huh, mom? We got a new toner cartridge for our photocopy machine! This is incredibly exciting as before you could barely see the copies which meant you couldn't make copies of copies and therefore cut and paste stuff from other books onto handouts. It also meant that in the poorly illuminated classrooms, we were causing massive amounts of eye damage to our students. This now allows for a lot more creativity in producing materials for our students. Speaking of materials, the RC had ordered a lot of books from Cambridge Press using left over money from our SOROS grant, about $5000 worth or so. Unfortunately, while they were in a warehouse in Almaty, some &*%$*# stole most of them. Of the shipment we only got two boxes, one of worthless study guides to literature like the Swiss Family Robinson or Animal Farm that is way over almost everybody's heads here (including most taeachers). Luckily one box that survived contained three or four sets of a series of ESL books called InterChange that include a student's book, a workbook, a teacher's manual, a lab guide, and cassettes to all of the books (not the teacher's manual of course). The author's name is Jack Richard's, and I would like to shake his hand for he has created some of the best ESL books I have seen! In grad school we spent a lot of time reviewing and critiquing ESL books, and many of them just plain out suck! I can't believe some of the crap that gets published. These InterChange books, however, are really good with lots of well placed visuals, activities, games, exercises, and so on. I have been using them for some of my classes since we got them last week and have found them very effective. I know this is a little cheesy, but could you find this guy's address? I would like to write him a letter of appreciation from a foreign land. Oh, I just looked at the back of the book and it appears that he is a professor in New Zealand at the University of Aukland. I guess I will just write to him direct. ...to be continued love, Rich