Sanderwa festival in BambergEnjoying a local beer with Hannes - very smoky taste

Shannon with her friend

Train ride from Bucharest to Varna - these were the people who told us we had "too much stuff"

View from the "villa"

Varna beach

Why pay for an umbrella when we can just hang out here for the cost of a few drinks

View from the "ski lift" to the beach

Whoever put this lift in had the right idea

Harry Potter "Deathly Hallows" in 3D with the popcorn and beer special!

Anyone guess what this means in English?

Chris in the main square

Probably?

Can this really be considered a street?

We barely fit

Dracula's castle (or maybe just a tourist trap)

Don't go in there!

This is gonna be like fishing in a barrel for the Count

Random picture of armour probably from Vlad the Impaler's personal collection

Near the Monastery caves

Susan enjoys the park and flowers

It's looking at me!

Storks make their homes

Center of Plovdiv

View from above

"Salt Lakes"

That's a salt lake?

Don't want to miss a spot

Drying in the sun. What's that smell?

Winery tour in Moldova

Susan gets started right away

Lunch with our tour

More bottles of wine than anywhere else in the world

We picked up our brand new BMW 328i hard top convertible at BMW Welt in Munich. If you ever get a chance to take European Delivery on a BMW, we highly recommend it. We got the VIP treatment the whole way through, and it was really pampering.

For people picking up cars, there is a lounge upstairs at BMW Welt that is much like a business class airport lounge. Comfy seats, computers with Internet access, food and drinks. Even beer. We thought it was strange - the notion of having a beer or two while waiting for your appointment to pick up (and subsequently drive off in) your new car, but this is Germany and that is the way they roll.

We drove the car up to Bamberg the next day, a 2 hour drive that included some exhilarating autobahn. Paul got the car up to 120 mph and the car seemed to want to go even faster. Not a good idea to get used to those kind of speeds though, since it will NEVER happen in America.

The reason for the trip to Bamberg was a Bierfest (which apparently EVERY town in Germany has at least once in the late summer. Our friend Hannes (who we met in KZ when he was volunteering at Samal with the German Scout organization) is from Bamberg and invited us to come to the festival. It was tons of fun, with good food, delicious beer and wine, nice weather and all kinds of music. Some of the places got pretty rowdy later in the evening, with one band getting the crowd so pumped that people were actually climbing onto the rafters! It was much mellower (and more our style) during the day when people were just enjoying the weather and a pretzel as big as your head.

After Bamberg we drove Shannon and Nena (another German Scout) back to Nena's family's home in Munich. Nena asked us to please stay in Munich one more day, as she wanted us to meet her parents and go to a neighborhood biergarten. We were happy to oblige, so we hung out at her place, did some laundry (it feels like we are ALWAYS doing laundry) and then walked to a biergarten. Just a bunch of picnic tables lined up under shady trees where people could order beer and food, or (as we did) bring food with them to eat with the beer. The place also happens to be near a deer park, so there were a bunch of does, fawns and young bucks hanging out and posing for photos. It was a very, very nice way to spend an evening, and Nena's parents were great fun. It is funny to us how many of our new friends are so young that we are actually the same age or (in some cases) a little order than their parents! What generation gap?

After our night in Munich we said goodbye to Shannon, and therefore to the last of our Peace Corps traveling companions. We were on our own, and it was a little sad.

Still, we made the most of it, driving wherever the winds took us and stopping whenever the mood struck. We did have one weird mood strike us and we ended up at a dirndl discount shop. Susan had seen so many people wearing such pretty dirndls at the bierfest that she simply had to have one. Paul got caught up in the fever and ended up buying himself a pair of lederhosen. Looks like we are set for halloween costumes (and any Oktoberfest celebrations that come our way) for a while now.

The one place that the wind wanted to take us was Lichtenstein, but, alas, that was not to be. According to the good folks at BMW, our cars temporary license plates would not be honored there and it would be unwise (and uninsured) for us to drive there. We realize that Lichtenstein is quite small and there isn't really a 'there' there, but we had wanted to go. Oh well, some other time. We stayed in Austria, spend a day in Switzerland and then headed to Kaiserstuhl (German wine region just on the other side of the Rhine from the Alsace) and then to the Schwarzwald (black forest). Beautiful weather, gorgeous scenery and great roads. It was a really nice, relaxing and beautiful trip with nary a misshap. Of course, if nothing goes wrong or gets strange it makes for a pretty boring entry, so we won't be saying much more about it.

Our new TomTom gps worked great and took us exactly where we wanted to go. We got into the Netherlands, used points at one of the fanciest hotels we have ever stayed in (Des Indes - built in 1850s as a manor house and converted to a hotel in 1888) in The Hague and then, with some trepidation, dropped of the car at the port in Amsterdam. It will take 10-12 weeks to get to the west coast, so we will not be seeing it for a while.

Our delightful friend Jan, of Liz and Jan, picked us up at the port and took us to their place in Amsterdam, where we will relax and visit with our good friends for a few days before taking the hopper flight to London and the next day finally flying back to the US. We are really, really looking forward to being home, back in the embrace of our family and friends and being freely, unabashedly American.

We arrived in Varna Bulgaria right just after dark after being rebuked on the train by our train compartment mates for "having too much stuff" (Hey you try to travel back home with 2 years of stuff.  Hurrummpph!  And another thing, only we get to decide what "too much stuff" means. So there!)  Our first goal at the station was to change currency to get some Bulgarian Lev.  No cambio's but we found an ATM.  Next step negotiate with a big taxi to take us to our "villa".  Chris had the hotel confirmation print out but it did not have an address only a street name.  According to our interpretation from a Bulgarian taxi driver is that it is a long street and we need to narrow down where the location is.  We had him call the local number on the sheet and he agreed to meet Eddie (villa owner) at a restaurant near the place.  30 lev for the taxi seems like a lot (2 lev to 1 euro) but we really don't know how far it is.    We meet Eddie at the restaurant and we follow him down some not so maintained dirt roads.  "Hmmm, doesn't seem like the right direction to a villa by the Black Sea."   We finally get there and not only are we not 2 blocks from the sea, our taxi driver is fuming because of the terrible roads he just had to drive on with all our heavy "too much stuff."  We give the taxi driver another 10 lev to calm him down (that mostly worked but he was still grumbling) and carried our stuff up 2 flights of stairs on little outside metal circular staircases about a meter wide that certainly weren't up to US building code standards.  OK, "villa" - with villa being used to loosely describe a building cut into sleeping units that was until recently student housing for the nearby university.  It's late and it's 15 euro per person per night so we decide to reserve judgment on the place and we unpack and settle in for the night.   In the morning, the view from the 3rd floor balcony was gorgeous.  It overlooked the distant Black Sea but we still weren't 2 blocks from it as described by the on-line description of the place, more like a 15 minute walk downhill.  We make some instant coffee, take in the view, and then take a 10 minute walk to a restaurant for breakfast.  We can't believe how cheap it is here.   Breakfast consisting of an egg, bacon, toast, some sort of salty cheese we later will find out comes with everything you order, tomatoes and cucumbers – 3.60 lev or ~ 1.8 euro.  Cappuccino – 1.6 lev.  We think our wallets are going to like Bulgaria.    Later on we head to the beach and find out there is a ski lift which will take you right down to the beach for 2 lev.  Sweet!  It was a no-brainer.   A couple of things we noted right away were: it is swim top optional for the ladies (men too) and most people bring/rent an umbrella.  We decided to a have a cool drink at a shaded café on the beach to consider our options.   We never left the café the rest of the day.  It was again cheap (1.6 lev for a soda) and they didn't seem to mind if we swam and came back and ordered another drink.  It was wonderful.  The water was warm and calm but had a bit of seaweed.  We swam, relaxed and sunned ourselves until we needed to go get cleaned up and ready for 3D Harry Potter Part II.   Yup, we saw the final Harry Potter film in Bulgaria.  In 3D.  That was our first modern experience with the 3D glasses and it was pretty cool.  The movie was great too.   But wait, not only those things, but for 5 lev you got a ½ liter of beer and a bag of popcorn!  Paul was in heaven.  We should note the the movie was in English with Bulgarian subtitles, so we had no trouble understanding it.   The rest of the time in Varna was spent at the beach every day.  There is also an area we visited a bus ride away called Golden Sands which was packed with people, souvenir shops, cafes, etc.  Festive but we were glad we were at a quieter section of the Black Sea.  All the food we tried everywhere was cheap and delicious.  Bulgaria so far gets 2 thumbs up.   Chris left for home on Sunday via Germany :>(   sigh, our band of Pavlodar volunteers is breaking up (hopefully though reunited again sometime next year).  The rest of us flew out of Varna to Sofia on Monday, caught a taxi to the bus station, and caught a bus to Plovdiv which was our next destination on our eastern European whirlwind tour.    Plovdiv was very old and architecturally interesting.  Our hotel was very nice and so were the people working there.  "What's this?  Friendly customer service?  We don't know how to act!"  We spent all day exploring the city, had an excellent dinner at some place called something like "Happy Food" and got ready to head back to Sofia the next day.   Sofia is a mildly interesting city.   If you traveled much it doesn't really have a "there there" that would make you want to go.  Again the food was great and cheap but that was about it.  Oh yeah, we did stay in an old Soviet style apartment so that remained us of home in KZ (not that we are getting homesick for KZ).  The next day we got to the airport ready to catch our 10 am Air Berlin flight back to the western world.   "Our flight has been canceled?!?!"  "Why didn't anyone tell us before we got here to the airport?"  "We did contact you by sending a post to your address in Kazakhstan in July."  OK, now we know why we didn't find out about it.  KZ Post, not the most reliable.  Well, we have to get to Germany today because tomorrow we have an appointment at 2:20pm at BMW Welt to pick up our new convertible (oh yeah!).  So we start hitting all the airline counters to find the cheapest flights.   We were able to cancel our Air Berlin flight which they had moved to the following day, and buy new tickets on Swiss Air for 100 euro more per person.   Besides spending 8 hours at the airport eating expensive airport food (oh airports here aren't cheap either), we were able to finally leave the former USSR and affiliated countries behind.  What will Western Europe bring?   We will soon find out!

Our flight was once more at the crack of dawn.  Why we continue to book these crazy flights is beyond us.  Ok, the real reason we had such early flights is because we planned to arrive in country first thing and then catch trains to our preferred destinations.  Well, just try and book a train ticket in Ukraine, Moldova, Romania or Bulgaria from Kazakhstan.   It just cannot be done.  We had expected to be able to connect to the trains but we didn't know we couldn't until after we bought the plane tickets.  So we ended up renting a full size car.   That didn't work out as planned either.  We reserved a full size car but got a Chevy Aveo which Thrifty has on their site as an economy sized car.  We played Tetris with our luggage and ourselves to be able to get everything that needed to go with us (including us) in there.  Thrifty at the airport told us an Aveo was a full size car but there was no $@%^$ way this was a full size car.  The people at the car rental place were helpful but wouldn't give us a bigger car.  We and our stuff were packed in like sardines.  At least sardines don't know they are packed in a can because they are %$#&* dead - we aren't, so it was a nightmare.  There, we got that off our chests.   We tried to buy train tickets from Bucharest to Varna Bulgaria at the airport train ticket booth before we left but they only sold train tickets from the airport to the train station.  Fortunately, Susan's new GPS mostly worked (the Tom Tom is not supposed to have maps of Romania or Bulgaria) minus a few street names and we drove into the city center to go to the train station to buy the tickets there.    It's been a while since we have had to navigate the round-abouts where 4 lanes on one side go into 2 lanes on the other so it was pretty tense.  Thankfully it was Saturday on a 3 day weekend so traffic wasn't too bad.  When we got to the train station, the two of us stayed with the car and Chris and Shannon searched around for a while until they got the international train tickets.  No seats on one of the trains from Russe to Varna but at least we got reservations for the day we want.  Whew…   Driving in the city was nerve racking but once we escaped the roads were good and we settled into our 3 – 4 hour drive to Sibiu.  Besides almost running out of gas and the weird body tweaks everyone got from being confined in our new Aveo strait-jacket, we made it safely to Sibiu.  Again we were thankful that the GPS mostly worked in conjunction with the Google map directions Paul printed out beforehand.   Our lodging at the Artemis apartment was pretty amazing after our last two Soviet style apartments.  Our space was 3 floors with 2 bathrooms and an enormous kitchen where if you left the window open, an orange cat would come in.  Susan hated that.  ;>)   The old town is pretty cool but we missed the rock-n-roll concert in the main square the night before.  Damn, how many more chances will we have to see Iggy Pop? (How many of you would have lost the "dead or alive" game when it comes to Iggy Pop.  Susan would have.) There were still plenty of black tee-shirted, tattooed, pierced, scraggly hair rockers walking around the next day so got a small feel of what the concert must have been like.  (Wow, listen to us?   We are turning into our parents!)  There was also an international Lion's club convention in Sibiu and there were groups of individuals walking around the main square in garb native to their respective countries.  That was pretty cool – definitely felt more European than what we have been used to.   The food in Romania has been interesting and delicious (sorry KZ, there's more to life than beshbarmak) although it is more expensive than we anticipated.  Now that Romania is part of the EU, the 24% VAT tax on everything sure jacks up the price pretty quick.    The next day we headed out to a nearby salt lake Shannon heard about from the neighbors where we were staying.  Sounds good, go float around in a salt lake.  It was not like anything we expected.  There were hundreds of people there in a self-contained complex of many salty muddy holes.  We paid our admission and went to find the water hole with the proper salt density for our novice American bodies.  We opted for the not the saltiest and the water was the color of espresso. Really cloudy smelly espresso. Yuck.  We all went in anyway and scooped up the muck from the bottom and then smeared it all over ourselves from head to toe.  Susan was not having any of it.  She went in the water, but no way was she smearing this smelly black mud on herself.    Once we were completely covered, now of course we had to wait for the mud to dry on us to get the full effect.  The color of the mud after it dries looks kind of like a wet suit so it looked a Jacques Cousteau convention except for the occasional topless mud woman which reminded us more of Bourbon Street in New Orleans.  The drying mud on our skins felt really strange but we were convinced the amazing properties of a mud bath would be like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon.  Man, were we wrong.  That sh*t got everywhere and it took 2 days to get it all off us.  We would think we were clean and then find yet another blackened cranny.  What were we thinking?    The next morning it was time to pack up and drive the 2 hours to Brasov.  Shannon, though, had heard about this Open Air Cultural Center that is just outside of Sibiu.  We decided to get up early-ish, head over there for a look and then pack up the car and make the drive.  The cultural center was a sprawling park filled with buildings that had been moved from other places around the country that were meant to show how Romanians had lived in the past.  Truth be told, it was a bit lame.  But the park-like setting was nice so it wasn't a total bust.  We spent a couple of hours there and then drove back to Sibiu, packed up the sardine can and hustled off.   The countryside in Romania is beautiful, and it was a truly lovely drive.  The weather was perfect and everything was pretty and green.  We arrived at Brasov at around 3pm, parked the car and went looking for our accommodations.  Susan had booked all of our dwellings in Romania, and this one was called Central Apartments.  She had not found any apartments that could comfortably hold 4 people, but this place advertised two studio apartments for 29 Euro each.  That sounded plenty luxurious to us – two apartments?  That means 2 bathrooms and 2 kitchenettes!  But the advertising was bogus.  It was another 2 room apartment, with a bathroom and a small kitchen.  Susan questioned the host – "I thought this was supposed to be 2 studio apartments?"  "It is, this is one-" (pointing to a tiny bedroom in the hallway) "and the other is here "- now indicating the living room with the foldout couch.  Ah well, it was clean, pretty cheap and very, very central with parking for only 3 euro.    Brasov has a really nice old Europe feel to it, with a few huge squares, a very impressive Gothic church and lots of outdoor cafes.  Susan and Shannon went to the organ concert at the church, while the boys opted to soak up the ambiance, and a beer.   After the concert we headed to a pretty fancy dinner.  The restaurant was in the cellar of a building and it was nicely lit, and appropriately dungeon-ly.  Susan won the 'who picked the best menu item' when she ordered Paprikash.  We need to figure out how to make that, cause it was delicious! The next day we headed to the reason for going to Transylvania in the first place – Dracula's Castle.  Of course, the closest thing to a real Dracula was Vlad Tepes, a pretty vicious ruler who was prone to impaling enemies on big stakes to die slowly.  And Vlad's castle is in complete ruins and is far from everything, so another castle was chosen, in the nearby village of Bran, and is designated Dracula's.  It could be that Vlad might have visited once, but probably not.  Oh well, the Bran Castle is cool.  The inside is a bit underwhelming, but the outside has a great feel.  Plus there are all kinds of shops selling kitchy vampire themed stuff, so it was fun.   Chris and Shannon opted to go for a walk to the top of the mountain (on which sits Brasov is written Hollywood style) while the two of us chilled out in town.  Pizza for dinner anyone?   Next day, drive to Bucharest, drop off the car at the airport, make our way to the train station to catch a train to Russe (on the border) and then a train to Varna on the Black Sea coast in Bulgaria.


   

Our escape from KZ was complete when we touched down in Kiev Ukraine at 7:30 am after leaving KZ 5 hours earlier.  We had 14 hours until our next flight to Chisinau Moldova and we didn't want to sit around the Kiev airport (again).  We got through passport control and picked up our bags with no problems.  Now to figure out where we can leave our meager, time worn, post-Peace Corps possessions and go someplace interesting for the day.  We found a storage service in another terminal, had an extremely overpriced airport breakfast, got some local currency and we were out of there.    We took a bus and then a subway line into Kiev in our search to find the famous mysterious caves near a monastery somewhere near the downtown area.  We came pretty close but still had a 40 minute walk in the rain to get there. After a few false starts, we found an entrance to an extremely dark tunnel in the Cave Monastery Complex as the site is called.  Maybe we should have a bought a candle or something at the gift shop first before stumbled around in the tunnels.  (Hmm, think before you leap?  Sounds like something we should have learned in kindergarten but obviously didn't )  What we could see seemed to be a bunch of religious artifacts from Ukrainian saints of old but according to the guide book, were actually "…blanketed bodies of the monks…"  On the other hand, maybe the dark lighting was a plus.   We emerged from the other side of the cave and set off to find a closer metro station to take us into the city center.  In the center, we found a McDonald's and ate some fries (not very exciting for all of you who can have McDonald's fries anytime you want, but for us, we are suffering from a 2 year Mickey D's fries shortage).  We toured around the downtown area for a while and found one of those cheap, delicious Ukrainian restaurants like the one we ate at last time we were here.  It was tasty and inexpensive  and we didn't even have Chicken Kiev this time as our PC doctor advised us not to eat anything that has a stick of butter stuffed on the inside of each piece.   Fat and happy, our Kiev tour for the day is over and we set off to recover our luggage and fly to Moldova.   On the way back, a taxi driver at the bus stop tried to convince us that the airport bus would be late and we wouldn't catch our flight so why don't we let him give us a ride for double the cost of the bus.  "You no want to miss plane yes?" Well, nearby was lurking (or standing) a kindly old women who just could not stand this guy or maybe she just hates taxi drivers.  She told us in Russian not to go with him and that the bus would be here soon and he was charging you too much.  You go girl!  The taxi driver was pissed and they had some heated words but the bus showed up a few minutes later and off we went leaving the taxi driver to stew like a Hungarian goulash.   Back at the airport, it was no problem getting our luggage and catching our flight.  We boarded an Air Moldovan prop plane and set off for the promised land of good, drinkable wine.   The flight was a little rough but we made it okay and landed next to the two other Air Moldovan planes which, we think, comprise their total fleet.  It was pouring in Moldova (is it going to rain this whole trip or what?).  Shannon had arranged with the lady we were renting a soviet era apartment from to have someone meet us at the airport.  Boris (yes, his name was Boris) and his friend loaded our stuff in 2 cars and we all took off like bats out of hell through the pouring rain.  "Arrggghhhh!!!! Get your seat belts on quick!!!!"   We found out a few days later when it wasn't raining and they were driving the speed limit on these same roads that they figured the weather was so bad that there wouldn't be cops around so they could drive as fast as they wanted.   (We're sure if you think about it there is some twisted logic in this thinking that still eludes us on why we would risk high speed death due to the decreased likelihood that you would get a speeding ticket.)  When we got to town, we asked our driver to stop at a store to get some provisions, namely water as we are not sure we can drink the tap water here safely and get settled into our new lodging.  Susan, who is , after all, her mother's daughter, insisted that we also lay in some edibles for snacks that night or breakfast.  The apartment was ok.  And by "ok" we meant that it was worlds cleaner than the one we had rented in Almaty.  We had, of course, assumed that a 2 bedroom apartment meant that there were 2 bedrooms and a living room, but that was a rash assumption.  It was 2 rooms, a kitchen and a bath.  The next day was reserved for wandering around Chisinau and checking the place out.  Lonely Planet doesn't have much nice to say about Moldova.  "Constantly ranked near the bottom of the World Database of Happiness" is one of the first comments.  Still, it is the wine making country of the region and, unlike Georgia, makes some really tasty dry wines.  We were on a mission to find and subsequently consume some.  We had a great lunch in an outdoor restaurant and sampled a quite tasty dry rose.  Susan's meal even included a poached pear!  So fancy, we didn't know how to behave.  Seriously.  The waiter did that thing where he holds the wine bottle up against his forearm for our review, and we all stared at one another, not quite remembering what to do.  Susan recovered first and said something appropriate like "that will be fine" and hopefully spared us from looking like the bumpkins we felt ourselves to be. Paul's much revered Johnny Walker roll-aboard had taken a beating earlier and the handle at the top (that you use to carry it when you need to put it in a trunk or haul it up stairs) had come off on one side and was flapping uselessly.  On the way back from lunch Susan spotted a shoe repair place and suggested that Paul might get his suitcase repaired there.  He grabbed the bag from the apartment and went to give it a try.  The first guy in the shop pretty much scolded him and said, in Russian, 'not bags', but the second guy (older, mellower and likely the owner of the shop) indicated that he would have a look.  Paul managed to communicate in Russian that the repair didn't have to be pretty, just strong.  The guy poked, awled, stitched and, viola, the handle is repaired.  And it doesn't look half bad either! The cost was less than 2 dollars.  Paul was sneezing all over Chisinau and we assumed that he was allergic to something.  By the second day it was clear that he had a head cold.  None of the rest of us caught it, which was a relief, but the poor boy was suffering for a few days.  We had arranged with Boris (hereafter dubbed "Boris the Booming" for his extra loud one volume voice) to take us to a tour of the largest wine cellar in the world.  55 Euro per person was a bit extravagant, but, seriously, it is about the only sight in Moldova.  Picked us up late morning and drove us out there.  The place was carved out as a sandstone quarry and had been such for 100s of years.  Sometime in the 1960s, some folks were touring the place and remarked that the temperature and humidity were about perfect for storing wine and a new purpose was found.  It was cool, both literally and in terms of gawk-ability.  After the tour we were seated at a table in the cave, very nicely set, with cold cuts, cheese, tomatoes and cucumbers.  We also tasted 4 wines, and the waiter left the bottles on the table for us to go back and try whichever ones we liked while we were enjoying our lunch.  We thought lunch was a little sparse, so we ate all of it, including the garnish.  Only to discover that this was simply the salad course and there was grilled chicken and potatoes yet to come.  It was really nice and starting to be worth the 55 Euro.  And then came our presents!  Each of us got a bottle of red and a bottle of white wine to take home!  Chris and Shannon opted to take that literally and actually packed the bags to take back to the US.  The two of us opted to drink them over the course of the rest of our trip.  Too bad for all our friends at home who won't get a chance to try this Moldovan nectar.  We went back to the apartment full and warm and happy.  We packed, visited and hit the hay early so as to be more prepared for the 3 am wake up.  Boris was there with a friend to take us to the airport, and we can confirm that time of day has absolutely no impact on his volume.  Egads!  On our way to Romania.

So, our last few days in Pavlodar were chaotic. Not work-wise, we had fully wound down by then and had not much to do. But Tina was moving into our apartment, and had to be out of her place on the 31st, and we did not leave until the night of the 3rd. That meant several days with too much stuff in a small apartment. Susan, in an uncharacteristic bout of altruism, volunteered to help Tina move stuff and, egads, clean her apartment for the landlord inspection. Tina packed while Susan swept, mopped and scrubbed. She swears she felt just like Cinderella. But you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, so the place still looked dingy, decrepit and slightly dangerous when she was finished.

We had people in and out for the last week, volunteers passing through or saying goodbye, and it was Grand Central for a few days.

Finally, all packed up and ready to go, we set off for the train station one final time. Sergei had offered his services as a driver and the use of the Decenta mini-van to haul all our stuff to the station. We had managed to whittle down our luggage to one big wheelie duffle a piece – weighing, we hoped, not more than 20 kilos per, and a rolling carryon bag. But given how we usually travel with just a carry-on, this was a LOT of stuff.

Chris’ roommate Baurzhan escorted him to the station, and Shannon’s counterpart went with her. Baurzhan had brought 2 bottles of champagne and we managed to chug one of them between the 5 of us before boarding. We also had a number of the English Club members come to see us off. OK. They really came to see Shannon and Chris off, but they said goodbye to us too. It was a little sad to say goodbye to a town we had come to love during our stay, and to bid farewell to the locals who had treated us so kindly.

It was a complicated exercise not unlike a real life game of Tetris to get all of our bags stowed. By then it was late, the train was underway, so we wrapped up the other bottle of champagne and just went to sleep. We, once again, were blessed with a window that opened so we were cool and comfortable and were rocked to slumber. (OK, not really. There is often more lurching than rocking, and the stop in Astana is long and loud, but still, we sleep better on the train than on a plane.)

We arrived in Karaganda at 11am and called a fellow PCV Elena who has an apartment not far from the train station. Elena is also a Kaz-21 but had arranged to stay in KZ until our original COS (Close of Service) date of October 31st . She had graciously agreed to let us store our stuff in her place while we took a bus out to a nearby village to visit a gulag museum.

We found her apartment, had a few minutes visit and then off to the bus stop. We got on the requisite rickety bus for the 45 minute drive to the village. The next step was to catch a local bus or van from the major intersection bus stop to a stop closer to the museum. But, in a move that, once again, reminded us that we were not in the US, a young woman with a car pulled over and offered us a ride. A granny at the stop talked to her and then to us and we all jumped in. Apparently it is quite normal for those in town who have a car to pick up anyone they see at that bus stop and take them into the village. She dropped us of right at the museum, and showed us where the bus stop was to catch the little bus back to the big bus stop. We love this about the people in KZ.

The museum was very well done. It is new, and a fellow PCV helped the people set it up, which was how we heard about it. Gulag history is interesting, because the actual place is huge. As in hundreds of square kilometers. It wasn’t walled or fenced, but the people were essentially prisoners sentenced to hard labor. You don’t need fences or border patrol when you are in the middle of the steppe. Being in the gulag, as bad as it was, was preferable to being on your own in the barren steppe.

We, thankfully, took the English language tour and so got the most out of it. The museum is working on upping the drama and poignancy of the displays – right now they have hundreds of framed, artfully lit and arranged enlargements of illegible prisoner entrance documents. Not as engaging as you might think.

Our tour finished, we caught a bus back to the bus, then another bus back to Karaganda. We met up with Elena and her boyfriend and went for an absolutely delicious Georgian dinner. Back to her place to split the extra bottle of champagne and then the two of them helped us drag our stuff to the train station for our final KZ train ride.

We had opted to spoil ourselves and take a ride on the much vaunted Spanish train. Why it is called the Spanish train we still don’t know, but probably because it came from Spain. The Spanish train equivalent of platzcart (like 3rd class) is over twice as expensive as kupay (2nd class) on a regular train. We tried for kupay, but it was sold out so we settled for 3rd. The Spanish train is really a nice train. Air conditioned, with a lovely restaurant car and a bar car. The only problem was that the 3rd class accommodations were simply not designed for people with so much stuff. We had our own cabin for four, but very limited storage. We ended up stacking 3 big bags in the middle of the space and blocking the sink (what? A sink?) and pretty much making the space unusable for anything but sleeping. There was not floor space to put your feet if you sat on the bottom bunk, and the top bunks are too close to the ceiling for sitting upright. Ah well, we will go to sleep. (The bummer was that, since the train was air conditioned the windows did not open. But the AC was set too warm, so it was a bit of a hot sticky night.)

We arrived in Almaty at 8am. Shannon had been talking with a woman from whom she had rented an apartment on a previous visit, but the woman seemed only mildly interested in renting us accommodations this time. Her lackluster attitude prompted us to find a different approach. We got a cab to take us close to our favorite coffee shop and we dragged our stuff the rest of the way. Chris and Susan took charge of watching our things while Shannon and Paul went to the street where people who rent apartments for short term visits hang out (yes, there is such a street) to arrange for a 5 night stay.

Susan and Chris played a very close game of Scrabble (this coffee shop is owned by an American and has a worn Scrabble set, albeit with a few missing tiles). And, yeah, it was close. But don't get us wrong, Susan still won. Paul and Shannon found a 2 room apartment between the Green Bazaar and the big mosque for 6,000 tenge/night (about 40 dollars). Hotel rooms in Almaty are expensive – a cheap one usually goes for at least $100/night and won’t hold 4 people, so an apartment was the way to go. This one was in a good location, in a building with a lift and boasted air conditioning. When Paul and Shannon inspected the apartment they found themselves unable to get the remote to work to operate the AC. (the AC is a single unit installed in the wall of the main room and it can only be operated by remote). The erstwhile landlady promised to get the remote fixed or replaced pronto so the deal was inked. (And by that we mean we handed her the cash for the entire stay.)

Paul and Shannon walked back and we gathered our stuff and went in search of a taxi. We found one that would hold all of us and our stuff and piled in. Stupidly, though, we had not negotiated a price before loading up because we thought this was a metered taxi. The guy wanted 3000 tenge to take us 2 kilometers! Outrageous! We unloaded all our stuff, hauled it across the street and stuff it into two cabs who would take us for 500 tenge per cab.

When we get to the apartment building we run into our first snag. The power is out, so the lift is not working. And the apartment is on the 6th floor. Dang. So we haul all our stuff up all those stairs (props to Chris, who did most of the heavy lifting). The place looks pretty good at first glance, but it was actually kind of a pit on close inspection. And, because the power was out, it was hot. The outside temperature was approaching 100F and the inside was keeping pace.

Blessedly, after a short while the power returned. The AC, however was still out so the fan was working double time to try to cool us off. Daily calls to the landlady resulted in halfhearted promises to fix the AC, but we checked out 5 nights later having never had it working. It was a hot and sweaty stay.

We didn’t do much touring in Almaty, we visited with some friends and some other COSing volunteers and basically waited until it was our time to trudge to the Peace Corps office and process the final paperwork to close our service. We each had a physical, an interview with our country director and one with our regional manager, got signed off on closure of our bank accounts, grants and the rest. It felt like a big deal, but yet didn’t. You don’t swear out like you swore in, you just get signed and stamped. And now we are officially RPCVs (Returned Peace Corps Volunteers). We are called that even though we haven’t returned, as are the people who complete the service even if they never return!

Back to our apartment to pack, eat, have a beer and a nap before the cabs came to pick us up at 2 for our 4:30am flight to Kiev. We approached the ticket counter with trepidation. We had no way to weigh our bags prior to check in and so we didn’t know if we were within the 20kg per bag limit. Paul’s was a little under, Susan’s was a little over so some quick weight balancing and we were good to go. Shannon’s bag weighed in at a whopping 26kg, but no one batted an eye.

Safely checked in, we waited in the underwhelming departure lounge of the Almaty International Terminal for our flight. Which was late. Over an hour late. No explanation, no updates, simply no plane. The plane finally arrived and we boarded uneventfully. We had to sit 3 across because the plane was full, but it was a smooth flight. One more time we experienced the typical Kazakhstani flight in which the entire cabin bursts into raucous applause upon a safe landing. And we were done. Our time in Kazakhstan was over, finished, done. Wow.

We went out one sunny day in late July with the sole purpose of photographing the adorable babushkas, or grannies, of Pavlodar. One a nice day many take to the benches outside their buildings to chat, people-watch and get some fresh air. Others take the opportunity to pick up some much needed cash by selling vegetables from their dacha gardens or the knitwear that they made during the long cold days of winter.

These pictures were all gathered during a single 2 hour walk on a Sunday morning.

OK, so he is not a grannie, but he was with the women in the previous photo and really thought we should take his picture too.

Earlier in the week Sergey had told us that Decenta wanted to have a going away party for us. We assumed that it would be the usual tasty lunch at the office, complete with wine/beer/cognac and tea. But they surprised us with an all day send-off event (and probably a reason to bag work for the day). We were instructed to arrive at the office at 8am prepared for a day at the beach. We arrived at work at the appointed time, got in a taxi bus and drove south. We thought we might have headed to the city riverside beach area, but that would have meant going west (and probably not needing a bus) so we were pretty quick to ascertain we were into something new. Once we got out of the city, we turned down a dirt road with big, deep, dusty pot holes that were making everyone feel a little sick. Or maybe it was only nauseating to those of us who were sitting sideways in the bus/van. At first we thought it was an interestingly designed interior, but we soon discovered (right after an especially nasty pothole rocked our bench) that our bench, which was along the side wall, was just placed there, not actually attached. We presume it was originally meant to be an attached, albeit removable, forward facing bench seat but they liked this precarious arrangement better. After a few turns and backtracks, we made it to an area they deemed suitable for a beach day.

It was a beautiful day and we had a stunning back drop of the factory in Aksu across the river which supposedly has the 2nd biggest smokestack in Kazakhstan. Once we unloaded the taxi and found a place to create some shade with an enormous sheet tied between bushes, the next activity was to find rocks/bricks to build a shashlik pit. Sure enough, there have been enough people previously on this beach that we were able to find rocks and bricks to build the grill. Not just a grill, but the shashlik grill of the century. Designed by Sergey, it was truly a work of shashlik art. Next up, find some wood. We were able to scavenge for a sufficient amount of dry wood (although you could tell that people didn't have a problem chopping down shrubs either, given how many stumps were around). So,it's now around 9:30, time to cook pork shashlik and prepare tomatoes,cucumbers, liver covered in mayonnaise (the liver patties having been cooked the night before, were now smeared with mayonnaise and chopped garlic), and assorted other mayonnaise slathered items. It was also beer o'clock so we poured ourselves a drink from the big jugs of beer that they brought. When the shashlik was done we chowed down. Sergey is an excellent shashlik chef, and there is nothing like meat and beer for breakfast.

After we cleaned up a bit, we divided into two teams with us as captains (they joked that it was the only time we had or would ever be separated). The losing team would have to buy pizza for everyone the next day for lunch. We got to pick our teams and the competition began. The first event was each team rhyming 4 different sets of randomly assigned Russian words. As captains, we just "supervised"as their understanding of the Russian language seemed to be sufficient for the task. Both teams produced some amazing poems (we hear tell) so we tied. The next event was hilarious. Some one held a stick and each person was given a piece of tape. The person who could stick the tape the highest on the stick won for that team. Here's the twist; you had to walk backward to the stick, and reach up between your legs and then place the tape. It was the closest we have seen to what looked like people trying to stick their heads up their own butts. Susan's team won as she had a tall, flexible young woman on her team- a ringer for sure. The girl's mom on Paul's team came in second. Nature or nurture?

The next competition was building a paper airplane out of a sheet of flip chart paper and the one that could fly the furthest won. Our Director (on Paul's team) had the brilliant idea to tape a rock inside it so it "flew" pretty far. Susan's team tried a javelin toss with their airplane on the end but it fell off. Score now tied again. For event 4, Sergey and Arman were tapped to have a sign taped to their backs and ,holding one leg up, needed to try hop around to read the sign on the other's back. Arman hopped best for the win and Susan's team took back the lead. Break - Timefor more beer.

It got pretty hot out and we both broke down and went into the river. Two years in Pavlodar and we hadn't been in the Irtish before, but they assured us the water was pretty clean here even if there was a giant factory across the river. Well, ok, the river starts in China and passes Semey, the Soviet nuclear center, on its way to Pavlodar, so we feel justified in being cautious. It felt great to cool off but we both couldn't wait to take a long shower when we got home. Not that showering really helps with irradiation, but we don’t seem to have any ill effects. It was great, because it was shallow for a long way, and then got deep and fast. Even the weak swimmers felt like Michael Phelps when they were swimming north.

Decenta also used this event for some team building. Elena, the overseer of all competitions, brought a ~ meter long metal pipe with many holes drilled in it. The team building event was for all the rest of us to plug up the drilled holes (the bottom was capped) so that when water was poured into the pipe, the ping pong ball inside would float out of the top. Sounds easy doesn't it? Well, we missed plugging up a few holes on the first few trys and never was able to fill the pipe. Then we got most of the holes covered but people's fingers would move allowing the water to leak out. After another bunch of tries, we got to see the ping pong but couldn't get it out. Finally we figured out that someone needed to keep a hand free to grab it. We were pretty soaked at the end of it but we did learn to get more organized each time we tried. Good team building exercise.

After several more refreshing plunges, the next event was dodge ball with a Nerf football we brought. Susan's team was handily defeated as Paul kept catching the ball which gave him an additional life. Score tied again. Break - time for a nap, some more beer and get the fire going to cook up the rest of the pork shashlik.

The sun, of course, moved during the day (ok we know - it is the earth that really moves, so there) and our food was exposed for long periods of time to heat and sunlight. We had heard in the States that you shouldn't eat mayonnaise left out because of the potential for bacterial infections. I guess those old wives tales were not part of the childhood for people here because they all ate everything. We still held on to our silly ideas and did not eat anything more that had mayo on it. We thought for sure everyone would be sick the next day but,surprisingly, they weren't. Maybe they have anti-bacterial mayo here. In any case, the second round of shashlik was still tasty as we came up to the last tie breaking event.

Susan and I stood back to back and a four foot rope was placed on the dirt between our legs. The first person to pull it through to their side won. Paul practiced using his toes to grab it. Ok, let's go! Paul quickly grabbed the rope with his toes but Susan, the clever devil that she is, just stepped on it until Paul let go. Then she quickly grabbed it with her hand and - game over! Paul's team was buying the pizza!

By the time we left everyone was sunburned and exhausted but feeling pretty good about the outing. We were so glad they invited us to come along; it was really nice. Paul brought 2 pizzas the next day for lunch (without mayonnaise on them because we know the one pizzeria in Pavlodar that does not put mayo on pizza) and brought them to the office. We finished the leftovers from the beach (yes, some of it was the mayonnaise covered items) and, with mixed feelings, we think this is the last time we will go to the office.

We leave Pavlodar in 3 days and KZ in 9. If you are interested, we go to Ukraine,Moldova, Romania and Bulgaria before heading to Germany, Liechtenstein,Switzerland and the Netherlands in our new car. We are not sure how much we will be posting during the trip becauseaccess to the Internet might be limited so this might the last entry for a while. See you in the States soon!

Our shashlik grill Preparing for our feast. By late morning this was all in the sun. You think that's coffee? Fabulous scenery. Glad they are not blowing our way. First challenge - write Russian poetry. Put the tape high up on the stick game (AKA stick your head up your @ss)

Sergey makes fire. Ugg. Shashlik soon. Ugg.

So, our final big project in KZ was to use some of the money we got to commemorate the Peace Corps 50th Anniversary by painting a big map of the world on an exterior wall somewhere it Pavlodar. We had complete instructions, templates and guides from http://www.theworldmapproject.com/ , all we needed was the paint and a wall.

But does anything really work out the way you had it planned? First, we had a lot of trouble finding a wall that we could get permission to paint. We were thinking we would paint it on the wall of an abandoned building behind our apartment, the wall that acts as one border of the play area. But it appears that, while it isn’t possible to actually find a person from whom to request permission, you will find people who will tell you quite stridently that it is Nilzya (forbidden, not allowed) if they actually see you painting. We asked Sergei to see if there was someone in the Akimat (city government) who could help, and he tried, but was unsuccessful. Granted, it was not really an important agenda item for him, as he has more pressing things to try to get done.

Still, we bought the supplies so we could properly account for the money and close the books on it, but we still had no wall. Finally, Nina Petrovna, Shannon’s counterpart, said she had the perfect wall at Samal Center (the disabled youth center) and that she could get us permission to paint it there. Not ideal, as we were hoping for public property, but the wall was nice and flat, north facing and is visible from the roadway so people can see if even if they don’t come into Samal.

Paul printed out copies of the templates, instructions and map details so that we could work off them. The idea is to scale your map, grid it out and then, using the templates, fill in your grids by scaling up the grid section in the template. Easy, right? Well, we had one small problem. Shannon decided to enlist the help of Kostya, a fantastic airbrush artists who has done a lot of volunteer painting to decorate the walls inside of Samal. He is a great guy who speaks fluent English, but he is also very opinionated. He thought following the detail grids was too time consuming. “You will see, it will be easy. You just do a big grid and draw in the countries in an outline, and we will fill them in later, it will be so much easier than what you have. Trust me.” He also had us take back all the paint we had purchased. “You don’t need. Is not good. Buy other, is better.Trust me.” Paul, ever organized planner, was about to go ape. We are not artists (nor can we honestly say that we have such a great grasp of geography that we could easily map and identify all the nations of, say, Southeast Asia freehand), so we were not confident that this was going to work. And it almost didn’t. But Kostya is very talented and was able to outline all of Africa and most of Europe. Chris did the USA and Canada, Shannon took the Far East, Paul did Australia and Susan took the left-most part of the map, which was only Polynesia and Hawaii. No way we are going to claim that it is even close to being true to scale (Hawaii came out huge, and the US is a bit misshapen) but it wasn’t all that bad. We got the wall scraped (“You do not need to wash the wall or prime it or anything. Will be fine. Trust me.”) and whole world outlined in about 5 hours.

The next day we were planning on painting the entire thing the blue that would represent our oceans. (“The marker that we used to outline will show through. You can paint over whole thing. Trust me.”). But Kostya had slept on it (and probably reflected on Susan’s threat to kick his a** if we painted over the whole thing in blue and the marker did not show through making it so that we had to map it all out again) and decided that we should paint all the continents a light yellow and the water blue as a base, and then fill in the individually colored countries. That took a lot longer, because you have to stay in the lines rather than just slapping down a base coat of blue. (“But the yellow will work. All colors after will be fine. You see. Trust me”). The 4 of us spent 2 or 3 hours filling that in, but it did look pretty cool when it was done. We went and got a quick bite of lunch so we could get back to the wall when the other volunteers (local kids from English Club, mostly) came by to help.

Kostya had left (“The rest is fine. It will good. Trust me”) so we were on our own for coloring in the individual countries. Paul, again, wanted to be methodical and to follow the project plan. It tells you what colors to paint each country so that you don’t accidentally paint two bordering countries the same color. But Shannon, taking a page from Kostya’s play book, wanted to just wing it. Let’s hear if for the English Clubbers! They thought it was a good idea to identify each country, find it on the plan, and pencil in what color it should be. They did that while Susan and Chris mixed paints to create the colors we needed. It took some time to do all that, but then the painting went pretty fast. Except for this one kid. The only local guy who was there to help, and the kid was in charge of painting the dark blue countries. Honestly, this kid must have seriously flunked coloring as a child, because he couldn’t stay within the lines at all. And sometimes he painted the wrong country blue, and then painted its neighbor blue too, so we might have changed some borders (or erased entire nations) in our creation. Hopefully we haven’t initiated any civil unrest in parts of the world as result of our lack of coloring skills… He also dripped a bunch, sometimes creating brand new islands in the middle of the sea. Oh well, you can’t fire them, they are volunteers!

We got the whole thing painted, outlined and logoed by the dinner time, which was terrific. We had thought we would have to come back for at least one more day, but our volunteers worked hard and we got it all done. Have to say, issues with scale notwithstanding, it looks pretty good! (All you Americans who read this might be stunned to notice that the USA is NOT in the center of this map. The entire rest of the world, when drawing a map of same, put Africa in the center so as to not have to cut any countries in half when flattening out the globe. So, America is on the left, Russia and China on the right and only a teeny bit of Russia is split. Just that teeny bit that Sarah Palin can see from her house…)The ocean is blue, land is yellow

Note the OSHA approved scaffolding - a bunch of pallets that we found in the yard and stacked up

mixing the colors

reinforcements arrive

All finished, 'scaffolding' removed.

We finally arranged for Shannon, Chris, and us to take the boat ride on the Irtish river. It runs every two hours in the summer starting at 1pm until 11 pm (we think it stops then). The first two rides of the day are free of the ear splitting disco “music” that you can hear from the beach so we opted for the 1 pm. We met some Americans on the boat who are in Pavlodar for 6 weeks teaching English to boys. Why only boys? We never found out. But seeing other Americans in KZ for us is now similar to how small children are with other children their same size on the playground: you see them, toddle over, size them up, and then you try to get them to play with you. It was a mutual attraction so we spent some quality time speaking English as we glided down and back up the almost fabulous Irtish river. The ride lasted about an hour and it was a beautiful day. Don't know if it was worth 500 KzT, but we are glad we finally went.

We were invited to help at Shannon's summer camp for 3 days in Bayanaul with the disabled kids from Samal. The theme of the camp was ecology and for some strange reason, Shannon assigned each of us a character from the cartoon Captain Planet. (Have you heard of it? We hadn't either.) Susan's power was wind and Paul's was heart. Susan's character is named Linka who controls wind and is from the Soviet Union (Well, she was originally from the Soviet Union. After the collapse she was heralded from Eastern Europe.). Linka likes to study birds and, according to Wikipedia, "...is extremely emotional when pollution harms them..." Paul plays Ma-Ti, a young Brazilian who, again according to Wikipedia, "...uses the power of Heart to instill caring, passion, and sympathy into the people of the world..." Anyway, when we started the camp, besides us wearing colored headbands and colored glasses, we pretty much didn't do anything related to Captain Planet.

Part of Shannon's enticement to come the camp was that the location this year would be much better than last year’s. She also said the food was better - there would even be omelets and yogurt for breakfast! Well, the food at this "all-inclusive resort" was just as bad but more plentiful as last year. (We never did see an omelet or yogurt. Breakfast was either one kind of gruel or another, except on boiled hot dog day). The rooms this year did not have toilets or showers. We had a sink and a fridge, though. Of course, to get the kids to the beach (remember a handful of them are in wheelchairs) we had to take them down a flight of stairs, walk 1/4 mile or so down a dirt road, up a small hill, cross the main road, go through ~ 50 yards of loose sand before we got to the water. The flight of stairs was into the building where they slept, with another flight from the path to the restaurant. Paul and Chris were sore from hauling wheel chairs! Given the sales pitch and what we ended up with, we think Shannon may have a career ahead of her in software sales.

After we got over the initial shock of our accommodations, we had a good time. There were many people at and around the "resort" who partied late into the night. Of course they probably didn't have to get up early to do weird activities with disabled kids, so they were entitled. We celebrated Nina's birthday one night and blew up balloons and drank some wine. As we were sitting outside our "cabana" for the festivities, all the children from the neighboring "cabanas" were intrigued by the balloons. We, being generous Americans, blew up a balloon for each of wide-eyed urchins, solidifying our place as diplomats of peace (or something). One of the kids, Kostya, was staying next door to us and we really got a kick out of him. He was a bruiser and maybe 3 years old and he didn't give a rip if his mom told him to do something. He would just keep on doing whatever he wanted. He would also look over at us and give us a sly grin periodically. And from time to time, he would go along side the cabana to make his toilet there on the dirt. Still, every time we went outside we looked for him and he looked for us and we'd exchange that open/close hand greeting common among small foreign children and Peace Corps volunteers. We had our mutual love fest with this little barely Russian speaking trouble maker.

Besides playing with the kids, we both gave presentations related to ecology. Susan had them do collages using pictures she cut out of magazines depicting either good or bad environmental situations. The kids loved doing it but not as much as the women support staff from Samal who also participated. Heaven forbid one of the children should grab a photo one of these artistic ladies wanted because they would body block anyone who would interfere with the creation of their perfect collage. It was on! Paul gave a presentation on volcanoes and their effect on the environment (well, sort of). He also had them make their own volcanoes and then using the secret ingredients of vinegar, dish soap, food coloring and baking soda, he let a few of them erupt without nary an effect on global warming (we think anyway).

Speaking of the support staff, they didn't seem to bother us as much this year. No one told us to eat or drink but they did tell us to move the kids here, carry them there, up the stairs, down the stairs, etc. Hmmm, are we just getting used to being ordered around by screechy Russian women or were they nicer this year? We are just not sure.

The weather was much nicer this year and the kids had fun at the lake. They (adults and kids) don't believe in using sun screen so most of the kids got sun burned the first day. Ouch. The local remedy for sun burned skin is to rub it with either milk or smetana (sour cream). Nothing like wearing after-tanning lotion which smells like, and actually is, fermented milk products. We still went back out to the lake the next day, again without sun screen, and luckily it was cloudier. They were able to enjoy the paddle boats, burying each other in the sand, throwing a football, and just getting wet on a warm day. Universally appealing activities.

In addition to the beach, there is also hiking around the hills in Bayanaul. Of course, we thought we wouldn't do that because of the difficulty associated with pushing kids in wheel chairs on the rocky paths. Oh no. At one point the rocky, dirt path ended so a local volunteer Azamat, who was helping, abandoned the wheel chair he was pushing and and carried Vitya on his back up into the hills. So now there was a bunch of disabled kids wandering through the scrub brush tripping over bushes. Finally the two of us couldn't take it anymore and went back down. Shannon was in charge so we let them continue their stumble through the weeds. Of course, the kids loved it. What were we thinking? Are we just too old for this sh*t?

Another activity we did was an outing to clean up garbage along the main road and another one on the beach. Afterward, some of the kids said this was their favorite experience of the camp. We can only surmise that, as disabled kids in KZ they rarely get an opportunity to actual make a difference. Perhaps they felt useful doing something to improve the environment. Ok, maybe not everyone got the point of the ecology camp as we witnessed one of the kids finish a water bottle and throw it in the bushes. Maybe we will need to do some follow up training to reinforce the messages. Some of the local KZ people at the beach were astonished that there were Americans, especially Californians, cleaning up their beach (doesn't California have places to vacation that are closer than Bayanaul KZ that are nice too? Why would you come all the way here? And is picking up garbage really a vacation?) We are hoping that maybe a few can take it on themselves to clean up after they are done. Lead by example and all. But that's probably wishful thinking. Now that we think about it, we are not sure if they were astonished because we were cleaning up (apparently a novel concept) or because we are Americans. Most people assumed we were German and we got greeted with "Guten Tag" more often than not.

The bus ride back was pretty uneventful except when the driver stopped alongside the road and all the males needed to get out to use the "bathroom" in the road behind the bus (we were in the middle of nowhere with flat steppe for miles and miles). After the males finished, the females got their chance to go outside. Apparently on the way to Bayanaul, people complained that the outhouse near the cafe we stopped at was so nasty, that peeing out in the open was preferable. 19 more days to go...

Irtish Cruise boat

Views from the boat

At the beach in Bayanaul with the kids from Samal center Teeter totter anyone?

Captain Planet camp: Chris with the power of fire (or ginger), Paul with the power of heart. Trail ends but not the hike Morning exercises

Great weather at the beach! Who doesn't like to be buried in sand?

Susan with some of the kids. Shannon helps load up the paddle boat.

Paul's presentation on volcanoes and the environment. Taking a break from picking up trash

We only had to take the kids up and down these stairs about 10 times a day. Susan's environmental collage activity. The kids hung their collages on the wall.

As the countdown continues, we decided to mirror our departure from home by throwing a going away party for ourselves on this end of our journey.

The idea was to invite all the people we have befriended in Pavlodar in the past 20 months, and hope that some of them could come. Shannon and Chris would add their friends too (as many are shared) and we would have a shashlik fest at a nearby tent. (in the summer here, shashlik tents are set up in parking lots and empty spaces all over town. They set up the shashlik barbeque outside, run power from a nearby business, tap a keg and off they go.)

So, we went to a tent that we had frequented last summer, to see if they would be suitable hosts. What a bust! They only had 1 kind of shashlik (most places have at least pork and chicken, and the best places also have sheep and beef), one kind of beer (warm) and the worst service we have had here. And, seriously, that is saying A LOT. Most people in the service industry were trained in the Soviet style, which results in service ranging between indifferent and surly. But these people managed, somehow, to be both. So, without them even knowing that they were in the running to host the bash of the century, they were out.

We had to rely on our tried and true friends at restaurant Kabachok. Kabachok means squash, which is a very odd name for a restaurant, but is our go-to place for gatherings. They have good service, are friendly to Americans and have never let anybody harass us. (Which can happen. Never underestimate the aggression of a group of young, drunk Kazakhs. A couple of our fellow volunteers got the crap beat out of them just walking down the street in a town south of here by a carload of drunkards. )

So, we enlisted Vika’s help with translation and arranged with Kabachok the details of the party. Shashlik, fries, salad, dessert, beer. We would supply the vodka (a requirement), juice (our way of being able to actually drink the requirement), cognac (for the ladies who don’t drink vodka) and a bottle of wine (cause Susan really doesn’t like beer, vodka or cognac.) We didn’t need Vika to translate, though, because the manager knows us, and we know how to say ‘shashlik’, ‘fries’, and the rest in Russian. All we needed to do was go in 2 days before the party to put down a deposit and firm up the details,and we would have the outside patio exclusively for our enjoyment.

Not one hour after we had confirmed the date, time and approximate number of people did Shannon email from Astana that she had to stay there until the 9th to make a presentation of volunteerism in the US for a group of Kazakhstani legislators. But it was too late to change the date, and too hard to find a date that everyone could do it anyway, so we had to have the party without Shannon. We managed to invite about 25 people, but with little idea how many people would actually come. We figured the exact count didn’t matter, as we could easily add more shashlik orders at the last minute if it came to that.

So 2 days before the party was Astana Day (July 6th, a national holiday that, completely coincidentally – wink wink – coincides with the president’s birthday.) We had big plans to go downtown and watch the parades and performances, but it was hot and we were not inspired so we did nothing of the sort. What we did do was forget that we were supposed to go to Kabachok and put down our deposit. Wasn’t a problem at all, of course. We simply went the next day, the day before the party, went over it all again with a new manager (with Vika on the phone to provide language support if needed) and we were set. The only thing we needed was a Tamadah – a sort of emcee who organizes the toasts, leads the party in a few games and generally guides the festivities. All parties have one – although very often it is one of the guests who just takes charge of it. We got a name from Kabachok and Susan went to Vika’s to ask for her help in hiring this woman. Bing, bang, boom – done. Susan gave Rosa (the tamadah) the 411 on the people she should call to give a toast and we were set to go.

The day of the party arrives, and we gather at our place to gussy up and then run to the store to load up on provisions. When we get to Kabachok they have the tables all pushed together into one long table set for 20 people. And they and the Tomadah started asking us when everyone would arrive and, later, has everyone arrived yet. Hilarious questions to us, because we, knowing we are in Kazakhstan, didn’t actually expect anyone to RSVP. We really had only a rough idea how many people would be there, so it was really hard to tell if everyone was there or not! It all worked out fine, as with early departures and late arrivals we were never more than 20. We made a couple of mix CDs (both American and Russian music) and they played while we ate, sang, toasted, danced, repeatedly.

We had only one mishap, and that was because of Chris’s roommate Baurzhan, who insists on multiple toasts of vodka. One of our guests, not from KZ and therefore unaware of how dangerous this multiple toast tradition can be, drank more than he should have. He, along with his hostess, was staying at our apartment for the night (we had a houseful – there were 7 people staying there including us!) . He was sick all night and into the next day, poor guy, and probably hates KZ and us for all time.

It was loads of fun (well, except for the sick fellow) and a great send off. And, in happy news, Nina and the folks at Samal center are going to host a going away party for Shannon in the next couple of weeks so she can participate in a nice farewell as well.

Our central park in Pavlodar contains an amusement park with Ferris wheel, swings, and other rides. The other day we were walking through the park and, as it is summer, there were many people around playing and eating cotton candy - white cotton candy, not pink or blue which for some reason they don’t have here. For us, it looks like people are eating huge wads of actual cotton. Anyway,, one of the rides they have is regular sized ATV’s which you can rent and drive around part of the park. As we were getting ready to leave, an ATV driven by a 12 year old who had a 6 -7 year old kid in front of her (no helmet) crashed into the fence not 20 feet from us. This wasn’t a little bump. This was “I think I want to put on the brake but oh shit I hit the gas instead-AAARRGGH!!!!” crash. The metal fence was damaged and twisted but thankfully the kids appeared to be alright. Scared the hell out of us but no one else seemed concerned.

We went to Astana for the 4th of July weekend (Happy Independence Day!). We took the train on Friday night and arrived in Astana about 6:30 in the morning. Shannon had arranged through a couch surfing friend that we would be able to use her apartment for the weekend while she was in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Shannon sent us the apartment address and we negotiated with a taxi to take us there. Well, funny story, the address she gave us was about 1 1/4 hour walk from the real address. We are not sure where the mix up occurred, sending or receiving address info, but we were not happy campers lugging our stuff for several miles in the middle of the night (ok, early morning-ish, and, since the sun rises at about 4:30 this time of year it wasn't anywhere near dark, but still).

But when we got there, it was an amazing apartment overlooking the new part of the city and the river. We settled in and then headed over to the new part of town for some shopping at the big "mall" which is called Khan Shatyr in Astana http://www.khanshatyr.com/ . The girls loved it. Shannon was on a mission to find a new dress for her birthday (July 3) so they spent the whole day there. The boys, fed up with the mall after eating their fill of KFC, decided to leave and go stock up on provisions for the apartment. Later we cooked dinner, went out for a beer and basically kept it low key as we were still pretty tired from traveling.

The next day was Shannon's birthday so we pretty much let her decide what she would like to do. After opening her present, we went for lunch, did a shot of vodka, rented a paddle boat and floated on the river, drank a beer, sat in the sun and took a nap. Not a bad start for a bday. Later that night, a former volunteer who now works with USAID, invited all the volunteers to his apartment for a party. And wow, what an apartment!

It covered 2 floors and the top floor had a large outside patio that overlooked the Baiterk http://www.astana-hotels.net/astana/sights/baiterek.htm which is a defining symbol of Astana. Amazing. Many of our friends were there so we enjoyed socializing and eating Hebrew National hot dogs and chicken wings. Oh the simple things in life which we will be able to enjoy again on a regular basis. Never again will we take chicken wings for granted.

We left the party early (~10pm) because our host was coming back from Bishkek early and we had the only key. Shannon stayed with the intent of maximizing her birthday fun - which she did but regretted the next day. ;>)

On July 4th, we were, for the 2nd time in 2 years, back on American soil at the US Embassy. This year about 65 volunteers came (maybe 30 came last year) and enjoyed hospitality of the Embassy and the Embassy staff. It just felt like America which is a bit moving after having been gone now for almost 2 years. There aren't any particularly interesting stories to tell of the party because everyone behaved. :-( But we all enjoyed cold beer, potato salad, pizza with spinach (who brought that???), burgers, hot dogs, chips, watermelon... well you Americans know how it is. A little slice of home for us.

That night we hopped on a train back to Pavlodar, and except for the French speaking, Kazakh snore monster in our kupay on the train, our escape from reality was over, and now have 5 weeks to go before we finish our service. One day at a time...

Ahh, Tuscany....

Italy was/is well, Italy - wonderful. The people are loud and animated, the history rich and colorful and the food delicious. We spent nine days in Tuscany six of which were in a villa built in the 1200's with some parts of it built even earlier ( http://www.villafabbroni.com/inglese/il_castello.php ). Paul's brother Alan (Alan! Alan! Alan!), his wife Celeste and their son Jacob joined us. The kids also took time from their busy lives to come for 7 days. Our flights to get there were typical KZ: we checked out of the hotel at 2am to get to the airport in Almaty for our 4:30 am take-off on a flight that included wine and fish for the meal. We then flew to Milan via Kiev and drove (yes, we drove after not having done so for about 2 years) to Tuscany 3 1/2 hours away. Flying into Florence would have cost about 4 times as much so we opted for the drive. Beautiful countryside after we got used to the car's manual transmission.

The rest of the group did not have as much fun getting there. Flight delays, canceled tickets, airline finger pointing, lost luggage, etc. but they did finally arrive. The villa was amazing and we felt like nobles but unfortunately, without the servants. There was plenty of room for everyone plus we had a private garden overlooking the Tuscan hills for our personal enjoyment. Without going into too many details we: toured Pisa, Siena and Florence, ate pizza just about everyday, wine tasted Chianti in the Chianti region of Tuscany, and still had plenty of family time. It was so great to see Trevor and Genevieve and Alan (Alan! Alan! Alan!) and family. We had a relaxing time chilling in Italy. Ahh...

Oh, in case you are wondering why we keep referencing Alan! Alan! Alan! check out this link and we think you will understand. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnHr5ITe0kc


We got back to KZ with a minimum of hassle. Alan had brought a GPS that Susan had ordered which came with a heavy metal base. Well, the airlines did not like this item being in the bags being taken on-board. Why? We don't know. Eventually they would let us through but at the Almaty airport they needed to examine it very closely. They tore open the packaging, and inspected it until they found the made in China label - "Ah, китайский - ok" Apparently if it was Chinese made then no worry (ie. it was crap).

We arrived back in Almaty at 03:45 am and walked to the nearest hotel to get some shut eye. No rooms. Shoot. Paul was approached by a babushka who he figured out was trying to rent us an apartment. Let's check it out. The apartment was close and clean and 10,000 KzT (much cheaper than the hotel) plus we got keep it until 8 at night when our flight to Pavlodar left. We will miss meeting a random person on the street and walking to their apartment and/or car without feeling unsafe. Such has been our experience in Kazakhstan.

Our Pavlodarian volunteer friends were at our apartment when we got home. Yay! We were on Italy time so we hung out and socialized for a while. They cooked us breakfast in the morning and made a cake for Paul's birthday. It was so nice to feel the love. We will sorely miss our friends when we leave in August. :>(

We left for work Monday morning and there was a crowd of 30 or so people right outside almost blocking the door of our building. When we looked closer we realized they were gathered an open casket. In the casket we saw an old woman who was clearly dead. Her family and friends were mourning her in the parking lot as assorted cars/people went by. It was a little (ok, alot) awkward to cut through them at a time like this while they were actively grieving. Very sad.

But not to end on a down note, we leave KZ in less than 2 months! It will be over 2 years since we were back in the US since we left and we are very excited to be going back. See you soon!

Within 90 days of their COS date, Peace Corps calls all the now veteran volunteers into Almaty for a 3 day conference. The start of the conference for us KAZ-21s happened to fall on Paul’s 51st birthday. We took the train down to Almaty riding in kupay style with Chris and Shannon. The two of us had plans to leave for a mini Reinhart reunion in Tuscany a few days after the conference, and so decided to stay in Almaty for a few days, rather than take the 26 hour train ride back to Pavlodar, spend 12 hours there and take the 26 hour ride back. We stayed one last time in the lovely Kok Tobe Sanatorium (daringly renamed by the group that came after us as “the Kok”), arriving the day before the action started.

The timing was perfect, as it gave Susan time to search for Paul’s elusive birthday present at the Green Bazaar – the huge bazaar in Almaty. She had searched both the big bazaar and the Chinese bazaar in Pavlodar (don’t ask us, we have NO idea why it is called the Chinese bazaar) for a Kazakhstan track suit. Not sure why so many volunteers want a Kazakhstan track suit as a souvenir, but many of us do. Susan already has one, so now Paul needed one. Here is the problem. While Paul may not be a big guy by American standards, by clothing standards here he is HUGE! Track suits must be loose and so sizing was an issue. Next issue, Paul did not want one that was really brightly colored. The Kazakh national color is a very beautiful, but very bright, blue and therefore was unsuitable. The final problem, and this was a major obstacle, was that the writing had to be in either Kazakh or Russian letters, not Roman. We find it strange, but most clothing that is marked for this country says “Kazakhstan” and not “казакстан”. We have spent way too much time learning the Cyrillic alphabet to not display it proudly on our dubiously styled clothing.

So Susan and a few others went shopping while Paul and Chris did guy stuff. Mostly they were trying to find a place that would sell them a dark beer for less than a king’s ransom. Susan fared better, and was able to score a great track suit in an appropriate size, color and alphabet. She and her cohorts were pretty exhausted after, as it took canvassing the entire bazaar to find it.

We all met up back at Kok Tobe for dinner. All meals are included when you stay in a sanatorium, but they aren’t all delicious. Or even entirely edible… We all remember the meals we got when we first arrived here and ate at Kok Tobe. What we couldn’t tell this time was if the food had actually gotten better or if we were simply used to it. Most meals were actually pretty good. OK, one breakfast consisted of a big brick of тборог, which is like solid cottage cheese, and was not a favorite for Susan, but many other volunteers scarfed it up, so…

So the conference was, for us, really just a way to hang out with our volunteer friends for a few days before we end our service and head for home. OK, that was true for most people, not just us. But really, most of the sessions were about adjusting to life after Peace Corps, finding a job, how to use your Peace Corps experience to make your resume interesting and all sorts of other things that you care about when you are 24-28, but not so much when you are 50. Or in Paul’s case, 51 that day.

There were a few important sessions on all the crap forms we have to fill out in order to close our service. This is a government agency, so there are copious amounts of paperwork. But seriously, the most important thing we had to accomplish (and thus the most talked about) was pooping. Every volunteer had to submit 2 fresh stool samples, collected on different days, so they could be tested at a lab for parasites and other yuckyness. We were each given a stiff cardboard tube in which were two vials with small sample collecting spoons attached to the lids (like the brush inside a nail polish bottle). The vials had some liquid in them that was some sort of poo solvent. The big warning was to not get any urine in the sample. Each volunteer was left to his or her own devices as to exactly how to collect a urine free sample of poo, and as to how to convince your body to poop twice in 3 days. Some of us are not as regular as others, you know.

To make matters worse, there was a special medical caveat. For those volunteers over 50, they needed to do an additional test for occult blood which meant 3 more samples, each on different days – and we didn’t get the collection devices until the last day! No problem, since we were staying in Almaty for a few days anyway. We arranged with the doctor to collect at our leisure and he would send a driver to pick the poop up at our hotel when we were done. We were, of course, the only ones who had to do this extra step…

Anyway, after the first day of sessions, we all gathered in the common area of our building (the Kok Tobe staff wisely puts all the Peace Corps volunteers in one building away from the other guests) to visit and socialize. The small market next to the place sold out of beer the first night, so people had to go further to get supplies. Shannon, Chris and some others bought a bottle of vodka and arranged for anyone who wanted to join in to toast Paul for his birthday. They even made a card and had a ton of people sign it, and they sang. It was pretty touching, actually.

Paul had a bottle of rum that we had purchased at duty free on one of our earlier jaunts, and he contributed that to the mix, along with some tasty juices. There was still a bunch of juice, vodka and rum left when Susan went to bed at 11, but it was all gone by morning. Paul skipped breakfast and the first session because he had stayed up way too late playing with his friends.

The last night of the conference was also Karla’s last night in country. Being a Peace Corps Response volunteer, she didn’t need to attend all the meetings and stuff that regular volunteers did. But she was able to choose her COS date to coincide with our conference so that she could hang out with people for the couple of days it took to process her out (medical exam, account closings, paperwork).

Karla had gone up to her room at around 11, to shower and go to bed. But Paul, Sean and Chris were all sitting outside, drinking beer and telling stories and decided she should come join them. The pelted her windows with berries from nearby trees until she agreed to get dressed and come back down. They -stayed up laughing and talking until the wee hours. They even outlined a script that one of them will likely submit to Hollywood involving a misunderstood Big Foot and his budding relationship with a dog groomer…

The next day Karla left without incident, and we all waved her off. It was sad. First, because we will miss her, and second, because it was a reminder of how soon we will be saying goodbye – maybe forever – to so many people who have shared this experience with us.

As most of you know (from reading this blog and others) most of the animals that should be pets here are actually homeless strays. Susan’s heart breaks on a daily basis seeing these poor dogs and cats with no homes and no forever families. It is even tougher in the spring and summer as none of these animals are neutered and therefore deliver the next generation of homeless little ones come warm weather.

Tina is a sucker for animals much like Susan We spend lots of time in the spring and summer walking around town. When a homeless dog or cat is spotted (quite frequently) Susan attempts to befriend it while Paul waits patiently, pretending to be immune to the cuteness. Many of the animals are shy of people and cannot be approached, but maybe 1 out of 10 is a sweet heart who just wants some love and a belly rub. Susan is happy to oblige them. She even carries bags of leftovers and/or pet food to give to the poor little critters. (And, for those who are worried, yes, she keeps a constant supply of antibacterial wipes and hand sanitizer with her).

So, one day a young cat appeared near the entrance to our building. Susan sat on a bench and tried to coax the cat into saying hello. This cat didn’t need much coaxing; she was curled up purring in Susan’s lap before she knew it. Susan resisted the urge to take her home (she deserves a medal for resilience!) and gave her some food and set her down. This little cat appeared several times over the course of a few weeks, and Susan was having a tougher and tougher time resisting her.

So one day we were all at Happy Hour except for Shannon, who had some errands to run and decided to meet us at our apartment for movie night later. We come around the corner of our building and there, leaning against a wall, is Shannon, with a lump on her shoulder. It is the same little cat! Shannon was just standing there waiting for us and the cat climbed up her and hung out! Well, Tina was there and she is even more of a sucker for animals than Susan is (if that is even possible) and so the little cat had to be rescued.

Susan and Tina took the cat and rang Vika (Susan’s language tutor and our neighbor). “Vika, you HAVE to meet this cat! She is perfect for you!” Vika was not convinced, but she agreed to meet the cat on Monday. Tina took the little one home with her for the weekend and brought her back over on Monday. Vika and I took the cat to the nearby vet to make sure she was healthy and all, and now she is Vika’s pride and joy. Her name is Moosya, which sounds a lot like the Russian word for trash, but Vika assures us it isn’t.A cleaned up, happy and content moosyaShortly after the successful bonding of Vika and Moosya, Susan got a call on her cell phone. It was Tina. “Susan, what should I do? There is this little dog that reminds me so much of my Chihuahua and I think she is homeless!” Susan told her to give the dog some food and some love if it wanted, but not to take it home. “Tina, you can’t rescue them all, you simply can’t. I know it breaks your heart, but you have got to walk away.” And Tina did.

But the next day came another call. “Susan, the dog is still here! I think she is hurt. I want to take her to a vet.” “Okay, Tina, take her to a vet. “ “Um, will you help me?”Honestly, how could you not want to help this poor dog?So Susan finds out where Tina is and grabs a bus over there. Tina is standing with 3 concerned ladies all wondering exactly how to help this little dog. One lady gives Susan a baby blanket to wrap the dog in, while another lady hails a cab and tells the cabbie where to take them. The 3rd pays for the cab and warns him not to charge more or take advantage just because these girls have bad Russian. Tina, Susan and the mud-encrusted little dog are off to the vet. The vet’s name is Vladimir, which Susan knows because it is the same vet to whom she took the little cat a few days before. Vladimir is very kind and gets to work finding and cleaning all the wounds. There are five gaping wounds around the neck, all of them really icky and smelly because they are putrid. Poor little dog! So Vladimir gives her some antibiotic shots and gives Susan and Tina a list of things to get from the pharmacy. The bill for the vet visit was a whopping 200 tenge (about $1.30). With Vika’s translation help they picked up the rest of the stuff they needed, and promised to bring the dog back to the vet each day for more evaluation and treatment. The vet is only a short walk from our apartment, so we decided to keep the dog with us until she was well enough not to have to go to the vet every day. Susan and Vladimir the VetSusan and Tina cleaned the dog, and tried to give her food and water, but she wasn’t much interested. The second day the vet said to let her walk around outside some, to see if she would pee or poop. On the third day Susan and Tina took her for a quick walk while the rest of the group was in our apartment getting ready for movie night. Susan took the dog to the area near our apartment that is an ice rink in the winter. It is fenced in on 3 ½ sides so it seemed a secure place to let the dog do her thing. We couldn’t put a leash on the dog because all of her wounds were on her neck and shoulder, but she seemed so weak and tired that it didn’t seem a risk. Susan kept watch while Tina went to the store to buy beer for the group. Just as Tina was coming back, however, the dog made a break for it. Suddenly she went from weak and incapacitated to full of piss and vinegar. She got past Susan, and then past Tina. Susan gave chase while Tina, not really able to run after the dog while carrying 3 liters of beer, ran to our apartment. Tina found some young girls who were just hanging out and asked them to hold the beer for 5 minutes while she tried to catch the dog. Tina then hailed a cab, and it a move made for an action flick, said to the cabbie “follow that dog!”

Sorry to say, though, that it was all for naught. The dog escaped Susan and disappeared, and we haven’t seen her since. And the story gets worse, because when Tina got back to our apartment building, the girls and the beer were gone!!! Two 14-year old girls stole our beer!!!

So, here we are. Summer Solstice. Longest day of the year. And still barely enough time to get a blog update in!

We have been remiss in our blog updating lately. Part of the reason is once you fall behind it is too daunting to start again. And part of it is that less and less seems noteworthy to us – we are getting used to how different this place is from home, and so fewer and fewer things seem remarkable. But, in the interest of having a blog that is a complete coverage of our tour in the Peace Corps, we are going to briefly catch up on what has transpired in the last couple of months, in hopes that we will find time and energy (and subject matter) to have a big finish.

We have 49 days left as Peace Corp Volunteers. And, honestly, few people have senioritis as badly as we. But we did do some work in the past 2 months, so we should at least mention it, lest people think this is some kind of boondoggle.

Late last year Susan helped our colleague Elena write a grant proposal to the US Embassy. This proposal was to get money to sponsor a training seminar and some internships for students. The idea was to teach students about working and/or volunteering for NGOs (non-profit organizations) by explaining the skills they needed and introducing them to some NGOs in the area. It was suggested at the time of the proposal that perhaps Susan would take on the training of the IT component, but it wasn’t a sure thing. The other training sessions would be on project management, grant writing and accounting.

So, the grant proposal was accepted and Elena started working on the project. Susan heard nothing about it, but that isn’t surprising. What was surprising was finding out with 10 days notice that Susan was, in fact, responsible for developing and delivering the Information Technology training, and that it was to be an entire day on the topic. Not one to panic, Susan, in fact, did just that. She was able to calm down enough to figure out what to teach and to gather the materials and create the PowerPoint slides for the class. She did not, however, have 8 hours worth of material, and was wondering how to pad it when the word came down that the training, which was now 4 days away, would be for 4 hours instead of 8. Phew!

Susan also was fortunate (and savvy) enough to enlist the help of her friend and fellow PCV Sean. Sean has extended his service and is now serving his 3rd year. His Russian is excellent and he did IT support work before coming to KZ. She had him help review her material. He liked it (and he loves to visit Pavlodar) so he offered to help her with her presentation. She created the material, set the parameters of the course, and he did most of the talking. Anna (our counterpart) was there to do translating for Susan, but it was much easier to just let Sean do the talking in Russian.

We used Google translate to translate the slides and only had one hiccup. We expected more, in that translation is tricky whenever idioms are used, and, plus, technology terms don’t always translate well. Most are cognates, but that is when you get cocky and think it is all good. When we showed the slide on computer viruses and their prevention, we got a big giggle from the room. Turns out that when we said ‘virus, Trojan horse and worm’, it translated to “virus, Trojan horse and “disgusting intestinal parasite””. Still don’t know what they actually call a computer worm-type virus…

Anyway, it all ended up just fine, Susan felt good about actually getting some work done and it was really fun to hang out with Sean.Plus, the day of the IT training was Svetlanas birthday, and she hosted a lunch for everyone at Decenta at a restaurant. We got video of our colleagues singing Happy Birthday to her. It is awesome! We are trying to figure out how to get a video loaded on Blogger...

Meanwhile, there was additional work brewing for us both. Sergey had been pondering the results of our strategic planning last year and thought it was time to do it again. But this time, with only Sergey, Elena and the two of us. The two of us spent as lot of time thinking about Decenta and how it might need to be structured and organized in order to be an ongoing concern. We had several meeting with Sergey and Elena and talked it through. The results were some major changes in the way people will be compensated and in the way project work will be done – basically running the place more like a business – and we fear not everyone will embrace those changes. Too complicated and too delicate to blog about, but it seems to be coming along. A lot of the changes were things that we thought needed to happen when we did the planning last year, but you can’t rush change, and you certainly, as outsiders, cannot force it. Sergey needed to come to his own conclusions in his own time, and we were just there to give an American business perspective when asked.

So, that sums up work. Many of our fellow volunteers work full time at their organizations and/or schools, but many others are like us and are not at it full time at all. We try to fill in the rest of our time with helping on other projects. One of the other projects that was underway this spring was an American Corner competition, set to commemorate the Peace Corps 50th Anniversary. American Corner is a US Embassy sponsored space, usually in a major urban center library, devoted to all things American. English language books, tutorials, movies and reference materials are there for people to peruse. The volunteers in Pavlodar all held their English clubs at the American Corner.

Anyway, all of the English clubbers were encouraged to participate in the competition. At first we hoped to have the competition across American Corners (like having the Pavlodar vs. Astana corners compete) but it was too expensive to transport the competitors to other sites, so our competition was strictly Pavlodar. There were 3 challenges. The 1st was a knowledge bowl, where teams competed for points by answering questions on topics related to America or Peace Corps. Another was a sports competition, where teams played American football and baseball against one another. We had a slight hiccup there, because we had no baseballs and no bats. No problem – we changed it to kickball with all the same rules as baseball. The 3rd event was a chili cook-off. This is where Susan stepped in. Her job was to put together a presentation on the description, history and lore that is American chili. When she made the presentation at one evening’s English club, she also brought 2 big pots of chili with her – one mild and one spicy – so that people could try it. Only 1 person there had ever tried chili before! Most seemed to really like it, but some very politely tasted it and said they were very full from their dinner. J

We used the PC 50th money to buy ingredients and gave each team all they needed to make a pot of chili – except a recipe! That they had to find on their own. The results would be sampled by PCVs (really, who besides Americans can truly judge chili?) and points awarded to the best.

So, the knowledge bowl happened first, on a Friday night, and the chili cook-off was set for Saturday morning, followed by the sports competition. Well, Saturday morning came and Susan was really ruing the decision to be a judge. There were only 3 teams when it all fell out, and 2 of the teams consisted entirely of teenage boys. Not to be sexist, but she really wasn’t relishing eating chili cooked by young boys, who have probably never cooked anything, and certainly had never cooked chili!

Her worries were for naught. The teams all brought a fully prepared pot of chili and each one was delicious! It was really hard to decide to whom to give the ribbon, because they were all really good and all really different. One was as hot as Hades, one was more soupy and one was really thick. We did finally choose – the soupy one had a very, very good flavor – and a grand time was had by all.

We went down to the embankment and set up to do the sports on the beach. We had a lot of curious onlookers who were 1) trying to figure out just what in the heck we were playing and 2) why in the heck we were doing it in English. It was so much fun! Paul and Chris both played to help the teams fill out, and Susan was a referee. The kids cracked up when she would yell “Safe!” or “Strike 1!” with as booming a ref voice as she could muster.

After it was all over we went to Samal and had tea, snacks and the award ceremony. Once that was cleaned up, the PCVs came over to our apartment for a beer. After the first person unrolled their pant leg and dumped a bunch of beach sand on the floor, Susan got smart and made the rest shake themselves out in the tub.

Another thing that we used Peace Corps 50th money (each oblast got a little bit of money to hold events to commemorate) was to sponsor a 5 K run. (OK, so it is a stretch, a 5.0K run, but 50K was too long!). On Victory Day (a big holiday here as in all of the former Soviet Union) Pavlodar sponsors a ½ marathon and a 10K run. We (and by we, we mean Shannon) talked with the Minister of Sports and got permission to tack on a 5K run to the day. For our part, we would provide water, fruit, cookies and candies for all the runners. The minister agreed to have a table at the start (which was also the halfway point and the finish for the ½ marathon) on which we could set up our goodies.

So, Shannon invited any PCVs in KZ that come make it to come and participate in the run. We had 8 people from other oblasts join us. Well, if 8 people are going to make the trip all the way to Pavlodar, we had better make it worth it. So Shannon and Chris organized a Pavlodar Pub Crawl for Saturday night (the race was on Monday). People just joined us wherever we were as they arrived in town from the bus or train station, and we hit several pubs and a pizza place over the course of the evening.

nothing says Pub Crawl like matching headbands and dried fish snacks!

Sunday morning was brunch at our place in the late morning and movie night later. Susan even got guilted into baking, and made tasty sweets that were scarfed up by our young athletes.

Shannon was coordinating all of us for the race and working with the Sports Minister on the set up. We decided to get there at 9:30 to set up water and all before the race started at 10. Only one slight problem. The 10K portion of the race was set for 10, but the ½ marathon began at 9. We were half an hour late for our race!!! Shannon managed to talk the officials into letting our group run anyway. The rest of us set up our water on a wall (naturally, there was no table or anything for us to set up on) and put out the fruit and gummy bears. We ran out of cups, of course, and came close to running out of gummy bears because of this one kid. Every time we turned around – there he was – getting another handful of gummy bears! He was probably 8 years old and must have eaten his weight in gummy bears. We finally put them away so that we might have some left when our runners finished and then the kid disappeared. Susan, mistakenly thinking it was now safe, put more bears out. 2 seconds later, the gummy bandit was back! She finally had to resort to “mom voice” to tell him he had eaten enough. It was really cold and windy, but the day was a success (mostly) any way.

When we are not doing zany Peace Corps related activities, we are just like regular people. We shop, cook, eat and get haircuts. Only Susan keeps getting strange hairdos. First time, few months back, she wanted highlights and a trim. She came back with hair that, in her more dismayed moments, she thought looked remarkably like Carol Brady of the Brady bunch. One of her fellow volunteers charitably called it a ‘girl mullet’. Sigh.

She went with Vika to a different stylist when it was time for a color touch up. Vika speaks English and translated. Please put in highlights, don’t cut it and please, please no red. So, when all is said and done, it was one color, shorter and, gasp, red. Sigh. The good news is that it looked so different that Paul actually noticed. The bad news is that he noticed because it was pretty close to horrible. Oh well, Susan spent a few weeks discovering what it feels like to be a redhead (and repeatedly not recognizing herself in the mirror) and then went back to the salon for a color change. It looks almost normal now (although still a bit on the mullet side of life).

As the weather has gotten warmer there are more and more people (read little old ladies) selling produce on the sidewalk. Paul went to one such woman to buy a kilo of potatoes. She looked at him and pleaded: “я старая бабушка! Дача делако!” Basically, it was an up sell. She wanted him to buy 2 kilos (the rest of her supply) and was telling him that she is an old granny and that her dacha (garden) is very far. He claims to have felt sorry for her, but Susan maintains that the granny spoke Russian and he understood every word, and that was worth the extra potatoes. Neither of us can really speak Russian, even after all this time, so understanding something is worth a few extra tenge.

This doesn’t quite catch us up, we still have to report back on our COS (close of service) conference and our family trip to Italy. We had better get on that or we will be gone before we have finished telling!

When we got our information packet about Kazakhstan from the Peace Corps, we were warned that the people there are more conservative in their dress than Americans. We were advised to wear long skirts, at least to the knee, tops with sleeves and never, ever shorts.

These photos were taken over the course of a few months in spring. You will note the extremely conservative style of dress for women, especially during the day. :-)

Casual Sunday strollWhat a perfect outfit to wear to an ice hockey game

just because it is still cold, doesn't mean you can't look hot!and motherhood doesn't change a thingpatterned nylons aren't just for evening

why go tight, when you can go shiny tight instead?the sun is out, and so are the legs...hanging out at the embankment, midday, with friends

taking turns posing and photographing each other in our finery

nothing says Sunday stroll like over the knee boots

These are my daytime heels - you should see my evening ones!So, let it be known that the Peace Corps information was woefully inadequate. Susan and the other female volunteers are constantly getting ribbed by our local friends and colleagues for being frumpy, granny-like and dull. Susan is starting to see sparkly, shiny clothes and thinking they look really nice. It might be time for us to go home soon.....

Hey everyone! This is the longest we have gone without posting, and we are disappointed with ourselves. First we weren't posting because there was nothing much new (these pictures are over a 6 to 8 week period). But then a bunch of stuff happened and we couldn't catch up! So, here we are, trying to catch up. First off, let us show you a string of photos that shows the transition from winter to spring in a way we NEVER see in the Bay Area...This is what late March looks like. Felt warm to us (note that Paul is wearing a knit cap instead of his Russian fur)Warm as it feels, it is still mighty frozen

Spring!These boats are simply frozen in place all winter. One of the boats is named тайфун, which is typhoon in Cyrllic alphabet. It also says it is a Life Guard boat but not a lot of help 6 months out of the year.Then, finally, ice is melting off the river

The trees are still pretty brown in March

During the winter we don't get many icicles because it never thaws! But spring is another story...

Lots of people (us included) go to the river in March and April and watch the ice break up and float north. It looks and sounds beautiful

sign says "Danger - thin ice" in both Russian and Kazakh

it is strangely beautifulIcicles are destructive though..the last frost of the year

the embankment has reeds on it, and they caught fire but no one seems to care

on top of the embankment that was on fire in an earlier photo...The ice comes and goes. It breaks up here and heads north, but then these dirty bergs from the south show up...and that same frosty tree, but May instead of March...

We stayed in Pavlodar this year for Nauryz as we didn't want to take the train trip again to Shymkent in search of the ever elusive Kokpar (Kokpar if you recall is similar to the game of horse polo except without mallets and a ball but with a headless goat carcass). Although the weather wasn't as warm as south KZ, it turned out to be an excellent sunny southern siberian early spring day (which means it was just above freezing). We still didn't get to see Kokpar here but we did catch the end of "Kiss the Girl" where the guy tries to kiss the girl as they ride full gallop and the woman does whatever it takes to prevent him from doing so including beating him with her kumshot (horse whip). We had been asking for weeks where/if there would be Kokpar but we heard: 1) what is Kokpar?, 2) It is in the oblast hippodrome which we think is north of the city, 3) it is in the oblast hippodrome we think is south of the city, and 4) there won't be any Kokpar in Pavlodar. Well, it was held at the beach but we missed it. :-( But we had a great time instead enjoying Kazakh hospitality in a yurt.

Shannon's previous host sister (Bota) invited us into a yurt near the KazTransOil building. The yurt was set up in traditional style and we took off our shoes and went in. We sat on carpets on the floor and were served tea and kumis (alcoholic fermented mare's milk) and boza (alcoholic fermented millet). We enjoyed vegetables, cheese, barsaki, horse sausages until the main course arrived: plov with a sheep's head! Our first time having plov with an actual sheep's head. It was delicious as you can tell by the photos' below.

A couple of days later, Paul slipped on the ice in the bazaar and hyper extended his knee. He iced it and took motrin but it was still bothering him. He called the PC Doc Dr. Victor, who sent him to a local clinic to be examined. He was to meet the orthopedic trauma doctor there on the 3rd floor. When we arrived we could not find an elevator so walked up 3 flights of highly uneven stairs (who has the orthopedic trauma doc on the 3rd floor with no elevator?). Fortunately, although his knee still hurt, it appears to be just a sprained ligament which was not, in fact, made any better by the walk up the stairs.

Spring is almost here! The snow and ice are melting but alas, all that is left is the trash which was previously hidden beneath a pristine white blanket - blah. But Coobodnik clean up day in May is right around the corner so this place will be spik and span in no time (hmmm). In the meantime, we are just trying to avoid wipeouts on the slippery mud and remaining ice.

 Big batch of plov in the town square

 Hairy camel central Asian style

Yurt guarded by Kazakh warrior.

 We aren't sure what's up with the beard The gang with Bota who is wearing traditional garb

 Yurt 

Kazakh dress with Russian hats

Inside the yurt

Kazakh spread in the yurt

Kazakh girl entertaining us by playing the dombra

Tina gets the sheep's ear (usually given to younger people to remind them to listen)

Ahh, plov with sheep's head!

Stacking the cut pieces on the top of the head

How exactly do you carve the head?

Chris isn't sure of the head carving ceremony.

Susan REALLY isn't sure of carved sheep's head.

Nena isn't sure either.

The horsemen on the beach after the "alleged" Kokpar match

Nauryz in full swing at the river Kokpar polo ball

Cheers! Susan loves her vodka shots!

Post vodka shot.

The traditional Kazakh "crossing of the tram via tracks"

Gosti!

We enjoyed our 2nd St. Patrick's day in Kazakhstan. We weren't able to find a pint of Guiness anywhere in Pavlodar but there was green beer to be had. And, on the plus side, this year we weren't knocked on our asses by strong winds and slick 6 inch thick ice covered roadways. Oh the ice was there again but we were fortified with vegetarian homemade Shepard's pie (not bad actually) and Irish Chicken Curry and we thumbed our noses at old man winter.

We hope you had a fun day too. Cheers! Or Sláinte! as they say in the old country.

St. Paddy's Day celebration at, you guessed, it Kabachoke! Hannes fixing his hair.



Green beer (and straws for women) is a must.



Everybody's Irish on St. Patrick's Day



Shannon and LaKrista remembered to wear green.



Of course, we played the traditional Irish game of Beer Pong which was invented by St. Patrick himself after he taught the Leprechauns how to chase the snakes out of the pubs or something like that. Our local friends were up first. 



We are not sure what's going on here but it captures the randomness of the evening. If you have a caption for this photo please leave a comment!



First day of spring! Ahh, spring - the trees are still frozen, the birds are no where to be found, and the green grass (grass? what's grass?)



Looking forward to the iceburgs flowing north on the river Irtish (not soon but eventually)



At least it is warm enough Paulie doesn't need his Russian hat



We hope no one needs to get rescued any time soon (there is a sign that says Life Guard on one of the boats)



We made our first snow man in KZ! We called him Francois-o-vich.



Tina has a bonding moment with her first snowman ever!

Let's start with this. In a previous update, we mentioned that Susan had jacked up her back doing housework. (You will be happy to know that she has since sworn off housecleaning for good!). Well, she did her stretches, etc., but it was still really hurting on day 3 and so she contacted the PC doctor. Dr Victor, our hero!!! He gave her some new stretches to do, and sent Paul to the pharmacy to pick up some heating plasters and the little slice of heaven pictured above. Simply lay it on the couch or bed, sharp side up, and lie down on it, centering the spikes around the area of pain and lay on it for 15 minutes. Oh, and make sure, if you can tolerate it, that it is your naked back, that is how it works better. Egads, what a barbaric country! But, what the heck, her back was killing her so she tried it. She looked like a pin cushion after, but it did actually help. And now she has a souvenir bed of nails to bring back to the states!

Next update: A wonderful holiday celebrated internationally, that has not caught on in the States is International Women's Day. It is a day to honor women, and men present gifts to the women in their lives - teachers, colleagues, wives, sisters, mothers. It is also a national holiday, so no work. This year March 8th fell on a Tuesday. In order to have a long weekend, Decenta (and many other businesses) closed Monday too, and to make up for the time we worked on Saturday. But we stopped working midday on Saturday to have a party. The boys did the cooking. OK, they did the ordering and the serving and the paying. We had shrimp, salmon, salad, fruit and sushi from the only sushi restaurant in town. (Susan is still holding true and has not tried sushi here, prefering to avoid eating raw fish so far from any ocean...). We watched a movie that was funny, even though, since it was in Russian, we only understood a little of it. We had wine from Georgia and juice and candy and the guys gave us each 3 tulips that are very hard to find here and were especially beautiful.

Sergey setting out the shrimp.

Sergey, Paul and Andrey putting on the final touches

Serving it up!

The celebrated women, holding their cherished tulips!

Elena, Svetlana, Anna and Olga

And don't forget that this year, Mardi Gras was also on March 8th! The Russians here acknowledge something like it, called Maslenitza. It is the beginning of Russian orthodox Lent and is the day for blini - a sort of Russian crepe. We made and ate them for brunch one day, and they were delicious. You can wrap a blini around most anything (cheese, mushrooms, cabbage) or sweeten them up and fill them with sour cream, honey, jam and/or butter. We went the latter route and found them delicious!

But the PCVs of Pavlodar decided to celebrate a real Mardi Gras. We had brought back rum purchased from airport duty free during our trip back from Thailand and we saved it for Mardi Gras. We had our party Saturday at our apartment. Susan cooked up a nice jambalaya and Chris surprised everyone with a delicious (if probably not authentic, since okra is not available here) gumbo. Everyone had a mask to wear, and Paul even had a special hat!

OK, so Paul's hat is really the styrofoam netting that had been protecting the rum bottle, but you get the idea. We stuffed ourselves silly and then watched The Water Boy (not exactly Mardi Gras, but it takes place in Louisiana and that was the best we could do).

After that, things returned to normal. We say that, but then things still occasionally happen to make us remember that we are not anywhere near Kansas anymore. Like the day after Women's Day, Susan was walking next door to her tutoring session, and this was waiting at the entrance to the building.

The stuff in the back is the trash. The stairwell has a garbage shoot that drops to a space next to the door. Twice a week someone comes and clears out that space and bags or boxes the garbage, and then stacks it neatly closer to the road so the garbage collectors can pick it up. But this special day there was a surprise. A skinless,earless horse head!

We don't know who threw it away, or why, or what they did with the rest of it, but it would appear that someone got a treat for Women's Day!!

This final picture is a simple shot from the side of the road. There are road crews whose job it is to scrape the ice of the roadways. Sometimes they use heavy equipment, sometimes it is more like snow shovels. But the ice looks like sedimentary rock, and is beautiful in its own way.

 FYI - this is a color photo even though it looks black/white! 

So, Peace Corps will be celebrating 50 years of service with events and activities throughout 2011. On March 1st (the 50th anniversary of the speech by President Kennedy that introduced the idea of the Peace Corps) volunteers and returned volunteers were encouraged to host House Parties. In KZ we went local style and asked volunteers to sponsor Chai Breaks at their school or organizations. Decenta was happy to participate, so we bought a cake, tea, cookies and carried them, along with our coffee maker and some American style coffee (that Susan's parents so kindly sent to us) to Decenta for a late morning break. Our colleagues flattered Susan by assuming that she had made the cake, but she pointed out that, while this cake was beautiful, it was not going to be really tasty, and Susan's baking is NEVER beautiful, but always delicious!

One of Shannon's colleagues at Samal is a air brush artist, and he painted this for us to use at our celebrations. The above is Anna, our counterpart.

And this is Sergey, our Director

We had similar parties (with similar cakes, and we were right, they looked pretty but tasted boring) at Samal with the handicapped children and then in the evening at the American Corner at the public library with the members of the English club. We were bloated with cake and tea, but feel that we honored the day rather well. We had handouts that talked about the Peace Corps in English, Russian and Kazakh, explained the history and current status of the organization, and generally promoted the group. We are such good volunteers!

And speaking of volunteer work, Susan found out that the grant application that she co-wrote got funded! Decenta will run a project that will offer training to University students on the skills needed to work for local NGOs (non-profits). There is a section of each university school year called Practicum, where students do actual work at business or organizations as practice for working later. We plan to introduce the notion of working (or volunteering) for NGOs and offer selected students a practicum at selected local NGOs. The students get valuable experience and the NGO's get much needed project assistance. Genius, right? Susan will likely design (and perhaps deliver, with the aid of a translator) the IT section of the training. Paul continues to work with Sergey on the project that for which he got the Peace Corps grant, and the videos and advertisements for the building cooperatives are almost finished. Work,work,work.

So, last year our fearless leader Mary (who has since returned to the US and is currently in graduate school in Baltimore) hosted a weekend in her village of Bayanul where she invited PCVs from Pavlodar and Karaganda (the two oblasts that were hers as our PCV-leader) to get together for insane competitions and ok, maybe some volunteer work. We did not attend last year, as it was freezing freezing freezing cold everywhere, but especially in Bayanul, and the hut we would stay in has no plumbing. (We know, we are wimps).Well, last year,it turned out, no one from Karaganda was able to make it (wimps too, we think) so it wasn't much of a contest. This year Shannon organized the event and invited the volunteers from Karaganda (about 14 hours by train away) to come to Pavlodar and have some fun. Oh, and, you know, do some volunteer work. 4 intrepid volunteers made the journey (OK, technically 3 PCVs and one PCV's boyfriend, a local. This will be an important distinction in one of the contests). Susan, due to a rash decision to clean the apartment in one big frenzy of tidiness, racked the heck out of her back and was in a lot of pain, with limited movement, when the guests arrived. The Karaganda volunteers spent most of the day at Samal (Shannon's org) doing activities with the disabled kids and generally helping out.The first olympic activity was banya, of which Susan opted out. During the banya there were several contests - a bishbarmak eating contest, a 'who could last the longest in a 100C sauna' championship, and a vodka taste-off. Mostly people were just enjoying the banya and the company. After banya everyone oozed over to our apartment for movie night. (Oozed is the best way to describe the boneless way people move after 2 hours of banya). We watched Volunteers (old Tom Hanks movie about the Peace Corps).

These are the ingredients that Chris and Susan prepared to make the bishbarmak.Shannon and Corrine were the finalists in the "if you can't stand the heat" sauna-off. Corrine won.

The next morning everyone who hadn't spent the night at our place was invited back over for bacon and beer. (This themed activity was Chris's idea. Everyone loved the idea and the alliteration, but nobody had beer - it was 11 in the morning!). We have found a shop that has bacon in Pavlodar, and the Karaganda people have found no such place in their town, so they were excited about it. Paul cooked up about 2 kilos of bacon, and Susan and TIna make crustless egg quiche. That, served with brewed coffee (which we have routinely but most volunteers haven't had in months) made for a heavenly brunch.After breakfast there were some more games. First, the Kazakh squat-off. All contestants had to assume the position that is so familiar in Asian cultures and so NOT in American, and who ever held it the longest would win points for their team.

This is where the boyfriend (a ringer, we like to say) was able to really shine. While the Americans did their best, they all started losing feeling in their feet and having too much painful feeling in their hip joints. The local boy was just squatting there comfortably playing on his computer and likely could have stayed in that position for hours. Another point for Karaganda.

Tina, preparing Pavlodar's plov entry

In the afternoon we went shopping for ingredients and began preparation for the Plov cook-off. Karaganda had 2 entries and Susan and Tina prepared one for Pavlodar. While it was cooking the able bodied among us competed in a leg wrestling championship, that Shannon won handily, and in a flexibility contest that she also won.

Leg wrestlingAny questions as to why Shannon won the flexibility challenge?These are locals, Karla's students, who agreed to judge the plov. Susan's entry was the one in the middle.

Much to Susan's dismay (she used secret ingredients and chopped the carrot instead of grating it - which, according to her Uzbek friends, is critical) Corrine's entry won 11-1. Hers was even vegetarian (which is simply NOT done in Kazakhstan). Susan is seriously considering launching a formal protest with the International Plov Foundation...

After stuffing ourselves and the judges with the plov, we played a game we call Cookie Face. You sit in a chair, have your handler put a cookie on your forehead, and, without using your hands, get the cookie in your mouth. We did it in a 2 team relay, with Americans vs Locals. We Americans won (we are all about cookies!) but everyone had a lot of laughs.The next contest was the frozen clothes race. We went down to the embankment (and admired our frozen river) with 2 sets of clothes that had been dampened and then frozen. The teams were responsible for dressing one of their members in the frozen clothes (over their regular clothes - we aren't THAT crazy!)Karaganda won that contest too.

After a little time to rest and shower, we all met back up at Kabachok, our go-to pub, for dinner and the final contest - Beer Pong. There was a table of locals there celebrating a birthday and they were very intrigued by the game. We invited them to take a turn and they loved it. After trying it, one guy was a sudden expert and was giving everyone advice on how to throw the ping pong ball for maximum effectiveness. Meanwhile there was live music and dancing, so sometimes play was interrupted. (Like the time it was Paul's turn and one of the women from the other party manuevered her way into the field of play to ask him to dance. Play was halted while Paul took her for a spin on the dance floor) We don't know if teaching locals about beer pong is really what Peace Corps had in mind for Goal 2 (Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served. ) but we are going to credit it anyway.

Beer pong kibitzinggroup photo, including 2 local women who wanted to be in the shot

In short, Pavlodar won the beer pong competition but Karaganda won the overall games in a last minute tie breaker cup flip competition and took home the trophy. It is now their responsibility to sponsor the games next year. Unfortunately (really, unfortunately?) we will not be participating as we hope to be on a warm beach in Maui. 

One of the more interesting activities we thought would be fun to do was to become fish food. Yes, we were actually eaten by fish. They have these shops with large fish tanks that have many, many little hungry fishes. Apparently these fish eat humans even if they are not piranha. We decided why not give it a try.

We signed up for the 15 minute feet feeding frenzy. First they washed our feet and then we put them in the fish tank with the flesh crazed monsters. As soon as our feet hit the water they attacked. Immediately, we started laughing pretty hard as dozens of fish started nibbling at our feet and ankles. It felt kind of like a mild electric current and it tickled a little. Luckily the little devils focus on munching dead skin so we weren’t really at risk of losing a foot. But they were all over whatever part of us was in the water. It took us about 5 minutes to stop laughing and we actually started enjoying being fish food. Afterwards, our feet were definitely smoother but it probably would have taken another hour or so for them to finish up with all our calluses that we have from the daily hikes (Susan claims they are forced marches...) we have been taking.

We wanted to scuba while we were in Phuket and our guide book suggested the Similan Islands are one of the top places in Thailand. If you read the brochures available here, the Similan Islands are supposedly one of the top 10 diving areas in the world. It was expensive (12,000 baht for the both of us) and it took all day even though our dive time underwater was minimal. Here’s how the day went: 5:40am pick up at the hotel. 1 ½ hour drive to the pier. Wait around for an hour or so at the dive shop. Take a 1 ½ hour speed boat ride out to the islands after spending ½ hour figuring out who went on which boat (the dive shop at least 4 speed boats).

We make it to the dive boat and started our first dive at 11:15am. It was ok but a little underwhelming. Some fish, some coral, no whale sharks. We both had to rent masks as we didn’t bring ours and Paul’s keep fogging up. His spit apparently isn’t anti-fog. 45 minutes of blowing bubbles and we were back on the boat. We were going to another site for the 2nd dive plus we needed about 1 hour surface time before diving again so we had some time to kickback. They provided the most delicious Thai food for lunch. Crisp green stir fry veggies, curry seafood medley with octopus (now the mouth was on the other foot – ahh!), and a green beef curry. It was amazing. Usually it’s sandwiches, crackers and fruit so this was a feast!

The 2nd dive was more interesting: more fish, more coral, a huge green eel, a striped fish we can’t remember the name of that was something like sweet lips (cool looking fish), a sting ray - overall a better dive. We even found Nemo!! That was a treat, as angel fish do not inhabit the reefs in Hawaii so it has been a while since we have seen any. 38 minutes of bottom time. Next, we get back on the boat and wait for the speed boat to take us back to the mainland. The divers got on the speed boat last after they picked up the people snorkeling so there were no more spots to sit in the shade. Paul wrapped the hotel towel around him as he knew 45 SPF wasn’t going to stop him from becoming a crispy critter in the intense Thai sun. We got back to shore after another 1 ½ hour ride.

When we got back to the pier, we bought a couple of beers at the 7-11 which are everywhere in Thailand for the ride back to the hotel (the driver didn’t care if drank on the way). 45 minutes later they sort out which snorkelers and divers get on which van (about 10 vans in play) to go to which hotel. Exhausted, we finally arrived back at our hotel at 7:30 pm.

Let’s review the day’s events:

• Time in van – 3 hrs. 15 min

• Time in speedboat – 3 hours

• Time waiting around – 6 ½ hours

• Time actually scuba diving – 1 hr. 23 min.

• Total time ~ 14 hours

An extremely long day. We are starting to wonder if $4 – 5 a minute for underwater sightseeing is worth it for diving.

We spent the next 2 days basically lounging around the resort. It was sooooo relaxing. There were 3 pools and we found a place with a nice view to camp out each day. One of the pools had a swim up bar so of course we to do that at least once. Plus they had Happy Hour from 5:30 to 7:30 each evening so that also became a priority. As did room service for dinner several nights. We did leave one evening to go into town for the Chinese New Year celebration that was happening in Phuket town. It was interesting with crafts, entertainment and local foods. We ate at a funky restaurant that was recommended to us by one of the local staff at the resort which was pretty tasty (but hot, no A/C).

But alas, vacations must end and we are now heading back to Kazakhstan. Sigh, another week would have been great!

 Sweet suite

 It is bigger than our apartment in Pavlodar

 Monks on coffee break

 School kids interviewing Paulie in English

 Huh?

 Anyone need a broom? Fish food







  Yes, they are eating his feet

Gotta love swim up bars

Diving the Similan Islands

Beach at the Westin Phuket

first you feed them

Health check: How does the poop smell?

Spa day for elephants - first the brushing

Then the bathing. Ahhhh....

a little polishing makes your eyes pop!

Mai was 14 months pregnant and so she didn't lay down.

She was kind enough to duck so Susan could reach the high spots

splish splash, elephants taking a bath

 Turn about is fair play - the elephants splash back!

All aboard!

time for a walk through the jungle

nothing like a dip in the creek after a warm ride!

The flower festival just by coincidence was happening in Chiang Mai the same time as our visit Feb 4-6.  We guess it was fantastic but we couldn't find anything about it in Chiang Mai except posters saying there was a flower festival.  Oh well, we found a walking tour and spent the first day exploring the city.   We visited a few wats and found a cheap place for lunch (like that's hard in Thailand). At one of the wats, there was a group of local Thai school children who were practicing their English skills.  A group of boys interviewed Paul and a group of girls later interviewed Susan in broken, Thai English.   It made us want to become English teachers they were so cute.   Did we mention the suite we had at the Le Meridien was fabulous?  Susan really didn't like to leave the room but on the second day we had elephants to take care of as we were to become "Elephant Owners for a day" (http://www.pataraelephantfarm.com/).    Our hosts, Patara Elephant Farm, picked us up at our hotel and drove us up into the hills to the farm.  After the briefing, we were introduced to our elephants.  Susan's elephant was "Mai" and Paul's was "Mae Won Dee".  We made introductions by feeding our elephants a basket of fruit.  We aren't talking about a banana or two we are talking a full basket with bananas, melons, and sugar cane.   We were instructed to greet your elephant and then put the food in its mouth by saying "Bon" which we guess means open wide because that's what they did.  We placed the food on their tongues (soft and big) and they chomped away.   We are not sure chomped is the right word because they slide the food back and forth on their teeth to pulverize it.  They seemed to like the process almost as much as we did.   After the feeding, we were instructed on the four ways to gage the health of our elephants: 1) are they attentive?  2) do they have dirt marks on both sides of their bodies to indicate they slept well? 3) are they sweating between their toes? (yup, toes) and 4) how's their poop – quantity (at least six bales/clumps – it's big) and quality – how does it look and smell when you break it up. If you squeeze it, does liquid come out?  That's right, we both grabbed a bale, squeezed it, broke it into little pieces and took a big whiff.   Luckily our elephants were healthy.   We can't imagine how bad breaking up elephant poop with your hands could be if they were sick.    After the inspection, brushed the dirt and dust off the elephants and then we bathed them in a nearby stream.   We got soaked but the elephants got pretty clean.   By the end of the bath, we smelled worse than our enormous friends (BTW – elephants really don't smell bad).   Time to give them a workout.   We learned some basic commands like the Mahouts we were sure to become: Pai (go), How (stop), Na Lung (lay down), Look (stand up) plus some others that we forgot after hanging for dear life when we finally got on the pachyderm and it stood up.  No saddle, no rope just put your knees on their ears and both hands on their heads.  Elephant riding bareback style!  We also learned how to get on/off the hairy beasts which is quite an experience onto itself.  We were finally ready for our big trek to the distant waterfalls.   (Did we say hairy?  Cause they aren't really hairy so much as prickly.  The skin on their bodies is tough and wrinkly and hairless, but the tops of the heads are sparsely sprinkled with wiry hairs that are about 2 inches long and a little sharp.) We mounted our elephants, surveyed the world from 10 feet higher and let out blood curdling screams as the animals tried to throw us off.   Just kidding, they were very gentle so we just broke out in a sweat and moaned when they started to move.  The trail was narrow and steep but our sure footed friends were up to the task.  Still sometimes, they would look over the edge of a 30 foot drop or so and we thought that was it.   Also they eat all the time so they would occasionally rip a limb from a tree much to our dismay and shake from side to side and then enjoy the snack.  "Arrggghhhh! We are going to die!!!" Luckily we didn't so we can give you the rest of the story.   We made our way to the water fall after a couple of poop stops (they stop to poop so we stopped too).   The baby elephants headed straight into the water and started frolicking.   They would submerge themselves and use their trunks like snorkels!    We were encouraged to swim with them and we jumped in.  The elephants mostly stayed below the surface while we climbed on them.  "Dee, Dee!!"  (good elephant!!).  It was pretty cool.   We had lunch and then took the easy way (thankfully!) back to camp as our hips, knees and butts were not in great shape after the initial ride.   We met some new friends, Rick and Lynn during the day and had a beer with them on the way back to the hotel.   We all got cleaned up and we headed over to their suite in our hotel (they got upgraded too) to watch the video that Patara gave us when we left.    Not only was it difficult to see the videos/photos on the hotel equipment, but getting to each other's rooms was a challenge. See we were on the 19th floor and Rick and Lynn were on the 20th.  We knew their room number so we tried to take the elevator up one floor.   Didn't work as our room key would not allow us to pick floor 20. Fire escape, nope, each floor is locked.   We called their room and asked if they could come down to get us.  Nope, their key did not work for our floor.   Finally Rick talked a guy in the elevator to use the pass key to come to floor 19 and that worked.   But Rick's key now wouldn't work going up so we went to the lobby and started there.  15 minutes later we had our first preview of the day's events captured in a weird aspect ratio on the TV that we weren't sure who was who.  Oh well, we hope the disk has some good shots on it.   That night we went to the night bizarre for dinner and shopping.   The next day we had to leave so we stopped at McDonalds for Egg Mc Muffins to go.   Yum!!  Security at the airport was a bear (we guess because of the airport bombing in Moscow) but we caught our flight to Bangkok and on to Phuket without incident.   Our hotel, Weston Siray, is a 45 minute ride from the airport so we were glad to finally get there.  We checked in and our room has a fantastic view of the bay but alas, was just a regular sized room.  Sigh… After slapping ourselves silly for a few minutes so that we would get over ourselves for not having a suite, we realized we are in Thailand, this is an amazing experience and we have a gorgeous room with an incredible view.  We are pretty damn lucky.  

Angkor Wat !!!!!!

Banana loving temple monkey

Tomb Raider

Can you find Waldo?

Elephant

Paulie and Susan dancing after a couple of Mai Tais

Paulie sides with the gods

Susan with the demons

Sunrise over Angkor Wat

Biggest lake in south east Asia

Snapping handbags

Random little girl with a snake. (What?)

Our guide Chet

Morning commute

We flew from Bangkok to Siem Reap Cambodia. Early, early flight so we could have a full day in Angkor Wat. We flew on Bangkok airlines, which is a fabulous airline. The flight was only an hour - shortest international flight we have ever taken, especially since 25 minutes of it was spent taxiing in Bangkok, we were only 35 minutes in the air! Still, they found time to serve a box snack and water, juice, coffee or tea.

We had found a driver to take us around using, what else, the Internet. A friend of ours had done the Angkor Wat tour on his own and really hated Cambodia. He found that it seemed that taxis, tuk-tuks and everybody else was on the scam and trying to fleece him. We wanted a smoother trip, so Susan found a reference for Sampho Lim on TripAdvisor and contacted him via email and set up an itinerary for our 2 and a half day stay in Cambodia. It worked out smoothly, and Sam was there to meet us at the airport. He took us to our hotel and they let us check in early and get changed etc. It was a Le Meridien hotel, the closest hotel to Angkor Wat, and it was fabulous. It was extremely expensive for Cambodia, but it was less than 100 dollars a night which is only a little more than Hotel Favorite (which is barely a hotel, and in no way a favorite) in Almaty so it felt like a bargain to us. It was a great hotel, with a friendly staff and sumptuous rooms and was a real oasis for us each day when we got back from hiking around, climbing steep temples and walking hot and dusty trails.

We went first to Angkor Wat, which is, of course, the most famous of the many temples in the area. Sam had arranged for a guide for us. His name was pronounced something like the lotion Eucerin, but he went by Chet (?). Sam was the driver, Chet was the guide. He took us all over the place, telling us all about what we were seeing. It was great! Angkor Wat was originally built as a Hindu temple, and then was converted to a Buddhist one when the king was a Buddhist. Probably should have known that, but we didn't, until we had Chet.

We explored other cool temples and sites, and went through several litres of water, several inches of shoe leather and several ounces of sweat. It was really, really great. We even saw the temple that was used in the movie Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.

The sky was hazy (Chet and Sam called it 'sticky') and so we decided to skip the sunset over the temple in lieu of a shower and a rest. We needed to recharge our batteries for the big Khmer dinner and dance show extravaganza. It was lame, but funny. The food was mediocre, the place crowded and the dancers bored. But they were pretty good, and they did that whole fingers-bending-backward-gracefully thing that is so much a part of Southeast Asian dancing. It was really pretty, in an embarrassing Luau sort of way.

The next day we got up really, really early again, to drive to Angkor Wat to watch the sunrise over the temple. The sky was, again, sticky, so it was not the most spectacular sunrise, but still, sunrise over an ancient temple in Cambodia is pretty cool. After the sunrise we, sorry to say, went back to the hotel and went back to sleep. Woke up again at 9, had the buffet breakfast (fancy hotel buffet breakfast for 15 dollars a piece - we have seen it for 30 Euro per person in, well, Europe). Then the driver was there at 10 to pick us up and take us to the lake. The biggest lake in Southeast Asia, and one on which thousands of people live in floating cities. It was really cool. Sam was sick and so his friend Wii took over driving responsibility. They took us to town and we bought a copy of Tomb Raider to amaze our friends back in Pavlodar. Apparently 12 minutes of the movie are in the temple we had been in the day before.

We had a nice lunch, drove about an hour to the pink temple (different colored sandstone), saw some people making palm sugar and a well preserved village on stilts. Everywhere there were 2 or more people collected (cafes, shops, stalls) there was at least one dog and usually a naked toddler. The dogs were usually sleeping, the babies not so much.

That night we were on our own and, as it was our 9th anniversary, we decided to splurge on a fancy dinner in our hotel. It was tasty and elegant, and actually not too expensive. Interesting how life takes you places. 9 years ago it didn't seem likely that we would be spending our 9th anniversary in Cambodia while on vacation from Peace Corps service...

The next morning was a casual (read: we didn't have to get up early!) one, and we hung out, ate a leisurely breakfast and packed. Sam was there to take us to the airport. We had our fast flight to Bangkok, a 3 hour layover and on to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. We are staying at another fancy hotel, and this time they upgraded us to a junior suite! OMG - it is bigger than our apartment in Pavlodar! Susan wants to spend all her time there, but Paul insists on going out and exploring. We found a place to eat dinner and payed a whopping 6 dollars for Pad Thai for two, with delicious cold beer. Of course, we saw bars, massage places (some legit, some not-so-much) and what had to be hookers, along with street vendors selling hand crafts and, oddly, tons of used books stores.

Uh oh. Russian doesn' t help here...

Baby in the front, toddler in the back. A family vehicle

 One of the beautiful temples in Bangkok

Which one is the guardian demon???

 

Golden Buddha

We have been in Thailand for 2 days now and are loving it.  The malaria medicine however sucks as we both have had upset stomachs after taking it. But we are in Thailand.  The food is interesting and tasty and we are running around in short sleeves.  Take that Siberia!   We leave for Cambodia tomorrow and will spend 2 days exploring Angor Wat.  Susan found a guide who will pick us up at the airport (we already got our e-Visas on-line -> who would have thought that Cambodia would have an on-line e-Visa system?) and take us to our hotel, be our tour guide, hire a car, etc.... Full Service!  

We are staying in very nice western style hotel here in the Sukhumvit area and appreciate the incredibly soft, non-squeaking bed.  We stayed (probably for the last time) at hotel Favorite in Almaty before our flight and it was terrible.  The bed was so loud (hey, I know what you are thinking but tsk, tsk) and each time you moved when sleeping it would wake us up.  Brutal.  Also we had the pleasure of manually flushing our toilet.  You had to reach in the back into the water to lift up the lever. Yuck.  Things are great here though, it's a damn soft, quiet bed for sure and everything in the bathroom works perfectly.

The hotel threw in a free breakfast and Paulie attacked the lox salmon.  So did everybody else though so they stopped bringing it out.  Here we go again with the food.  What can you expect from Peace Corps volunteers who usually eat in Kazakhstan?  Some pad thai, green curries with coconut sauce, spring rolls, green salads, etc.  We are in heaven.

We found a couple of walking tours for Bangkok in our Lonely Planet guide book so here are some of the highlights:* Wat Phra Kaew - Emerald Buddha and Grand Palace* Wat Pho - with the 15 meter high, 46 m long reclining Buddha * China Town - the usual highly crowded, crazy stuff for sale (including dried snakes and the like)* Boat ride on the river* Crazy ride in a Tuk Tuk* Insane drivers everywhere and motorcycles riding on the side walk to get through the traffic jams.

Besides dried snakes (ok not too unusual for an Asian country), an unexpected thing we found in Thailand was Russian speakers.  Last night at dinner there was a group of Russian speakers at the table next to ours.  We were amused listening to part (a small part given our Russian skills) of their conversation.  They weren't quite sure about the food.  We thought we felt like fish out of water but they wanted bread which the restaurant did not have so the staff brought them hamburger buns.  It seems if you are from a Russian speaking country you can't have a meal without bread even it might not go with red curry noodles!  Another group walked in and they were from Belarus.  Who knew!

One of our Peace Corps KZ colleagues remarked the other day that we hadn't updated our blog in a while and asked why not. We can't believe we are going to say this (if you read other PC bloggers you know that they all say this after a year or so) but – nothing seems new and therefore not much seems interesting enough to write about.

We are helping at Decenta, and went through another strategic planning session that turned into a major 'come to Jesus' for the troops. We could tell it was a big deal, but with everyone speaking high speed Russian (except us) we were not able to offer much on the spot facilitation. Still, we talked at length with Sergey after the meeting and gave him our thoughts and some managerial steps to try next. And it also became clear that Decenta is at a point where they need to manage their portfolio of projects with more rigor than in the past, and we have lots of experience doing that, so we are helping there too. But, seriously, it is not a full time job. And the office is so crowded that Paul gave up his desk too, so now neither of us has a regular work space. So we do research and documentation at home, and come in for meetings. As Susan's sister pointed out, we could 'work from home' actually FROM HOME, so why are we here? Not entirely sure, but it is not the weather….

Tomorrow we leave for a vacation in Thailand and are very much looking forward to more than 8 hours of daylight and more than zero degrees for a high temperature. We certainly hope that we get inspired to draft an interesting blog update about our trip.

But, in the meantime, what can we report on? We decided to list some things we still notice or that still strike us as odd after more than a year here.

•If you are playing a game in which it is possible to score a goal, then there must be a goalie. We have played American football and ultimate Frisbee several times here, and every time, after a few minutes of play, one of the local players takes it upon him or herself to be a goalie. There is absolutely no explaining that these games do not have goalies. So, you roll with it, try to score around the goalie and keep playing. Just keep playing.

•If it doesn't sparkle, glitter or at least have a shine to it, why are you wearing it?

•If there is a line, you should stand in it. Ha ha ha – who are we kidding? There is NEVER a line. NEVER. The closest to a line that you will find is when a bunch of people are crowded around a spot (a teller, an ATM, a post office clerk) and when someone new joins the bunch they say, in Russian, "who's last?". Then people in the cluster just remember who was the person who was to go right before them, and they wait. But some people don't wait. Usually middle aged women will push to the front of the cluster and act like they are just going to ask a quick question, and then try to get served. If they are really forceful, (or an actual бабушка) they get away with it. But sometimes the cluster closes ranks so that she cannot push her way forward (again, exceptions are always made for babushkas – they have lived long and it can't have been an easy life and so everyone cuts them slack. EVERYONE.) But sometimes it is just tolerated. They don't seem to have an expression for "Hey! No cuts!"

•Come about October, the snow suits come out and the children become starfish. They are so covered in layers of puffy clothes that they cannot bend at the joints or put their arms at their sides. Even when, to us, it doesn't feel that cold yet. Their parents have to carry them because, if you can't bend your knees you cannot climb on to the bus, or up a curb, or up stairs, or virtually anywhere. And the poor overheated little tykes will have all these same layers on inside restaurants and malls and shops. And their cherubic little faces start to flush and they fall asleep, too warm and immobile to do anything else. Being immobilized helps when they are "tied" to sleds and dragged around everywhere. Every outside surface is frozen solid so we see kids being pulled on little sleds to the store, mall, bus, etc. and older kids walking (skating) from their apartments to the outside skating rinks set up everywhere around the city. But how the young ones are able to move and run and jump again once spring comes is a great mystery to us.

•Once we are back in a place where you can drink water straight from the tap, will we actually be able to do it? And, what will Paul do with all his time if he is not constantly monitoring the distiller in his ongoing water management exercise? Our apartment is "Pavlodar Central" for wayward volunteers so we go through a lot of distilled water because no American (no German either) is gonna drink from the faucet in KZ. And you should see the residue at the bottom of the distiller each time it is run.

•It is a nice thing that, for every person that brushes you off when you ask for help, there are two others who will go out of their way to help you. When you're in a foreign land and your language skills are not high it is such a relief that good Samaritans exist. We really hope to remember that when we get back to the US and are feeling exasperated cause some foreigner is taking forever because they don't know what the heck they are doing.

So, that is it. Just some things that we have been thinking about while the rest of the time everything seems normal. And honestly, we never thought that frozen nose hairs would seem normal, but they do.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Ok, maybe not despair, but definitely a combination of depression and sadness, with a tint of hope  Let's address the sadness first.   Our favorite KZ puppy who we, carrying on the local tradition started in Bayanaul, called "Puppy, Puppy" disappeared on New Year's eve.  As you may recall she lives across the street from our apartment and we pet/fed her every time we went outside.  Sometimes we even called her from our 4th floor apartment and threw bones and such out of the window for her.  She wasn't the smartest dog on the block so when she heard us calling for her, she would look intently down at the ground waiting for food to magically appear.  In any event, on New Year's eve this place goes crazy with fireworks.  Explosions are everywhere including 50 yards from our apartment building - we are talking the big, in the sky kind of fireworks that rattled and sent sparks into our windows.  Big booms.  As to be expected, this scared our little friend.  Now she is gone and it's been 8 days since we have seen her.  Sigh, she was a very friendly and happy Heinz 57 kind of dog that we looked forward to seeing every day - she made us smile.  We still look for her but...   The depression either comes from sleeping 10 1/2 hours a day or the other way around.  We still get up not long after dawn, but as previously mentioned, dawn is around 9 am.  It is dark 16 1/2 hours a day so we spend a lot of time in darkness.  Plus, the temperature has been averaging - 30 C (-22 F) everyday here so the thought of going outside is met with dread so we limit our trips to the store, coffee shop, hockey rink, etc. until we absolutely need some food, beer, Latte or a hockey match.  If only we would have brought our brewing equipment and espresso machine to KZ...   But it's 2011 and we go home this year!  We also have some great friends here and spent New Year's eve with several of them celebrating.  And this is our last winter in Siberia (although it is southern Siberia as Susan usually points out).  Plus, we are heading to Thailand and Cambodia in about 3 weeks so things are looking up.  It will be nice to ride some elephants and scuba dive and be warm for a couple of weeks.  Although we have some challenges ahead, now that we think about it, all and all, life really isn't too bad....

So we got back from our vacation to Dubai and it was still pretty mild in Pavlodar. OK, it was cold, don’t get us wrong, but just barely below freezing – altogether not too shabby. Dreary, and of course more and more darkness as we approached the Winter Solstice, but not so bad. We were even thinking, gosh, maybe we are just used to southern Siberian winters now, and so we will get through this last one no problem!

Wrong. We are NOT used to the winters yet, it was just starting out mild. Now it is not mild. It is cold. Face hurting, teeth aching, finger freezing cold. The sun is out (OK, only for about 7 hours a day, but still) so it is not so dreary, but the wind is up and it is bone chilling cold. AccuWeather has a description for it when it gets like this ‘Bitterly Cold’. Susan whole heartedly agrees with this description and is, in fact, bitter about it.

Just like last winter, we are having a terrible time waking up in the morning. On the Solstice, sunrise in Pavlodar was at 08:59. Sunset – 16:30. The sunset is a bit earlier than we are used to at home in CA, but the late sunrise - OMG! Sometimes we wake up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water and a quick glance at the clock tells us that it is not, in fact, the middle of the night. It is 8:00am. But it is before dawn, it is cold, it is dark – and so we go back to bed. We might stumble into the kitchen (which is only a few feet away) and turn on the coffee maker and then crawl right back under the covers. Yeah, we splurged and bought ourselves a coffee maker. We are all about the tea (chai) at work and during the day, but we have not let go of our wholehearted American need for a good cup (or 2 or 3) of joe to start the day. We are so fortunate to have loving family and friends outside of KZ who send us delicious coffee. There was even a Starbucks in Dubai where we were able to increase our stash. The ground coffee we can find for sale here is really expensive and really horrible. Don’t get us wrong, we will be mainlining жоккей (the only brand we have found here) if we run out of brew from home, but let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

When we returned from Dubai we had some special treats for our friends here. Susan collected shells from the beach and gave one to everyone at the office and to each PCV. In addition, the stores in Dubai stocked items that we cannot get here in KZ – Doritos, cheese dip, guacamole dip and tortillas. We brought all of that back with us and planned a Mexican dinner night for the Saturday before Christmas. Tina, our newest volunteer living in Pavlodar, is from a Mexican-American family. Her family sent her mole sauce! So Susan made frijoles, Susan and Tina made chicken mole and Spanish rice and Tina made salsa. It was a feast! Karla had even found some avocados earlier in the week , and Susan put them in a brown paper bag to ripen. They were ripe by Saturday and we made guacamole ! Nena, our German scout, sat next to the guacamole and ate most of it with a speed rarely seen. It was her first guacamole, and she really liked it. We were all in a Mexican food coma for the next two days, it was so delicious!

Our organization is very tight for money right now, so the work they had planned to do to renovate the kitchen to make it office space for the extra staff (Susan being one of those ‘extras’) will not happen. But now, in addition to Susan, Tanya and Julia and another new girl we haven’t formally met yet all have no place to work. No desk, no table, no chair, no computer. We have offered to work from home (where we have wireless network, our own laptops and space to work) and Sergey gratefully accepted. Which is great, since it is uncomfortably cold to walk to work anyway, but bad, because we really need face time with people to make sure we have work to do. As Susan’s sister pointed out –“that sucks. You could ‘work from home’ here in CA. Why the heck are you all the way in Kazakhstan if you are going to ‘work from home’?” Head scratch here, cause we really don’t have a good answer handy for that query.

Meanwhile, we prepared for Christmas. The offsite office celebration was cancelled due to lack of funds, so there was to be no Decenta festivities. But Samal, the rehabilitation where Shannon works was hosting their New Year’s party on Christmas Eve and all the PCVs were invited. Susan decided at the last minute that she wasn’t feeling well enough to go. Too many people drinking way too much vodka is what she remembered from last year, and her constitution was not feeling hearty enough for it. Turns out she was right – it was too many people drinking too much vodka getting hilariously rowdy. Paul made it his mission to keep LaKrista (a new volunteer) from getting cornered by a Russian guy who thought she was simply too cute and delicious to be left alone. Actually, with Chris back in the States visiting family, Paul is the only PCV representing the Y-chromosome in Pavlodar and so had is work as protector cut out for him! A good time was had by all, but Susan is just as glad to have missed it. She watched Christmas themed romance movies and played games on her computer and simply had a quiet Christmas Eve.

The next day, Christmas Day! Susan woke up uncharacteristically early (7am!) to get started on Christmas dinner. We have started a new tradition here, and we were serving chili. (Heck, it is red, and green – that’s Christmas-sy, right?). We had chili, cornbread muffins, sugar cookies, chocolate cupcakes and, not that it goes with the rest of the dinner at all, but you can’t have Christmas dinner without it, pumpkin pie. There were 7 of us for dinner, and a few of the diners were a bit peaked from the festivities from the evening before. By the time dinner was over we had every flat surface covered in sprawled out, sleepy volunteer. Paul joked with them that he wished he still had the energy of a 20-something – it was so boundless! We managed to rally them for a gift exchange game and then we watched “Fred Claus”. It was, indeed, a holly jolly Christmas!

Decenta is closed now for 2 weeks, so we are finding other things to work on for the next little while. Susan has made friends with some English teachers at a local university and they periodically invite her to come to their classes and talk to the students. It is good practice for them to listen to a native speaker, and they have a LOT of questions about life in the US. She has a lot of fun doing it, and it is a nice cultural exchange.

She even got invited to the university language faculty New Year’s Party – which was a luncheon in the faculty office. Beshbarmak, of course, and the usual tasty treats. She thought it would be easy, since each time she has visited the interactions have been in English. But, she arrived to find that it wasn’t the English faculty, it was the language faculty, meaning some people teach English, but some teach French, German and even Chinese. That means that the common language was to be Russian. About 10 teachers, laughing, joking, toasting and chattering in Russian. Sigh. She was frustrated. She recognizes so many words but the meaning eludes her, or comes to her too late for her to have followed the rest of the sentence. And then we she thinks she understand, she assumes she must be wrong. For example, one person’s toast, to Susan’s novice ears, seemed to wish to everyone many cabbages. Susan shook her head in dismay, knowing that couldn’t be right. Only to hear from her kind friend who translated “you see, she is wishing for everyone to have many cabbages”. Ok, so even when we do understand, we simply don’t understand.

But we are prevailing. Winter will not crush us (plus, we have a trip to Thailand at the end of January!) and we will keep on fighting the good fight and trying to make a difference.

The road from Abu Dabi to Dubai. Can you say 'desert'?

Mosque on the way

Our balconye

the grounds of the Sheraton Jumeriah Resort

the pool bar

on one hand....

turn around from the sign and this is what you see...

Chili's in Arabic is still delicious!!!

at one time it was estimated that 25% of the world's cranes were in Dubai

Worlds tallest building Burj Kaliffi

We have had troubles loading pictures into blogspot, but we will try again. These are pictures of the Thanksgiving football game at the orphanage.

Our Peace Corps Mid-Service Training (MST) started at 9am on December 1. Everyone was waiting to hear about the big news: early Close of Service (COS) due to the change in timing for the arrival of new volunteers (they will be arriving in both March and August instead of just August like for us). PC KZ realized that with 3 groups of volunteers in country, their staff would be severely stretched so Washington approved our group (Kaz-21) leaving in August instead of around the original date of October 31. Everyone wanted to talk about it but the Country Director (CD) told us it would have to wait until the session after lunch tomorrow. Shoot! So the conference commenced with this big cloud hanging over us.

We made it through the day and Paul and Chris decided to find some place in Almaty to have a beer away from Kok Tobe. Another volunteer Mark joined them and they headed out into beautiful weather (mid-50’s). We guess December 1 is a big deal here because there was an outside disco for young people at the cultural center and a huge, and we mean HUGE fireworks show that went on for 15 minutes at least near the Akimat. The theme for the celebration seemed to be focused on Santa Claus (Det Morose) and rabbits. Rabbits? Yup, rabbits. It took us a few a minutes to figure it out but it looks like 2011 will be the year of the Rabbit. Goodbye to the year of the Tiger.

Back at Kok Tobe many of the volunteers were also celebrating with their long-lost colleagues from the KZ-21 group who they hadn’t seen since IST in March. Some people were also sporting their new PC KZ t-shirts that a couple of volunteers had designed and then had made (only 800 tenge!). We also got new coffee cups too but few people were sporting those.

The next day was the much anticipated town hall meeting. Everyone had their pitch forks and torches ready as we had heard that we wouldn’t be able to take vacation in the last 90 days of service. So for the volunteer teachers who can’t take vacation during the school year, that would mean no more vacation. Vacation time would be over for all of them already as the school year has started and finishes in May. We were ready for a fight.

The first thing the CD told us was that we could all take vacation in our last 90 days of service. Hey wait, oh, no, that’s great! Bomb diffused so we are on for the villa we booked for Italy in June! Of course this means the travel planning we did for our post-COS trip in November now needs to be re-thought. Chris, Shannon and we went over to the Il Patio restaurant nearby to use their WI FI. This changes everything! “How much does a visa to Azerbaijan cost?” "What is the best way to get to Moldova?" "Do you need a visa for Armenia?"

On Friday, depending on who you talked to, it snowed about 8 inches (In Paul’s estimation) or 30 centimeters (in Nena’s). Anyway it was a lot of snow and it got really cold; no snow melting anytime soon. Chris and Shannon caught the train back to Pavlodar and we, with Nena, continued the Friday Happy Hour tradition, unfortunately at a really expensive Uzbek restaurant. Afterwards we watched a movie on Susan’s computer. It was also our last night to hang out with most of our fellow volunteers until our next conference (COS conference) sometime in late May/early June. A good time was had by all.

Part of Nena’s travels south included a Scout conference in Bishkek. We found the buses which go west and south leave out of a different bus station that we are used to. We were told to go to Abai Street and catch any bus heading west to get to the station. It wasn’t quite that simple (never is) and Nena was glad that we came along as her Russian language skills are still in early development. You couldn’t buy tickets anywhere inside the station to Bishkek so we wandered the parking lot looking for buses marked with a sign to Bishkek. It was cold and slippery but finally we found a van in the back with such a sign. We hugged our German friend goodbye and headed back for downtown Almaty.

We found a restaurant serving pseudo-American food near the Arbat and settled in to get warm and chow down. Afterward we walked to TSUM and went up to the top floor to look for Kazakh souvenirs. There were plenty but we were not feeling it so we headed back to the hotel.

The PC conference was over so if we wanted to spend another night we had to move buildings. No problem. We were given a room in the main building so we thought this must be an upgrade. We were wrong. There wasn’t any black mold on the ceiling like our last room but the windows didn’t close all the way and the room was freezing. No mold, but cold. But the room came with room service – we ordered Plov for dinner and got cold pelmeni (Russian ravioli) delivered. And they didn’t bring tea! Nothing but the best for us. For breakfast, they delivered 2 cold runny eggs sunny side up, a piece of meat resembling a slice of bologna and some bread pieces. Susan couldn’t even look at it without shuddering. Oh well we will head to our new hotel near the airport later today which is only slightly better than Kok Tobe but walking distance to the terminal to catch our early flight to Dubai.

Except the plane isn’t going to Dubai any more. It is going to Abu Dhabi. For some reason Air Astana changed the city the plane was flying to. They didn’t change the time or the flight number just the destination city. We found out about it a few days before through a cryptic SMS Air Astana sent Paul that Google-translate translated to ‘your flight is become a labyrinth’. Paul then contacted Air Astana who said, yes, the destination city has been changed. Really? You can do that? Apparently they can but they said a bus would be waiting to take us to Dubai. OK…

Air Astana also does some other strange things. Paul got a different call from Air Astana about the return flight from Almaty to Pavlodar. The woman called and told him the flight time was changed. Paul asked her if he could ask her a question. She said, “No.” Paul said, “No!?!?” She “No, goodbye.” Now there’s customer service for you.

Our flight to Abu Dhabi was uneventful. We eventually found the bus to take us to Dubai. The bus dropped us off somewhere downtown in a parking lot. “How the hell are we going to find this parking lot to get back?” we thought. At least we found people to ask questions in English about getting to our hotel. I am not sure what the KZ passengers without English will do. The driver said taxis were on the way to the parking lot so that should be fine. Money is money so we are sure someone will help them. We went and flagged down a taxi on the street and were off to our fancy Sheraton hotel.

And fancy it is. Right on the beach with a pool and palm trees. There were bathrobes and slippers in our corner room. We had a balcony with gulf views. They even threw in a free dinner any night we wanted. Ahh, we love using Starwood points to get pampered for free. There are some interesting contrasts in the lobby: a huge Christmas tree and piped in Christmas music and a big sign nearby saying that alcohol will not be served for 26 hours during Islamic New Year. The hotel aims to please.

Alcohol here is very expensive. There is also very little alcohol available here and it is only served in the hotels. Can’t buy it in stores or at restaurants. A beer at our hotel runs about $10 a glass. What can you expect in a Muslim country. ;>) Hey, wait a second… we currently LIVE in a Muslim country and you can’t swing your arms without hitting a bottle of something alcoholic in good ole KZ!

We probably could chronicle the rest of the trip through the food we ate i.e., fajitas, breakfast burritos, tuna melts, etc. at restaurants such as Coco’s and Chili’s but we won’t. But we will slip in that Diet Coke and Doritos are plentiful here. Suffice it to say, we were missing American and pseudo-Mexican food and got our fix in UAE. But it isn’t cheap at the restaurants or when you order a bagel with cream cheese and lox along with a diet coke poolside and all you have to do is slgn it to your room. Nothing like gulf side and pool side table service. Ahhh, the simple life. We soaked up the sun, swam in the sea (OK, the Persian Gulf, but, heck, it's salt water!) and savored the warmth.

We went downtown to both of the over-the-top big malls here. At one, Mall of the Emirates, there is indoor skiing. Yup, skiing in the desert. We also saw the new Harry Potter 7a in English. Pretty fun. At the other mall, Mall of Dubai, there is an enormous aquarium with sharks, rays and other big fishes. We decided not to go scuba diving (or skiing either) inside the malls. It just doesn’t seem right. But next to the mall, is the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa. We took the elevator up to the 124 floor. The elevator was amazing; quiet and moved at 10m per second. The day was a bit hazy but you could see most of Dubai including the Burj Al Arab (the hotel that looks like a sail) but not the man-made Palm islands for which Dubai is famous. We did see the “World” islands but if you didn’t know what it was you wouldn’t recognize it as the “world”.

If we can get pictures to post (it hasn't worked the last two times we have tried, we can post our shot of '

the world' and see if anyone can see it in there,

As we mentioned, the hotel gave us a free invitation to dinner so we decided to go when they had belly dancing (an amazing dancer from Brazil – huh?) and Arabian food. We watched the chefs make Nan bread which was delicious and Paul tried to eat his weight in smoked salmon at the salad station. The rest of the food was tasty and most of the servers seemed to be from the Middle East which is unusual from our experience so far. It seems that most of the help seems to be from the Philippines: the concierge desk, the cleaning staff, the people at most of the restaurants near our hotel, the nail salon, etc. Hearing so much Tagalog (or Tagalog accented English) reminds us of being back home near South San Francisco. Paul is referred to as “Sir” and Susan “Mum”. They are extremely nice people and it is a contrast to service people in KZ. The hotel guests are mixed – some British, some Russian, many middle Eastern, just from all over the place. Sometimes we wonder where we are. And when we are. The music that is blaring out most places is 70’s dance music. We see young men in bright colored polo shirts with the collars turned up. The host of Middle Eastern men with gold chains and smooth banter puts Susan in mind of Northern California right after the Shah of Iran was deposed. That, combined with the fact that our hotel is a little older style means that sometimes we are not sure what decade we are vacationing in.

There is also a big contrast in the way people dress. There are men in the traditional Arab dress with head scarfs and also women in burkas (if they call them that here). Then there is the usual assortment of local people (80% of Dubai’s population is ex-pats) and tourists running around in shorts. It was particularly striking to see burka clad women eating lunch at the mall by lifting up their veil to get a taco to their lips to eat. We probably won’t be seeing many of them at the swim up bar when we go later today to have a drink...

Susan is soaking up the sun and warmth and trying to commit it to memory for the long cold winter ahead in Pavlodar. She was wondering if she could sit, eyes closed, in front of the radiator in the apartment and feel like she was back in Dubai for a moment…

So, as you know, Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday and, as such, is not celebrated here in KZ. But lots of people know about the holiday, and want to know more. Our colleague Elena asked us about the holiday. In a mix of broken Russian, Russ-lish and English, we explained that Thanksgiving is about, well, giving thanks. But we confessed that the giving thanks part only takes a few minutes, and the rest of the day is about the 3 F’s – Football, Family and Food.

Elena is a part of the KZ scouting organization, and she asked us if we would accompany her to an orphanage in Pavlodar on Thanksgiving Day and share a little about Thanksgiving with the kids. Susan volunteered to make pumpkin pies, but that was a big нельзя (not permitted, forbidden) – the food the kids get is pretty controlled and they were not comfortable with the idea. So Elena decided we should play American football. We have one real football and one Nerf football so we thought it was a great idea.

We went into work on Thanksgiving Day, Susan having made 2 pumpkin pies. From scratch! As in starting from 2 real pumpkins! The Decenta staff remembered pumpkin pie from last year, and were delighted to try it again. Susan even translated the recipe into Russian and metric (with the help of Google translate and other handy Internet tools) and gave it to Elena. She made one mistake, though, and left in the crust recipe the ingredient shortening. Google translate was able to translate it, but Elena didn’t know what it was. In fairness, no one here knew what it was. You cannot get shortening here. So I told her you can use butter (which many volunteers, who do not have moms as nice as Susan’s, had to resort to as they had not gotten shortening in a care package). Anna was thrilled that Elena had the recipe and decided that next year, when we are no longer in KZ, Elena would be responsible for bringing pumpkin pie for the staff on Thanksgiving. We are thrilled that we might have actually started a tradition of sorts!

Anyway, in the afternoon we took taxis to the orphanage to play some football. Chris and Tina – two other PCVs came also. This particular orphanage was really nice – and is a new model here. It consists of several buildings surrounding a courtyard and play area. Each building is a home for eight kids and a house mother. The house we went in was very clean and spacious (a little too clean for Susan’s liking – how can eight kids be so tidy? Probably because they don’t have a bunch of toys, games, etc to spread around the place.) We visited for a bit, had the obligatory chai, and then went outside to meet the rest of the kids and play around. Susan had the great idea to bring the eyeliner pencil that she had used so effectively on Halloween and to draw black bars under people’s eyes like American football players do. The kids were a little hesitant at first, but Susan drew one on all the volunteers and the kids and house mothers stepped forward eagerly to get authentic decoration too.

So it was cold out, and there was some snow and ice on the ground, so we were more Green Bay than Tampa Bay, but it was still legit. The problem came when we tried to explain the game to 20 eager kids and the house mothers (who really wanted to play too). Anna was translating for us, but still – American football is a very complicated game to explain to people who have never seen it, and they were cold and eager to get started. So, just like last year’s Turkey Bowl in Bayanaul, the game quickly disintegrated into something completely hybrid. First off, people here cannot stand the idea of a goal with no goalie, so two people stationed themselves under the goal posts. The rest of the game was a combination of soccer, ultimate Frisbee and rugby, but played with an American football, if that makes any sense at all. There was even one gentleman, a staffer (we think) who took it upon himself to keep score. Not that there was any real way of telling which team was which or even how points were tallied, but he was authoritative in his scoring anyway.

It was hilarious! And the kids and house mom’s were having a blast, so who were we to say they were doing it wrong? We played for about 2 hours, and then everyone got cold and we had to call it a day. Paul and Chris are going to try to get a sports thing going with the kids at this orphanage this spring and summer, if they can.

Later that night Chris was hosting a Thanksgiving themed English Club at the American Corner (a US embassy sponsored room in the library of many cities that has books in English and lots of information about America). Shannon had given Alecia (the young librarian who runs the American Corner) the recipe for pumpkin pie and Alecia cooked it. She, of course, had to use an oval casserole dish instead of a pie pan (this country is not big on pie pans). Chris talked a bit about the story of the first Thanksgiving and the club members read a little play that he had found about it, and then we had chai and pie. When Shannon took the cover off the pie, however, Susan was alarmed to see that parts of it were green. Never having seen a pumpkin pie with green spots, she whispered to Shannon “why is it green?” Shannon, with enviable tact, called across the room to Alecia – “hey, what is the green stuff?” Alecia responded – “marmalade”. Huh. Quite an innovation, first time making pumpkin pie to put green marmalade on the top. The club members seemed to enjoy it, so…

On Saturday we had our PCV Thanksgiving. After several attempts, Shannon was able to locate a turkey. The biggest one the store had (they had 3) was 4 kilos (about 9 pounds). It cost something like 1800 tenge per kilo – or almost 4 dollars a pound! All the volunteers chipped in to pay for it, but, as we are the only ones with an oven, we were charged with cooking it. Talk about nervous! The dinner was at 3 at Shannon and Nena’s relatively new apartment. They have two, two burner hotplates, no oven, no microwave, so the meal was prepared in other apartments and carted to theirs at the last minute. We brought pumpkin pie, turkey and gravy. Karla was responsible for mashed potatoes. Tina tried in vain to find yams or sweet potatoes here, but was unsuccessful. She cleverly made a dish out of pumpkin, brown sugar and marshmallows (kinda stale ones left by a previous volunteer – you can’t get marshmallows here either) that was pretty tasty. Chris brought macaroni and cheese, Nena (our resident German) brought knoodle (we know that isn’t spelled right, but since we can’t say it right either it won’t matter) and, upon Paul’s request, German potato salad. We had bread, cranberry sauce (which, thanks to Paul, everyone now calls ‘can-berry’) green salad and stuffing (Stove Top sent from home, but still…) – it was a feast! The turkey was scrawny, but pretty tasty. We like to think it was probably our first free range turkey – no breast meat to speak of, but who likes that dry white meat anyway? We had so much food that we invited everyone over to our apartment for leftovers the next night. By then we had set up our Christmas tree (ok, we took it down of the top of our armoire, dusted it, rebent some of the branches and plugged it in) so it was a very festive weekend indeed.

On Monday morning, Chris and Shannon and Nena boarded a train for Almaty. Chris and Shannon were on their way to our MST (mid-service training) with Nena as a stowaway. We opted to fly and so were leaving Monday night. They left 12 hours before we did and got there 13 hours after… We went into the office on Monday and made some plans with Sergey to do some strategic planning meetings when we got back.

That evening we went to our favorite lagman restaurant for a birthday dinner and then Susan opened her presents. Her mom and sister had hooked her up with some clothes, a nice belt and some fun jewelry, so she was smiling from ear to ear. Plus Paul gave her an over the top (tacky-wise) souvenir coffee cup and, the crème de la crème, a white Kazakstan track suit! Blue and gold trim, Kazakhstan written in Kazakh across the back, and white track pants that are unlikely to ever be seen on Susan. It is truly awful, and truly fabulous!

We caught our flight at 11:30 arrived in Almaty at around 1am – and therefore officially Susan’s 50th birthday. We caught a cab to Kok Tobe (the lovely sanatorium where all of our Almaty Peace Corps training meetings happen) and got to bed around 2.

Shannon, Nena and Chris arrived at around noon, and at 1:30 we headed for Susan’s birthday banya. We went to Arasan, the reputed best public banya in all of Central Asia. The place is huge, and, by Kazakstan standards, very luxurious. You banya naked by gender, so Paul and Chris went to the men’s side and Susan, Shannon and Nena went to the ladies’ side. There were 3 saunas – hot, really hot and super steamy effing hot, shower rooms, massage tables, and a swimming pool. Susan purchased honey (to put on faces) and scrubbing salts to scour skin. When the ladies came out they looked brand new! (Susan was worried that, if the process took 30 years off her, Shannon and Nena might revert to so much younger that they would cease to exist. But it turned out that she still looked 50, just a shiny, soft and flushed 50). We spent 2 hours there and were hungry and extremely mellow when we emerged. We walked over to the Green Bazaar to do a little shopping and get ourselves some lagman. The bazaar was fixing to close (it was almost 5) so we didn’t have time to do any shopping. The lagman, however, was good, cheap and plentiful. We got on a bus to go back up the hill to Kok Tobe. By the time we exited, a few stops too early, it was so crowded on the bus that we could not believe that they kept squeezing more people in. We exited early in self-defense.

The plan was to go out to dinner, but we were so full of lagman that we never did. The rest of the PCVs had arrived by then and were all crowding around the central room of the building we were in. People made runs to the small grocery across the street for provisions and we had a big reunion party. Paul, Hilary and Shannon put a candle in a choco-pie (a cookie with marshmallow crème and chocolate coating) and everyone sang “Happy Birthday” to Susan. It was a great time.

We helped our organization, Decenta, celebrate their 9th birthday at an off-site location north of Pavlodar called the "Green Grove."  Of course it wasn't very green this time of year but given the proximity to the river we knew it would be green for part of the year. Actually we were near here before this past summer with Shannon's org, Samal, when they arranged for all the kids to get some outdoor time.  It was pretty green then, but as usual, we stayed away from the river which is also green at times (and not in a good way).      When we first arrived, we weren't sure in which of the two buildings there the celebration would occur.  The older one had a sign for a banya and picture of a nubile scantily clad woman.  Paul was hoping for this one.  The newer building was much larger, without pictures of scantily clad women, and that was where the party started.  They had reserved an entire section of the building with a swimming pool big enough to do laps, steam sauna, dry sauna and bedroom (without scantily, or otherwise clad women).  The dry sauna turned out to be the hottest ever.  At one point when we left it closed and put the heat on high, it got up to 130C (or 266 F), which if you understand the basic physics is well above boiling for water.  It was crazy hot.  Our lips (and other sensitive parts) were sizzling.  Trying to open the door to leave resulted in skin burns on our hands.  Almost needless to say, no one spent much time in there.    It was great to swim, sauna, eat, drink, and just basically relax for 4 hours.  We told our Director Sergey that we should to this every Friday.  He said he would think about it, but we don't really believe him.  Unfortunately, as the party was on Friday, we missed our oblast weekly Happy Hour but we think we did our part to acknowledge the work week's end. On Saturday we played volleyball with our local friends, Alexey and Katya.  Susan hadn't played in a few years and insisted that the ball was way too hard for a regulation volleyball (water volleyball maybe?).  The last time Paul played, the game lasted 1 hour followed by 2 hours of banya.  We thought it would be the same this week but it was the longest hour ever (actually 1 hour and 50 minutes we found out later).   We had just banya'd the night before so we left after volleyball, bruised, beaten, and sweaty.  Susan's not sure what she thinks about: 1) getting hammered with a seemingly steel coated ball, and 2) playing with guys who don't play any better than she does but still go out of their way to keep her from getting a chance to hit the ball, and 3) giving up relaxing with English speaking friends on a Saturday night.  Jury's out whether she will play again with this crowd. On Sunday the new volunteers to Pavlodar arrived!  There will be a volunteer in the city, Tina, and one, LaKrista, nearby in Aksu.  After watching a creepy Guy Richie film, we went out to the train station to meet Tina (LaKrista got off earlier in Aksu) who arrived at 10:41pm.  The movie was longer than anticipated so rather than walk or take the tram we tried to call a cab.  We finally reached a cab company and they promised to send a cab, but we waited and waited and it never showed.  The five of us finally ran out to the street and flagged one down, crammed inside, and got to the train station as her train was coming in.  Just in the nick of time. She will never know (unless she reads our blog ;>).  Blogspot is still blocked here (we have to sneak up on it using proxy servers or IP Shields) so unless you tell her she will be in the dark about just how close we came to missing her arrival until she gets back to the US. We met her at her wagon with our handcrafted welcome signs and helped her carry all her sh#t outside to the parking lot.  There are a lot of stairs between where you get off the train and getting out to the parking lot.  This was a sticking point with Paul; when the volunteers met us last year they did not help us carry our 300 lbs. of sh#t.  If we were going to meet her, we were going to help out.  And we did.  Her counterpart and some future colleagues were there too and they were hosting her for the night so we just got them into their car with her stuff and we were done.  We caught a cab back to our apartment: round trip to the train station - 40 minutes, not bad. Sean, a Kaz-21 who extended, came back to visit Pavlodar on Monday.  He will be living in another part of Kazakhstan helping as a volunteer and as a PCV Leader to the other volunteers in that region.  It was great to catch up with him and he will be here a few days this weekend before going to his new site.  He came bearing gifts in the form of guacamole dip from the Almaty Ram store.  Yummm, can't wait to try that. Paul's Russian tutor Lada is moving so he has to get a new tutor. He met with someone who was more expensive than he wanted (at first she wanted 1000 tenge per hour but ended up at 800 which is still expensive).  She can't start for a week so it is, what it is.  Then, for some baffling reason, she called 3 times on Sunday, sms'd 3 times, and sent several emails explaining that it is urgent for them to get together on Sunday to start tutoring.  What?!?!  And it seems she wanted more money.  Paul told he has a hard time hearing and understanding spoken Russian could she send him an email (we can read basic Russian reasonably well - if not, there is always Google translate).  Oh, after reading the email, she will accept less money, 600/hour but wants to start in an hour from now.  No can do.  We have plans so it can wait.   Ok, back to the original plan of starting on Nov 15.  On Nov. 10, he gets a call from his old tutor saying the new tutor is too busy and she won't be able to tutor him.  What the heck is going on? We haven't even started yet. We still don't know what happened but now he needs to get another tutor.  What a pain this has turned out to be. But, he wants to continue so he'll have to jump through some hoops for a while. The four Kaz-21's in Pavlodar (that would be Paul, Susan, Chris and Shannon) went to lunch at the fanciest restaurant "Metropole" in Pavlodar to celebrate our 1 year stay in this city.  Turns out they have a "Биснес Ланч" (actually phonetically says Business Lunch) for about 4 bucks which included salad, soup, main course, dessert and chai.  What a deal!  It was nice to celebrate our 1 year together in this strange, strange place that doesn't feel very strange anymore.    Sergey was in India this week at a conference so we went crazy doing PowerPoint presentations.  Susan is working on some "kits" for volunteers to use next year at their sites to help celebrate the Peace Corps turning 50.  Paul agreed to do a presentation next week on getting an MBA in America as part of the International Education Week activities in Pavlodar plus he did 2 other presentations he needed to get done (that guy THINKS in PowerPoint).  Susan also was invited to visit an English class at a local university so they could hear a native English speaker.  She enjoyed it and spoke to 2 classes.  After she finished up, the head of the English department asked her to now permanently volunteer there. Probably won't happen but it is nice to help out.

We swore in as PCVs on October 31st, 2009 and so have officially completed our first year of service. We really thought we would understand the language and the culture better by now -- cie la vie. But, we heard the second year of service is even better so we still have time to go "native" - (hmmmm, very unlikely although we occasionally seem to suffer from "Stockholm syndrome").   Paul has made some local friends, Sasha and Katya, a married couple he met on the tennis courts. They invited him to play volleyball with them on the Saturday and join them after for a banya. He hasn't played much volleyball before, but he was able to hold his own ok. Since it will freeze here soon and tennis will no longer be an option, it may be that we both play some volleyball this winter.   Sasha texted Paul on Sunday night and asked if we were busy on Monday. Turns out that the tutor that Sasha works with to learn English was having a get together at a local pub and everyone in attendance was supposed to speak only English. Sasha wanted to know if we wanted to come. Paul, who had come down with a cold, hemmed and hawed a little bit. He is often exhausted on Mondays after an hour of tutoring and 2 hours of trying to understand the staff meeting. He said that we would try to make it. Turns out both tutoring and the staff meeting were postponed, so Paul felt he had enough brain cells left to attend. Good thing, because Sasha had not understood the subtleties of Paul's waffling and they were expecting us. We were the only native English speakers there, and, as such, were sort of special guests. It's great to occasionally feel like a rock star.   Their tutor goes by the name Helen (her name is almost certainly Elena, since half the Russian women here are named Elena) and she was acting as the master of ceremonies. NO party in KZ can happen without a master of ceremonies. Contests must occur, games must be played, toasts must be made – and someone has to coordinate that. (It is so American to let guests "do what they want" at parties, we need central planning!)   There was live music by a pretty good quartet who did American jazz with aplomb. But they were loud, of course, and it made it extra hard to talk. Everyone was to speak only English and there was someone there with a till that people had to pay into if they were caught speaking Russian. But no one could really hear anything so it was moot. Helen just ran around organizing games, trying to get people to dance and making sure that Sasha and Katya didn't keep us all to themselves. But only a few other people were brave enough to talk to us in English over the sound of the band. One woman cornered Susan, however. Turns out she teaches English at a local university and wants Susan to come and talk to her class. Her university is not one of the ones that has a PC volunteer, and she was hoping a native speaker could come talk to her students. Susan agreed and they exchanged contact information. Her name is Sevda (remarkably NOT Elena) and she was not going to take no for an answer, so it was good that Susan was up for the challenge.   Susan has mastered the art of speaking English to people who are just learning. She figured out how she wants people to speak Russian to her - slowly, clearly and with simple words, and she does the same when speaking English to them. To native speakers she sounds a little retarded, but the learners really like it because they can understand her. Paul still talks too fast and uses words like fungible and vanquish – he needs some (let's be honest, a lot!) more practice.   The rest of the week was work and Susan working on Halloween. Her tutor, Vika, was having a party for her English students on Saturday night and Susan agreed to be the master of ceremonies (see above description of the requirements). Vika wanted an authentic "American" Halloween party, so they went all out on decorations and scary themed activities. It isn't like you can run down to the Halloween Super Store and pick up this stuff. Susan was cutting, taping, painting and gluing to make the garlands, skeletons, ghosts, black cats, and other things that are so simple to buy in the US. We did have a few Halloween themed items in a bag of crafts, etc. that had been left by a departing volunteer, and those helped round out the decor. Vika went all out too – crafting eyeballs out of clay and paint, and making tombstones out of cardboard and spray paint.   Paul was going to be Count Dracula, and, as such, needed a cape. Susan was trying to figure out how to make one with no sewing machine, and she decided to see what she could find at the bazaar. She found a really nice guy who sold her 2 meters of black satin and 2 meters of red satin for 1,000 tenge (about 7 dollars). Then she walked around until she found a lady with a sewing machine (there are a few tailor booths at the bazaar) and, via hand signals, extremely broken Russian and some quick sketching, was able to explain what she needed. 600 tenge (about 4 dollars) and 35 minutes later she had an absolutely fantastic Dracula cape! What a triumph! Susan tried to explain to Vika that an authentic American style party would not have a master of ceremonies, there would likely be maybe 1 activity and mostly food, drink and conversation. Vika said she understood, but she really didn't get it. So we had a Halloween themed Russian style party. We had a costume contest, we carved jack o'laterns, we did a mummy wrap, we made people put their hands in bags of gross feeling stuff, we had a who can make the scariest sound contest, we ate apples off a string (not as wet and messy as bobbing for apples) and we got it all done in 2.5 hours. Our fellow Americans joined in, and all dressed in costumes too, so there was a lot of practicing of English. The students (ages 14-18) seemed like they really enjoyed it. They had never carved a jack o'lantern before, and they were very intrigued by the notion of trick-or-treating. One said that now that she had seen a real Halloween party she was going to host one for her friends next year! I would suggest to her that she have more food. Except for the cupcakes that Susan made, there was no food! Extremely unusual for any gathering here. Maybe that's what they think of as "American."  ;>)  Susan found a bag of pretzel sticks (we were using them as fake bones in the feel gross stuff in the bag game) and put them out as snacks. Some people were even dipping them in the fake blood that Susan made for Paul. It was corn syrup, peanut butter, strong coffee and red food coloring – kind of gross to look at, but quite tasty on a pretzel stick! One fellow volunteer chastised Susan for wasting rare and valuable peanut butter on a costume and so was relieved when she found out people actually ate it.   Goal 2 of the Peace Corps is "Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served." and we were all over goal 2 this week!   The next night, actual Halloween, we decided to go to our favorite watering hole for a grown up Halloween party. Kabachok (the pub) had said they would be hosting a Halloween party starting at 8. So, we went to dinner (to say goodbye to Megan, for whom this was the last night in Pavlodar) and then back to our apartment to don our costumes. Paul was Dracula, Susan was a recently turned zombie (knife coming out of the chest, blood dripping from a head wound), Shannon was a teapot, Chris a rock star, Karla a cat and Nena (our German Scout) was Britney Spears. She was the only one who did not wear the same costume as the night before, when she had dressed as a teabag   So we get to Kabachok and there is no one there celebrating Halloween. The staff are wearing devil horns and they had put a giant spider web on the wall, but none of the other patrons seemed to notice. Oh well, we brought the party with us. We had also invited some of our local friends to come, and they did. Sasha came as a vampire slayer (garlic around the neck, wooden stake) and Anna (our counterpart) and her sister came as zombie brides. We mostly sat and chatted, we took a bunch of photos and we danced. It was really fun, even though the other 10 or so people in the place were a little baffled.   The beer at Kabachok was served in glasses with the beer brand «Bavaria – Holland». We still aren't sure of the connection between Bavaria and Holland. Anyway, Nena, our German scout friend, is from Bavaria so Shannon started the negotiation with the waitress to buy a mug or two as a gift for Nena. The waitress had to consult with the manager about this unusual request (not really, volunteers are known to covet foreign beer mugs and stealing is frowned upon everywhere). After some deliberations, the waitress brought back 6 mugs and gave them to Shannon «бесплатно» or free. The manager then came over and gave her 6 free beers to go with it. Pretty generous we thought. I guess they don't mind us loud Americans so much here, at least in the favorite watering hole we frequent.   This was the last weekend in Pavlodar for our 2 remaining PCVs from group 20. Brian joined us for Happy Hour on Friday and spent the night. Saturday was a late lagman lunch and several rousing games of Backgammon and then he was off, never to return. He had last day invitations from people in his village on Sunday which he said afterward, "...included eating my weight in horse meat, washing it down with vodka and then chasing it with whiskey...". Helluva way to go.   Megan's last day in town was Sunday, and she left on the early train Monday morning. We are happy for them, they completed their 2 years of service and are heading home. But we are sad for us, because they have become good friends and we will miss them.   Things at work continue on – Susan is working on drafting a grant proposal to encourage social advertising in Pavlodar. Decenta's office remains chronically overcrowded, with Susan sharing any leftover space with 3 other employees and volunteers who also have work to do and no place to do it. Many days Susan comes in, says hello and then takes off back for home where there is a computer, a table and Internet access for her. Paul continues to try to read Russian accounting software manuals and plan for the next cycle of 2011 Strategic Planning. We are both looking forward to Decenta's 9th birthday party celebration this coming Friday.
 

We have been trying to have new experiences here including what we eat.  One of the more mundane food items which is mostly associated with drinking beer, here, and at home, is the potato chip.  At home, we have bbq, plain, green onion, ruffled, etc. - pretty standard and tasty.   Here we have had the pleasure of trying fish egg, bacon, crab, parsley and sour cream, chicken, shasklik, cheese, cheese with onion, and ketchup flavored chips (we probably forgot some).  Most of these are not bad except we can't get used to the fish egg ones (they usually have a picture of salmon eggs on the outside) because they taste kind of like fish bait.  Of course, we haven't tried to use the chips as bait yet in the local Irtsh river only because: 1)  the Irtsh starts in China, runs through a very, very industrial area, then through Semey where they did the nuclear testing before making it's way to Pavlodar, and 2) we are fearful of what kind of fish living in this environment might be attracted to potato chips.    We had Happy Hour this week at the usual kind of place we go in Pavlodar; scary on the outside, warm and cozy on the inside.  They had cheap beer and we took a few swigs before calling Emily who was then in Almaty and leaving the next day from KZ probably for good.  :>(   We are going to miss her and the other Kaz-20 volunteers who left and will be leaving in the next few weeks.  Of course, with Emily gone, our apartment is now the de facto place to crash in Pavlodar: comfortable, close to everything with excellent breakfast and brewed coffee in the morning to boot.   So we have gotten to know our fellow volunteers even better and Paul has gotten the chance to practice his backgammon skills.    Susan is happily preparing for Halloween.  She is planning with her tutor Vika to have an "American" style Halloween party for Vika's students of English.  Vika was questioning Susan about what a Halloween party might be like and Susan explained it to her.  Vika, not understanding that a party could occur without a master of ceremonies, wasn't sure why people would dress up (and dress up scary, just dressing up is weird) and just socialize together.  "What will they do?"  So, the "American" Halloween party will now have a master of ceremonies and games with a little bit of English club thrown in too.     Should be fun.   Paul, Brian and Chris went on a long, freezing walk on Saturday.  They are guys so there so they can't just go for a walk in freezing weather, there has to be an objective.  We ran out of bacon and there are some new beers from InBev available in Pav so they made the store near the river which carries both their destination.  Mission accomplished.   Hockey season is back and we went to a game Sunday night.  Irtsh rocked.  They are starting off this year pretty well.  There was another home game Monday night but Paul was beat.  He has been going to Russian lessons 4 days a week plus the Monday staff meeting at work (all in Russian) and he was burnt.  Next home games will be in a few weeks.   Speaking of work, Susan was asked to do some research on Social Advertising (you know those commercials or billboards that tell you quit smoking or not eat so much bacon).  Decenta is trying to determine if they might have a role in advancing Social Advertising.  Susan prepared a PowerPoint presentation and they were impressed with what she came up with.  I also think they are impressed with PowerPoint because they so rarely seem to use it here in meetings. She did a great job but was still ousted the next day from a desk at work by some other person who apparently  thought he needed to do work more than Susan did. Sigh, she just went home to work there.  Will she ever get a space to call her own at Decenta?  Not likely, but we will see, it's only been a year...   We (by we, we mean Susan) have been going through a lot of dog and cat food.  Yes, it is sad, but the PC doesn't pay us enough so we have been eating... WHAT?  NO!  There is a kindle of kittens near our work and Susan has turned into crazy cat lady without the shopping cart.   Now, when they see her, 4 - 7 kittens, depending on who is around, plus usually 2 friendly adult cats, one who is perfect for Halloween (or the SF Giants playoffs) because she has long black fur and orange eyes, come running at her at top speed screaming "Meow, meow!" (in Russian of course).  Then Susan proceeds to dump out about 100 tenge worth of "feed for cats" as it is called (not cat food - food is for people) and the feeding orgy commences.  They have also gotten used to her presence so she can pet them at will.  To be able to do that took a while as animals are pretty skitish here.   Across the street from our apartment there is a little puppy who we creatively call "Puppy, Puppy" (the name started in Bayanaul and we stole it from Mary).   She, the puppy, is a sweety (Mary's a sweety too) so we usually leave food for her (the puppy).   Paul usually whips something up using the bread butts from breakfast (i.e., diced bread loaf heel soaked in bacon fat) to leave as a puppy offering.  That works for the puppy, but the other dogs along our way to work also need nourishment so they get fed regular dry "feed for dogs".   We can't figure out a way to save all these friendly, stray animals so we try to make their lives a little better anyway.    

The leaves, the temperature and the hours of daylight are dropping, and we are sad to see summer go. The heat (radiators) has been turned on in much of the city, but not in our apartment building. Susan has been glad to have her -37C bathrobe! When the heat comes on the robe is too warm, but for now it is a blessing.

Our friend Shannon has moved into her new apartment and is, for now, without a washing machine. She and her roommate (a German scout who is volunteering at her organization) came over to use the washing machine. It made it through the wash and rinse cycles, and then refused to go further. No drain, no spin, nada. Our washing machine repair karma was completely spent and there was nothing to do about it. We wrung out Shannon’s stuff and hung it to drip on the balcony and Susan, once again, bailed the water out of the machine and then, after opening the drain in the back, bailed the remaining water off the floor.

With our friend (and Susan’s tutor) Vika’s help, we were able to explain to our landlady that the washer is kaput and that we would really like to have one. We arranged to get the money (65,000 tenge) to our landlady which she would use to procure a nice, new, washer. We will subsequently pay less rent until the money is recovered. She bought one that day, Wednesday, and it was delivered on Friday. But then we had to wait until Sunday for the master (handyman) to install it. Oh sweet technology! Oh wonderful plumbing! Susan washed clothes and towels and everything she could. Paul came back from a walk on Monday morning and Susan was washing more things. Not entirely sure what was left to wash, but her enthusiasm knew no bounds.

Speaking of going out for a walk, we both have noticed that birds that we haven’t seen around since spring have reappeared. One type of bird is small and green and yellow, and the other kind is big – like gull-sized – and blue, white and black. The strange thing is that they were gone for the summer, and now are back. Which means that Pavlodar is a winter destination for them, as in ‘fly south for the winter’. Susan has been trying to tell the birds that they should keep going – that there are places south that are actually not frozen for 6 months – but she doesn’t speak bird any better than she does Russian and so they remain.

Susan’s shingles have mostly abated. The rash may end up scarring a bit, and right now there is a 6 inch area on her back that is a touch numb, but it only hurts at the edges now, and even there not always so Yay!

And this week we say goodbye to another of our wonderful 20’s. Emily, a Peace Corps volunteer who has been teaching English at a university in Pavlodar for 2 years, is off to new adventures. We are going to miss her so much. We have only 2 20’s left, and they have less than a month remaining. Chris lives with a local named Barjan who, though he doesn’t speak English, likes to have the volunteers over for ghosti (visiting). He cooks food (although usually fish, so Susan isn’t a huge fan) and serves it up with a side of vodka. And then some more vodka. And the toasting. And more vodka. Susan brought her own wine and Paul stuck to beer, but the other volunteers went local style and a good time was had by all. The two of us left at 10:30 (3 hours is a good enough time to spend, isn’t it?) and Barjan did all he could to block our exit and not let us leave. With Chris’s help we prevailed, but Barjan felt bad that we left so early. Turns out that the rest of the guests left at 1:30am and he tried to bar them from leaving too! Apparently he thinks that if you don’t pass out on his couch he is a bad host. He is a great host, and a very nice guy, but we just can’t do that anymore!

Meanwhile, we are still plugging away. We have conversations in our broken Russian that make us feel like we are making some progress, only to subsequently attend the Decenta staff meeting and not understand a thing. A thing. Oh, we get the occasional word here and there that we know, but it is not nearly enough to understand the gist of the conversation. Ears tired, brains drained, we drag out of the meeting completely defeated. Sigh. We know that people can learn this language (heck, even little kids can speak it here!) but we are pretty certain that those people are not us. Sigh.

This week Paul started taking Russian language lessons with a new tutor, Lada. He really wants to learn this language so he plans on going 4 times a week for an hour each time. As is usually the case, the first few lessons start with getting to know each other; questions about where you live, your family, etc. At one point during the lesson, Lada asked Paul whether he had kids. He explained he did. As they were discussing our daughter Gen, Lada asked "Кто её по профессии?" or "What does your daughter do?". Paul proceeded to answer "Она продаёт мужчина штуки." By the look on Lada's face, Paul obviously got it wrong. Maybe he did not use the right case endings. So he tried it again with several variations with different word case endings. Lada got more and more worried. Paul, unsure how to proceed, asked "Что?" (What?). Lada said "Секс?" (Sex?). Now Paul was really perplexed until he realized he was saying "мужчина" (Man) instead of "машина" (Car) - in Russian they sound similar. Oh no, Paul just told his new tutor that his daughter sold man pieces and not car parts! ARRGGHH! This language is so hard to keep straight! They had a good laugh before changing topics. Susan noticed a rash developing on her lower back that was itchy and sore. She tried ignoring it for a few days but it just got worse. Finally we took some photos and thanks to the digital age were able to send them to the Peace Corps doctor for a diagnosis. The verdict: Shingles! For those of you who don’t know, shingles are a flair up of dormant chicken pox. It is only contagious with skin to skin contact with people who have never had chicken pox – who will proceed to get chicken pox, not shingles. It can appear anywhere, but most often it shows up in a band or belt on one half of the body. It can be extremely painful as the flareup occurs in the nerves and just has them over stimulated. If you catch it early enough you can take some anti-virals to help, but we did not catch it in time, so there is no treatment but to wait it out, taking pain medication as needed. Friday night was OktoberFest at Kabachoke restaurant. Well, the restaurant didn't know anything about it but the group decided we needed an excuse to have a costume party. As the theme was OktoberFest, everyone was supposed to come dressed appropriately. We are talking Dirndl for the women and Lederhosen for the men. Paul wasn't exactly feeling it so he wanted to go as an Aryan skin head (his hair is so short anyway), jeans, t-shirt, leather jacket... Susan expressed some concern of the message this might send and proceeded to make costumes for both of them out of rice bags. Susan is becoming quite adept at transforming the ubiquitous bags into some thing useful, like Sonny and Cher outfits earlier this year. As you can see from the photos she did a great job of creating something "special". Paul was able to borrow a shirt from a colleague at work (it was from Moldova so this was as close as we get to a real German shirt) to complete the "look" - burgermeister that he already is. We converged on Kabochoke at 8 pm much to the amusement of the local population there who had no idea why we looked so funny. Even if they had an idea about OktoberFest and thought we might be Germans celebrating, they could tell we were Americans speaking English. They kept a close eye on us and we definitely gave them something to talk about. To make it more authentic, we did have one German scout with us who brought OktoberFest music that the restaurant was willing to play. Including our local friends, there were 13 of us enjoying traditional Kazakh beer and snacks to celebrate OktoberFest. Shannon had the great idea that instead of paying for each drink as we got them, to have the waitress put a mark on each of our arms for each beverage to keep help keep track. Of course, this worked out pretty well until it came time to pay for the bill. We had left early and settled our "hash marks" but apparently our friends had to figure out where the extra 4000 Tenge on the bill came from. Saturday was a beautiful day so we took a long walk along the river. It was cool and most of the trees have lost their leaves but Paul decided this might be the last time this year he could wear shorts outside and wasn't going to pass on the chance. We have discovered a grocery store further town the river from where we live that has the closest thing to bacon we have found here so we made that our ultimate destination. Later that day, after a delicious lagman dinner, a few people converged on the apartment to watch a movie. 0 for 1 on the good movie count for this week. Sunday was group banya without the group. Susan wasn't up for it (banya really isn't her thing and she didn’t think that it was a good idea to mix shingles with sauna) and neither were the Germans (we got a new scout yesterday who will be here for 6 months so there will be 2 of them here until Johannes leaves at the end of the week) so five of us went over for potentially Emily's last banya in Kazakhstan (she leaves on Oct. 13). It was a steam banya that was so hot your hair felt like it was melting. The plunge pool was dirty so we didn't use it and there were 2 used condoms in the plastic trash bin (could they use a liner?) so it lived up to our expectations. Still, after a few cycles through the banya then a shower then some cold beer, life was good and we were pretty relaxed. It was movie night again at our place. The movie was so distressing Shannon almost left and we had to talk some other people out of jumping off the balcony. We don't think it is a good idea to let Chris pick movies going forward. And, in case our reports make it sound like all we do is plan parties for ourselves, we are actually working too. Susan still doesn’t have much of an assignment nor any workspace, but she goes in and pitches in where she can – helping with some IT stuff, fixing the English on grant submissions and the like. Paul has work to do to launch the project that he was able to get grant money for, so that is about to take off. We will keep you informed of all the "interesting" work stuff as time permits. ;>)

So, we got back from our trip around midnight, caught a cab back to our apartment, and prepared to crash out. Only we were too wired to go right to bed, so we unpacked our stuff, inspected our apartment for changes (our landlady comes and goes whenever she wants, and usually takes or leaves some stuff), reminisced about the trip and finally went to bed.

Jet lag was of some impact and we slogged awake at close to 11 am. Bleary-eyed, we made coffee, stumbled around and even did some laundry. We discovered that the landlady had left a vacuum, taken our window planter, had the handyman finish fixing the windows on our balcony, moved a chair and put in a small end table and installed a bookcase in the hallway that will serve as the shoe rack. Everyone takes of their shoes when they enter a home here, so sometimes the pile in the outer doorway and inner hall can be substantial. Don’t know if the vacuum is ours to keep or just leftover from work she did, but we took advantage and ran it. Of course, the bag was packed full, and it has to be emptied by hand (which means sticking fingers into a hole and pulling out dusty, dirty, hairy balls of yuckiness) so Paul got that lovely chore. Probably wasteful and horribly un-ecological , but we really miss the disposable, sanitary vacuum bags we have in the States!

We didn’t get to the office until close to 2 and were sure that we were going to get teased by our colleagues for our casual arrival. But there were only 2 people in the office! Everyone else was either at a conference in another town, at a training in yet another town, on vacation or sick. We visited with Elena and Svetlana (who seemed quite happy to have us back) and did our best to tell them, in Russian, about our vacation. Never very good at Russian to begin with, we were pretty out of practice and only their abundant patience made it possible to communicate at all. Sigh.

The rest of the week went well, as we got back in the groove of Decenta and Pavlodar and our colleagues all returned from their absences happy also to have us back. It is a nice feeling to have people seem genuinely pleased to see you again, especially when you feel ‘in the way’ a lot of the time. For Susan that feeling is most frequent because she still has no desk, no chair and no place to actually be while in the office. With so many people out she was able to find a place to work every day, but sometimes her squatters rights were revoked by a young woman who is also doing work at Decenta and would need, for some reason, to sit where-ever Susan was sitting.

Sergey came back and we compared vacations. He and his significant other spent two weeks in Montenegro while we were in the Baltics. A note about significant others here in Kazakhstan. They have no words for that – no politically correct way to express a relationship like that. So here, they just say wife. Sergey would say that he and his wife went on vacation. And if you look baffled (because you did not know he was married) he would say, well, we aren’t married, but we just say wife. Andrey does the same thing, as did Kostya when we saw him. When does ‘wife’ not mean ‘wife’? When it is Kazakhstan.

Paul had arranged Happy Hour for Friday, as usual, only this time a twist was introduced. First, there were some Americans (from Danville, our neck of California) who, having recently graduated with liberal arts degrees and finding themselves ,therefore, unemployable in today’s market, were traveling around the world and were currently ‘couch surfing’ with a fellow PCV. Second, we found out that Irtish, our local hockey team, had a game against Karaganda at 6:30. We moved Happy Hour to Burger Maxx (right across the street from the hockey stadium) so that we could all go to the game. As usual, happy hour and burgers took longer than we meant them to so we missed the first period of play. No matter, both sides scored while we were watching and the regulation time ended in a tie of 4-4. Overtime produced nothing so they went to match up where each team sent a player and a goalie and took turns trying to score. The first team to score more wins and our team prevailed. Go Irtish!!!!

Saturday our limoncello was ready to decant and freeze. It had been over 6 weeks since we started it, and it could have rested longer, but our 20’s (the volunteers from the group before ours) are leaving soon and we wanted them to try it too. We decided to make an Italian themed evening, with lasagna, garlic bread and a salad with limoncello as dessert. Once we invited everyone and found out about everyone who was planning on coming, it became clear that we would have to expand the menu. We only have one lasagna pan and a really, really small oven – we could not make enough lasagna to feed 12 young adults! So Susan made lasagna and Paul made fettuccine carbonara (with local bacon and the most expensive Parmesan cheese on the planet). But wait – Susan decided to try to take advantage of the harvest bounty and we went to the farmer’s market in the morning. We bought tomatoes, peppers, onions and garlic and, with Shannon’s help, chopped, minced and blanched our way to a huge batch of pasta sauce. We made the lasagna with some of it and froze the rest in the handy Ziploc bags that loving family and friends have sent. When winter comes and the only vegetables we can find are potatoes, beets and carrots, a nice batch of homemade pasta sauce will be just the ticket!

Just to add another wrinkle to our Italian themed dinner, Susan thought we should ask everyone to speak like one of the Sopranos for at least the first hour of the evening. “Why you gotta be like dat?”, “Fuggitaboutit” – hilarious.

The limoncello was a big hit (and we were delighted that it was very cold, but did not freeze) and a good time was had by all. The couch surfing Americans ate like that hadn’t been fed in weeks – a very rewarding response to home cooking. Manga, manga!!

Sunday our washing machine leaked all over the floor – again. Susan is pretty darned tired of bailing out the bathroom. The first time it happened the drainage tube had broken. It was pretty easy to replace, though, so no big deal. The second time it happened the replacement pipe had come loose (we aren’t all that handy, so sue us!). This time, though, the hose was intact, we couldn’t see anything wrong at all – except, of course, for the Lake Erie on the floor. Brian was over and he and Paul looked at it, banged on a few things, twisted some other things and then shrugged. Paul says we have to do like Microsoft would recommend and reboot and try it again. We are waiting until 1) we have a load of laundry to wash and 2) Susan’s back has recovered from the last mopping so that she can do it again if and when it floods.

(And before any of you other PCVs or RPCVs start giving us crud about how we have POSH corps and how we should be beating our clothes with sticks at the river and who the heck do we think we are having a washing machine – just pipe down. We know we are spoiled with running water, electricity and appliances and we are wholesale unapologetic about it.)

Update Bulletin:

We ran a load of wash and it leaked like crazy and we took turns bailing. Good thing we have a very absorbent rag (they use absorbent rags wrapped around a t-bar on the end of a broomstick as mops here - very effective!)!

Thinking we had exhausted all our repair person street-cred, we moved on to trying to figure out how best to explain to our landlady that we wanted a new washer. We know that her solution will be for us to use her washer, but Susan really hates the lack of flexibility that gives her on when to do wash. Plus, in a culture like this, she would have to do ALL the wash, because it is unacceptable for a man with a wife to do it. So Susan wants a washing machine. We agreed to talk to Susan’s tutor about it, as Vicka both speaks English and is a friend of the landlady. Susan can explain to Vicka and maybe Vicka can explain to the landlady.

But, it turns out Paul had another trick up his sleeve! He turned the washer on its side and looked at the underneath and found a small hose that had come unhooked. He reattached it and, viola!, we ran a load and it didn’t leak! We might squeak a few more loads out of this old thing before it craps out for good.

Two aerial shots of Riga taken from the top of a church.  The other shots are of Kiev from around town. 

After our short flight from Helsinki, we arrived in Riga Latvia without any fanfare.   We took a crowded bus to the old town (the entire old town area is a UNESCO site) and burn through all of Susan's KZ cell units (over 1000 tenge) on a 1 minute call to the person who will let us in to our apartment.  Man, roaming charges are brutal!  It is a very nice, very large 3 bedroom, 2 bath place (yeah!  we have our own bathroom!) right on the edge of old town.  We get settled and head out to find provisions for the apartment.

 

After a few false starts (go that way, no this way) we find the grocery store.   Wandering around turned out to be a good way to get our bearings. Chris had read about the local fire water called "Black Balsam" and we got some at the store.   Apparently this stuff is made from everything except the kitchen sink and is kind of thick, black and smelly.  It contains wormwood, berries, roots, buds, some other plants, oils among other things all fermenting in a wooden barrel.  We also stocked up on breakfast items, H2O, etc. and head back to the apartment.   Of course we have to sample the new-found libation as soon as possible and proceeded to do mini shots of the foul liquid once we get back to the apartment.  Arrghhh, nasty! It tastes ok at first, but has a finish in the throat like kerosene.  Ok, we tried it, but we are not fans.

 

We ate dinner at a really cool, self-service restaurant offering Latvian food.  Susan got some baked, seasoned, moist and tasty chicken plus some rice.  Paul got something that looked like a gigantic pork mushroom that was also pretty tasty.  The atmosphere was charming and it wasn't very expensive.   After dinner we headed to a cafe/club to meet with Pieter after he arrives in Riga.

 

We couldn't find the cafe we wanted to meet at.  We checked our 6 year old guide book for the address of the place but it was gone.  Hmmm, what to do.  We check the price of beer in all the cafes around where the place we were supposed to meet - thinking that we would periodically go outside to see if Pieter arrived.  We found a place with .90 LS (~1.75 USD) beers and settle in to enjoy our wait.  Unfortunately we will never be able to return to this place because we ended up doing what the cashier woman on the tram via does and paying our bill with coins worth 5, 10 and 20 cents; there was a pile of it.

 

We see Pieter walk by sometime later after dark and Paul went out to fetch him.  Pieter, seeing Paul, opens his bag and gives him his Kindle.  Awesome.  Paul walks back inside to check to make sure the Kindle is intact and working.  As he starts to examine it, he lets out a sigh, "this is not my Kindle." "Of course it is" says Susan.  Upon closer inspection it is a black paper notebook about the same size as a Kindle.  "Oh well, he tried."  Pieter comes in and Paul thanks him for trying to retrieve his Kindle.  Pieter looks perplexed, looks at the notebook and then starts laughing.  "What?"  "Here is your real Kindle I bought the notebook as a joke."  Whew, relief.  Good one, he did have us both going.

 

Pieter flew back home to Amsterdam the next day and we did a walking tour of the city.   This tour was at least partially planned, as we followed the map and descriptions in the copy of the guidebook we had.  Very interesting, historic place.  The castle was a little under whelming; more like a small, boring chateau but the churches were grand.  We had kebabs for lunch and pancakes (a local inexpensive speciality) for dinner.  In the evening it was raining but we found a place that had live music, a covered place outside to sit and a space heater. (We weren't about to let freezing cold rain get us down on our last day of vacation.)  Apparently, there were celebrations going on in a few places around town to mark the arrival of autumn.   There were quite a few people about even with the bad weather.  We relaxed and "soaked" in the surroundings. 

  

The next day we checked out, got our 100 euro deposit back and flew to Kiev, Ukraine. 

 

Susan did not want to sit at the Kiev airport for 9 hours so she arranged for a local tour guide to meet us at the airport, show us Kiev, find us dinner and then drop us off before our flight later that evening to Almaty.  Our guide was both knowledgeable and attractive and the boys did not have a problem following her anywhere.  We walked around the city for about 4 - 5 hours taking in the sights.   Some of the highlights of the city include a 100 meter deep metro system with the fastest, steepest escalators on the planet, quite a bit of well done mosaic art work in the metro and around the city, whimsical art work (i.e., cat sculptures), and a tour of the area where Mikhail Bulgakov wrote "Master and Margarita" including some of the landmarks that were in the book, which we both have read and recommend. 

 

Our tour guide took us to a very popular self-service restaurant for dinner.  It was pretty cheap and the local Ukrainian food was very good (Susan, of course, had Chicken Kiev).  We wish we had the variety of food in KZ that we have had on this trip. Sigh, back to borscht (even though you can get that in Ukraine too).

 

After a flight delay, we fly back to Almaty and head to the Peace Corps office to meet with the Country Director (CD) John Sasser to discuss our plans (that is the KZ Volunteer's plans) for the KZ Peace Corps 50th Anniversary celebration coming up in 2011.    The meeting went well, we saw a few new, and some familiar, volunteers in the PC lounge before heading to the train station to catch our train back to Pavlodar.  28 hours later we arrive in Pavlodar.

 

The vacation is over, but it was a fantastic vacation!