Happy SUMMER ya’ll,
This journal entry will be in two parts, because I don’t want to break my once a month schedule I’ve tried to stick to, but I want to get some thoughts down while I have them in my mind (I think my memory is failing, anyone else feeling that at all?)
I spent last weekend out of town once again, at a place
called
Something strange here is that I can freely sing at the top of my lungs at parties, because the locals LOVE to hear native speakers sing English songs, no matter how poor the quality. At the teachers holiday party back in December I sang the entire song of Hotel California to an audience of fifteen teachers.
The best thing is, if you don’t know the words, you can make em up, soon you have an entire city singing your version.
I’m waiting for my chance at American Pie.
But I digress. We said farewell to a fellow volunteer Eric last Friday who finished up his service. We had a small gathering at my little apartment, and ate some incredible spaghetti and meatballs cooked up by another volunteer, Debra, who is here with her husband Jim (they arrived in January). So now we’re down to just three for now, but expect to receive a couple more in August, hopefully. The country director is trying to get more volunteers into the villages, so we may not get replacements. I actually agree with her, this isn’t the Peace Corps the commercials portray, but it isn’t without its difficulties.
I can’t believe I’m the “ranking” volunteer here already. I remember looking at the “old-timers” thinking man, they are so far advanced.
I guess I’ll stop for now and finish this next Sunday. I’m going rafting and camping next weekend, so that ought to be good story fodder. More later.
Ok, so I am a week late. Before I get into the rafting trip, I just wanted to mention that I just got back inside after leaving my apartment because of a FIRE believe it or not. Here’s the story. Its Sunday morning, I’m sitting here studying Russian, all the windows are open (its definitely summer here now). I smell something burning, and its not the normal smell of shashleek cooking in the outdoor shashleek shack across the street. I ignore it for a few minutes, then stroll to my balcony to see what’s burning. I see a few people gathered on the street below, looking at MY building. I see some smoke coming from a balcony on the 2nd floor (I’m on the 4th), but I can’t quite see the inside the balcony. The people are looking at me, but not saying “get out!” so I’m a bit confused as to what to do (plus, I can’t say “should I evacuate?”).
I paced around my living room for a few minutes, wondering if maybe I ought to leave. I thought, these buildings are all concrete, they can’t burn, can they? Then I thought surely if it was bad the people would have told me to come down, and hey, the fire department would be here too, right? Then alarmed I thought…do they have a fire department? I’ve never seen a fire truck. I started to get worried and began to pack my stuff. I threw my laptop, my wallet, walkman into my bag (so, not exactly a large packing effort). Then I heard a big engine and saw a fire truck pull up, my cue to skedaddle. I went outside and joined the other onlookers, my bag slung over my shoulder. Here’s the deal. Apparently, someone flicked a cigarette out of their window on one of the upper floors, and it came into an open window on the 2nd floor, catching some stuff on fire. The firemen put it out in short order, and now I’m back here, tragedy averted. I hear this is a common occurrence with the cigarette thing. Why the hell they just don’t use an ashtray is a stumper, but I’ve long since learned to ignore that which I don’t understand.
Ok, so I’m ok. Back to rafting.
Last weekend was my coworker Jay’s birthday, so we went rafting/camping to celebrate. Check out the pictures if you haven’t yet (after
I’ve uploaded them), you’ll see how excellent the scenery is around here. After a three hour truck ride in the back of
a six-by (old military guys like my dad will get that image), we arrived at the
river, yours truly nauseated and very annoyed.
Those that know me well can picture me trying to explain logically that
we live near a river, and rivers always have bridges over them, so why on
earth did we have to drive over mountains and streams to get to a place to put
the boat in? (yes, I can be a sarcastic s.o.b. in Russian too J ). My stomach settled down in short order
though, and the day was great. We
started with some lunch, soup over an open fire, bread, salad. I laid down in the
shallow rapids and relaxed, until one of the locals got very concerned that the
cold water would make me sterile (a very
popular misconception here, so I didn’t argue).
Then we piled into the raft and two catamarans and started off. The water was very shallow, too shallow
actually, so we spend a bunch of time pulling the thing along. It was cool though, reminded me of cruising
down the
Anyway, we rowed for about four hours, then pulled over and camped. Oh, the two catamarans pressed on, with three Americans and a guide, because two of them (Jim and Debra) where taking off the next day for vacation, and Jay went along because he’s afraid to camp..hehe. So that left yours truly and a bunch of Russians to camp. We set up camp on a sandy patch beside the river and hung out. We had a cook along (a major babe btw, I’ll try to post a picture of her), who made up some mac n’ cheese and salad. We sat around the fire, drinking, singing, talking (in my case, mostly miming) late into the evening, then hit the hay. A few hours later it started to drizzle, which was the start of two days of rain. The second day was sort of miserable weather-wise, but spirits were high and the water was a bit deeper, hence easier to navigate. It was a great, revitalizing trip. One weird thing (there’s always something) was the butterflies. Now, I like butterflies, when they are solo. One, two, three, that’s pleasant. Four, five, a dozen, slightly annoying, but acceptable. One THOUSAND or more, and you’re talking a Stephen King novel. I have one picture of the “trail” we were driving on to get to the river, on which was a bed of dead white butterflies, I’m talking a bed of them, run over by vehicles. If anyone out there doubts that a butterfly can be creepy, try being inundated by them. Heck even puppies and bunnies can be creepy if there are like a thousand, can’t they?
So that was the trip.
These next few weeks will bring some great times for me. I’m headed down to Almaty
in a couple weeks, just to stretch my legs a bit. I hope to do a bit of hiking with my fellow
Maine volunteer Shauna, and hang out with some other Kaz-11’s that straggle
into town for a cold beer and real burger.
I’m also going to a place called Blue Bay, which is supposed to be
fantastic, and on the agenda soon is paintball, believe it or not (I looked in
the PC handbook, its not banned).
Outside of that, I’m going to stop by a little place called
Good stuff, but I can envision the summer flying by L .
Congrats to my friend Greg and his better half Linda for taking the leap finally, Friday the 13th. Greg if you’re reading this, not sure if you are aware but 13 is actually a lucky number, numerologists just created a bad rep for it so they could have it all to themselves (true story I think).
And also a happy father’s day to all the fathers out there (including my own, of course).
Ok, back to studying, the smell of burning linoleum is going away thankfully.
Paka,
Andrew