| |
|
|
| [9:46 am] |
| Subject: Happy birthday! |
| Mood |
: |
 accomplished |
|
Asella’s 8 month birthday! Yay! We got her a new family. It makes a lovely gift. We spent the morning on our own, trekking down the street to the fast-food hot-pocket eatery for lunch. Using my handy-dandy Russian skills, I managed to order food that very much resembled what we wanted. Karasho!
The weather was beautiful again today, temperature in the low 70’s, and Sarah and I were two of the five people in town wearing short sleeves. Eugene says this is unusually warm for April, so we’re just assuming everyone is in denial. Kids are still wrapped up in scarves and snow jackets. Girls are still wearing their wool mini-skirts and fur-lined stiletto boots.
Here’s the birthday girl!
Sarah did the feeding today, and of course, Asella was perfect for her and gobbled every bit down. In spite of the fact that the food again appeared to have carrots in it. Asella is displaying the fickleness of a child twice her age. Sarah even managed to get most of the shot glass of milk down her gullet. She wanted to spend most of the time standing at the table again today, and decided that banging her palms against the tabletop made a very nice sound.
Since it was so nice out, we took a long walk this afternoon to go see the Tobol River. It runs along the southeast edge of town. It’s about a 40 minute walk.
They are building luxury apartments in a large tower by the river that run about $100,000. We also passed a lovely section of graffiti on a large building close to the river. They don’t exactly have a gang problem here, so the graffiti consists of people trying to write their favorite band’s name. These included Slipknot, Nirvana, Kiss, Metallica, AC/DC, System of @ Down [sic], and Eminem. Also included were the ubiquitous “Sex” and of course “Harley Davidson.” Very artistic. On our way back to the apartment two Kazak teens tried surreptitiously to snap our picture with a cell phone camera. We have no clue why they would want to do this. But, we’re keeping the town morale at a high level by being a constant source of amusement.
Another exciting night out to eat, as we tried a relatively new restaurant, again a bit out of the way, called Aladdin. It certainly lived up to its name, with the forest themed interior with statues of genies, and paintings from the Disney movie all over the wall. Here we are with the lovely waitresses, with the cartoon cells in the background.
Dinner was not cheap (by Kazak standards) given the amount of food we got, but it was quite tasty, and we were also treated to live karaoke and one performance by a belly dancer. Also, you can smoke from a hookah here, and have cappuccino flavor added to your tobacco. Wacky!
The day ended in typical fashion with the purchase and consumption of $0.70 worth of ice cream from our corner grocer. At long last the weekend is here, which for us we may as well be saying, TGIT! (Thank God It’s Tuesday.) Hasta la vista. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|