Sunday, September 23, 2007

Sunday
Success – I made a more than palatable red sauce! The Italian world of food is now open to Amanda’s kitchen in KZ. Yippee – pizza, pasta, etc. Yum, yum. I bought lots of veggies and fruits yesterday and today – tomatoes, red and green peppers (I love the red peppers here!), eggplants, and apples (if you get them fresh they are most delicious fruit you will ever taste!). I think I mentioned some of these items the other day. Hopefully, these fruits and veggies will last through the rest of the week. I tend to eat a lot of them though as the week progresses.

Cleaned the kitchen and my bedroom this morning. There isn’t AC here and the summers are hot, so I usually left the windows open during the day and night. The apartment stayed cooler because of the air moving around, but unfortunately the apartment also became dirty. The outside, somewhat dirty air comes inside and forms a film on most surfaces. My room was the worst. I have a shelf right under the window and there was a noticeably large layer of dirt on it. It doesn’t rain much here, so dirt is easily transported by the wind. However, I did buy an umbrella today; the fall and spring have more rain than other times of the year and I have been caught at school twice already when it was raining. And walks uphill in the rain back home from work without an umbrella when I am craving dinner are more than unpleasant. The umbrella cost about $18 and pops out so it is easily transportable.

After grocery shopping and cleaning, I headed down to the school to meet with a student and have lessons. The student and one lesson showed up. The student is always prompt and a pleasure to work with. The lesson was an introductory meet and greet so it wasn’t a paid lesson. My student will be a small girl, about 7, who is just starting English. She is cute and her parents want her to have two lessons a week. I don’t know if I will be able to keep her with the TOEFL lessons beginning tomorrow, but I will see.

The other lesson didn’t show up – this is twice in a row he has not shown up or called me to say he won’t be able to make it. I won’t schedule another lesson with him. Another person cancelled her lessons with me completely today. She and I originally had agreed upon 3 one hour lessons a week. Her health, and her daughter’s health, is bad, so she wants to take a break. I understand her reasoning and asked her to call me when she wants to resume lessons. But, it is good that I have this TOEFL gig.

The TOEFL lessons begin tomorrow. They are sending a driver for me in the morning. Evidently, my students are “politically important.” Not sure what that means, but I hope they are nice and want to learn.

Not too much else today. David and I had planned on getting together today, but that didn’t work out. I encouraged him to come to the mountains next week though. Maybe he will be able to make that trip and meet Joey.

An international film festival started today. I went to part of the opening ceremony where the famous directors and actors in attendance were introduced and walked down the runway from the street to the building with the films. They had women in traditional Kazak dress (a white dress with red cloth trim and white fur edges) greeting the people. The locals seemed to know the directors and actors; I didn’t so I left pretty quickly.

I am very excited about my friendship with a co-worker of mine – Russell Ragsdale. He worked in the States in the culinary industry for about 37 years and then came over to Kazakhstan in 1992. In the States, he was very successful in this field. He served as a consultant and Su Chef for several restaurants in large cities, such as Phoenix, and led the restaurants to success – from being completely unknown to one of the top 20 restaurants in the city. In Kazakhstan, he is a judge for cooking competitions on TV and sometimes is the cook himself. I was impressed and asked if I could come over and watch him cook one day. Lucky for me, he agreed and I think he is looking forward to our visit. I mentioned Joey, so he has an invitation to come along as well. Russell asked if we wanted to help prepare the meal and I said, “Of course! That would be lovely.” So, we are going to help too. What fun! I’m not sure when all this will happen, but we will work out a menu and a good day sometime soon I am sure.

Russell is also a poet and is compiling a book of his poems to be published. I have helped him edit and shape them over the past few days. It is a fun process. He uses a minimalist style, little or no punctuation and several different poem forms. The result is a free flowing poem without fluff, which is what I like. I now have a collection of some of my favorites by him. I have also begun collecting a few by Walt Whitman thanks to my showing of The Dead Poet’s Society in film class. WW was an amazing poet.

Russell is married to a Kazak woman in Almaty and his daughter (technically step-daughter) recently got married. His daughter is moving to Germany to be with her spouse soon. His wife works at the CDC here in Almaty as an epidemiologist. She sounds like an interesting woman. His biological son lives in Wilmington, NC with his family. He didn’t know many details about his son’s life, but I thought that was kinda cool. It is a small world.

Joey’s visa saga continues to be a headache. I hope he is able to figure it out on Monday, but I won’t count on it. I don’t count on much as far as the KZ government/embassy is concerned.

Judy, I have lots of M&Ms here. No worries. Thanks for the offer though!

Alright, I have an early morning and long day tomorrow - lessons early in the am, and classes in the pm and evening.

Sleep well!