March 30
Wendy and the Kaz kids took a little trip over to Interlink Resources this morning while Brooke, Paige and I slaved away over schoolwork. Motivation was a bit of an issue, but we finally got the morning’s work done. I think we’re staying up too late over here, but Kazakhstan in general gets up later in the morning and stays up later at night.
Tonight Bibi took us to the bowling alley in Taraz. It’s 4 lanes, with very nice computerized scorekeeping, all in English. All 7 of us bowled for 2000 tenge (about $15) an hour with no charge for the shoes. She said that people don’t bowl a lot here because it is expensive, but we thought it was pretty reasonable. Neither Vasya nor Julia had ever been bowling before, so it was a new experience and they liked it very much. It was a fun family activity, and good for us because it felt like a normal American evening out.
One thing I underestimated was the toll that “normal” life takes on you when you can’t read or speak the language. Everything is difficult and uncomfortable. I have new respect for folks who immigrate to the US without English. I wonder if anyone over 40 ever feels like anything but an alien. In spite of trying our best to lay low and dress like the locals, we may as well have big American flags sewn on our jackets. For one thing our shoes are wrong. Men and women over here are all wearing these really pointy shoes that make a plain old size 9 foot appear to be about 18 inches long. We privately think they look like something a Genie would wear and are entertained as they try to walk around and not trip over the six inches of empty shoe tip on the fronts of their shoes. They kind of have to go with that “heels first” walk that circus clowns use. At least their current batch of silly fashions don’t involve permanent disfigurement. Not much piercing or tattooing here.
We picked more prints at the photo place today, and our print envelope just had “the Americans” written in Russian in the name and address field. Of course, we’ve been to that place a half dozen times, so they know us by now.
On our way to the bazaar, we walked past the old monument to the father of Soviet Communism, V.I. Lenin. At one point, it had a bust of Lenin looking down on a globe that prominently featured the Soviet Union. Someone knocked his head off the top of the monument a few years ago. We looked at the other side of the globe and found it hilarious that in Soviet reality, the North American continent did not exist. One wave of the Communism wand and “PHOOF”, no more America.
Russ
Tonight Bibi took us to the bowling alley in Taraz. It’s 4 lanes, with very nice computerized scorekeeping, all in English. All 7 of us bowled for 2000 tenge (about $15) an hour with no charge for the shoes. She said that people don’t bowl a lot here because it is expensive, but we thought it was pretty reasonable. Neither Vasya nor Julia had ever been bowling before, so it was a new experience and they liked it very much. It was a fun family activity, and good for us because it felt like a normal American evening out.
One thing I underestimated was the toll that “normal” life takes on you when you can’t read or speak the language. Everything is difficult and uncomfortable. I have new respect for folks who immigrate to the US without English. I wonder if anyone over 40 ever feels like anything but an alien. In spite of trying our best to lay low and dress like the locals, we may as well have big American flags sewn on our jackets. For one thing our shoes are wrong. Men and women over here are all wearing these really pointy shoes that make a plain old size 9 foot appear to be about 18 inches long. We privately think they look like something a Genie would wear and are entertained as they try to walk around and not trip over the six inches of empty shoe tip on the fronts of their shoes. They kind of have to go with that “heels first” walk that circus clowns use. At least their current batch of silly fashions don’t involve permanent disfigurement. Not much piercing or tattooing here.
We picked more prints at the photo place today, and our print envelope just had “the Americans” written in Russian in the name and address field. Of course, we’ve been to that place a half dozen times, so they know us by now.
On our way to the bazaar, we walked past the old monument to the father of Soviet Communism, V.I. Lenin. At one point, it had a bust of Lenin looking down on a globe that prominently featured the Soviet Union. Someone knocked his head off the top of the monument a few years ago. We looked at the other side of the globe and found it hilarious that in Soviet reality, the North American continent did not exist. One wave of the Communism wand and “PHOOF”, no more America.
Russ
posted by The Petersons at 1:13 PM
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