Parties and Pizza

I hope this doesn’t sound too depressing, but know what’s great about living a fairly melancholy life? The good days are really good and I really enjoy them :-) Nothing extraordinary happened today, at least not by American standards. We’ve got nice cool summer weather (lower 70s), I secretly put money on my girlfriend’s phone so she could text me back, which she did right away, I got all the research done this morning that I needed to, did some planning for our summer camp, and I had two successful meetings, one with the psychologist and one with our director. See? Nothing out of the ordinary for a typical American day, but here it’s a lot. It’s 2pm and I have nothing more to accomplish for today except send a few business emails.

A girl I know from college just got accepted into Peace Corps. In fact, she and her husband are coming together to Kazakhstan this August! How exciting is that that I know someone who is coming here next year. I might even get to see them during training, who knows?

After Vera from CA came and after the Russians came and left, I was kind of tired already of having guests. That evening, after I cleaned the apartment, a nice rain fell. Cleaning the air, it was nice to lean out of the balcony window and breathe the fresh, clean air. It was wet, cool, and quiet as everyone had abandoned the streets to stay dry. These are the little moments that mean so much.

Last evening I cooked a huge Mexican styled dinner for about 8 people, volunteers from across the country who had stopped in Pavlodar on their way to a village north of here for a Frisbee camp. I spent a lot of time preparing the meal and it got devoured in a fraction of the time it took for me to make. I made Spanish Rice, Quesadillas, fresh salsa, chips, salad, and Tacos (chicken and soy) with all the toppings. It was quiet the feast. Took over 5 hours to prepare everything, but only because of limited utensils and stove top space (and I had to make my own chicken stock). Again, after so many guests, I was happy to send them on their way today with most of the leftovers and have some peace again ;-)

But the visitors didn’t stop there, friends, oh no. I forgot that I had invited my host family over for American styled pizza this (Sunday) evening. It was only at 4pm that I remembered and they were supposed to be here at 7. So I quickly ran over to the market to visit my market lady who always hooks me up with great prices. Check this, so not only does the lower the price of everything for me (peppers from 450 to 400, tomatoes from 250 to 200 and onions from 150 to 125), but then she usually rounds the total price down, something quite strange for here. She lowered the prices and my total was 225 and she said give me 200 ($1.45). Love that place!

Anyways, made the sauce, made the dough, sliced all the ingredients, made some pizzas and threw some leftover salad from last night onto the table. Quick (only two hours this time!) and simple. Paired with some of their home made wine that they brought over, it was a great evening full of laughter and good tastes, the way good dinner parties should be and I hope to have them over again some time soon. And the girlfriend just came back into cell phone range, so life is good :-)

Sometimes instead of doing my real Russian homework, I do more interesting things like translate songs I like. My tutor doesn't mind - I'm learning russian, right?


The Russian hitchhiking couple - nice but quiet people.


Half of the volunteers chowing down on some Mexican food.


The host family admiring the pizza.


The host family and Andrei, who speaks Russian quicker than anyone I've ever met. Thanks to Andrei, I can understand any speed of speach by any person because no one speaks quicker than he.