5 days dow, 9 to go

As we have traveled to many places throughout the world we have learned that every place has something that makes its people unique. We have had the opportunity while here to learn that the Kazakhs’ are famous for their hospitality. What a weekend we have had with all of our new friends that we have made here. On Saturday we did not only get to see our beauitiful son, we also spent time with our friend Yezbol at the Natural History Meuseum of Uralsk and we went to his apartment for lunch. It was such a treat to go to their Ecology museum. It is interesting for us because we are almost at the same latitude and ecological region as at home, so many of the plants, insects and widlife are similar to home. For my paleontolgy friends at home we also were able to see a small collection of fossils from the region. It was pretty interesting to talk about rocks in terms of their periodic elements. This translates better than common words.

After the museum and lunch we visited JED and I was treated to feeding him for the first time, but I have already writen about this so I will move on to our adventures of Satuday night.

On Saturday night we were invited to have dinner with the people who are renting us our apartment. This was a night that I think we will always hold dear in our expereinces in Kazakhstan. The man of the family came to pick us up in his Machina (car) with our friend Nadya (who speaks english very well.) Then we ended up driving to the outskirts of town to an area we call the cottages. It is as close to they get to suburbia here. The road to their house was dirt and very rutted from all of the recent rain. When we arived we were greeted by the woman of the house and then we met their two neighbors. One of them spoke english as he lived in London going to school to become an air trafic contoller.

Once there we all visited in a room like a parlor until dinner was ready. Imagine seven people in a room with the two host who know Russian, Kazah and a little German. John and I who know very little Kazak some Russian and John with his limitted German. Then there are two people besides us that can speak some English. Four of us are armed with Russian English dictionaries so that we can figure out unknown words, yet our biggest lesson learned here is that words have very little to do with communicating. Once seated the hostess brought in a huge platter of Bishmanpan (Five Fingers.) It is a traditional dish with noodles, potaotes, onions and horse meat. Fortunately for us the hostess was able to communicate that they are only able to get horse meat in the winter and that this meat was beef. You might wonder how this information was shared. With little plastic farm animals of course. I almost peed my pants when she started placing farm animal figurines by the food to show us what it came from. We might try this at the next resturant we go to. To start off the meal the filled our glasses with Vodka and beer and then the host took a helping with his hands (a tradition) and tasted it to make sure it was good enough for his guest. After this he toasted and we drank to good health and friendship across nationalities. Then our plates were filled. A note is that your plate will always be full, so every bite we took involved more food being put on our plate. This went on for quite some time with many more toasts made. Then the host asked us to put on our shoes and coats so we thanked them and assumed that the meal was over. Oh contrare, we were just going to look at their garden and their apple trees. Then we were back in for basicaly a second meal. This time there was a fish on the table the size of a tuna. I mean a whole fish and it was divided up with the head for the host and other big chunks for the rest of us. So we ate again and had more toasts. This eating lasted until almost 2 in the morning. The best was after we were all throughly stuffed we were treated to them singing beautiful Kazakh folk songs for us. We felt so honored to be their special guests. Eventually a taxi was called for us and we were wisked back to our apartment and off to bed laughing at our twist of events here and how delays sometime lead to wonderful opportunities.

On Sunday (mothers day.) I was denied the opportunity to see our son, but we did get to go to the park with a peace corps volunteer. It was wonderful to sit and talk with him and enjoy the beautiful day. We then had dinner with Matt and Betsy and bid them farewell for now. Now we only have a few more hours until we see our boy. We should find out today when we can start seeing him two times a day.