Our Busy Worker Bees

Monday, June 12

Day 6. Here we are staring at the face of the computer saying we are not scared. We can come up with fun and entertaining things to delight our reading audience. I just know we can. Sure we’ve been to the Aqua Park a few times and you think you’ve read it all but we have a few surprises up our sleeves to keep you hungry for more!!!

We had a late breakfast of eggs and “meat stick”. Garrett and I are determined to limit our pork intake now that we know we have been consuming mass quantities of it thinking it was beef. I am relieved to know that more than likely to my knowledge, at this point I have not consumed any horse. Tuey will be so proud of me since the last thing he said to me was, “Mom, whatever you do, don’t eat one of my cousins.” This last beef stick that they gave us for breakfast had a picture of a horse running on it (for dear life I think). Garrett asked Sasha to look at the ingredients to ensure it was not horse and he assured him it was “swina”. I did not have any in either case. I have had a few major headaches and we think pork might be a factor.

Speaking of horse it is mostly the Kazak native people that consume it for special occasions. One of the delicacies here is horse milk. It is not strait horse milk. It is slightly fermented and is soured. Nastya says, “It is nice.” Garrett asked if I would drink horse milk and I told him that I probably would since no horse gave its life for it. Ron and Sharon were invited by a Kazakh friend to his village for dinner. They said they had horse and it was quite good and then a few nights later we had hot dogs for dinner at Marina’s apartment and Ron said they tasted like the horse. That was enough for me…NO HOTDOGS! I think he was playing with me a little bit. I was not planning on having any anyways.

After lunch we headed over to the big “Magazine” that is about 15 minutes walk for us. We parked the kids at the computer salon for an hour and went shopping for a little bit “unescorted”. We felt so free! There was no one to say, “Mama! Give me this, please.” We were on the hunt for another fan since the one we purchased the other day died prematurely. We were planning to take it back since we had a two week warranty! We secured our fan for the rock bottom price of 2500 tenge…you do the math. This one is larger and is on a stand. Wooohooo! We are sleepin’ cool(er) tonight!

We went into a few clothing stores to see if we could find something cooler to wear since Summer has officially arrived here and we were not totally expecting to still be here. Garrett bought a beautiful blue t-shirt the other day that once washed became a perfect full length dress for Sasha. It did not shrink in length but quite a bit in width. So we are trying to be a little more discerning about our choices. We found out rather quickly we are handicapped without Nastya. I found a skirt that looked rather interesting but there are not a lot of sizes and much of the clothing is thin and quite see through. It is not unusual at all to see people walking around with netting or see through clothing. Of course we have that at home but it seems bras are more prevalently seen here. Anyways I would try on a skirt and decide it was too thin or too small or not made for an adult and try to explain “too small” and the lady would bring me a smaller skirt! It was an adventure and we did not buy anything but we were out enjoying the culture.

We went down to the grocery store and picked up a few items including a few “fun” things and the kids had fun trading the bags around seeing what we had and going “Oh!” and “Yes, thank you!” It was quite hot outside and we were glad to get back in the cool apartment. We plugged in our new fan and all stood back and felt the goodness of the cool breezes. Sasha wanted the broken fan and we tried to explain to him that we were going to return it to get our money back but he said he needed it for his room. He was very insistent and decided he wanted to take it apart to try to fix it. He does like to take things apart and see how they work but has not always been successful at putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. Garrett conceded and next thing you know there were fan parts everywhere. He actually figured out after an hour or so how to get it working. Stella was his assistant and cleaner of the dirty parts. They were totally into it. He got it working but it would not oscillate and he thought that was ok and took it into the den but did not reappear for dinner. When I went around the corner again there were parts everywhere. He fixed the oscillating after dinner of course and then it rattled so once again he went to work so now we have a working, oscillating, quiet fan…did I say we…I mean of course he does! He says he is going to take it to America. After this his next project is an ancient vacuum but I have seen the condition of the vacuum and I am quite confident it is a goner! Later he asked me about my i-pod speaker which is not working and said he would like to take it apart. Unfortunately I had to put a stop to his fixing streak with that one. I intend to use the warranty on that one! He is quite proud of himself and Garrett and I made a big deal about it and our Mr. fix-it!

We had English lessons at 6:30pm but they had a party for Alona upstairs for Graduation so we had dinner in the apartment and she came down around 7-ish. They had lessons and then Alona told us that she could take us this weekend to do some sight seeing Kazakh style. There is a coal mine, a concentration camp from Stalin’s time and a reservoir. There are no natural lakes here, they are all man made. She will also take us out for lunch. It sounds really good to us.

We also had a major praise. My i-pod docking/speaker system suddenly died about 3 weeks ago and I did not bring a charger with me so we have had no praise music. My cousin Stephen sent me some songs through Skype and after downloading for about 40 minutes I have a Chris Tomlin song. Yeah! But it gets better! When I went to play through windows media player I discovered Chris Rice, Hillsong, Delirious, Rita Springer and Abba (don’t ask)! I forgot I had loaded them a while back. Anyways we were rejoicing and singing all of us in the apartment. We had a fly and mosquito that got in the apartment and Garrett and the kids were armed with kitchen towels and had the bugs trapped in the den. They were not going to bed until they were taken care of!
They were quite humorous to watch jumping on the bed and furniture yelling, “There it is!” It was good entertainment! Who needs T.V. under these circumstances? They fixed themselves a nice little fort thing on the bed with the fan incorporated of course! Then a little gameboy/leapster and off to bed.

We are staring down Day #7. We got it covered because, “My God shall supply all my needs according to His Riches in Glory! Good night and God Bless!