Swimming in the Caspian Sea

Today I walked to the Caspian Sea and jumped in or more like waded in. The water was so cold that I was going to chicken out, but I stuck it out and did some swimming. The northern part of the sea where I live doesn't have any salt, but the southern part is salty. So the joke around here is that if I'm floating in the Sea and start to taste salty water, I need to turn back before the Iranians arrest me.

The very first thing that I ever heard back in the states when someone found out that I was going to Kazakhstan was that if a man found a woman that he wanted to have as his wife, he would pull her home by her hair. Well, I am starting to grow my hair out so that he can get a good hold of it.

I know that many of you will never get to Kazakhstan, so I really want to represent it fairly. I love being over here, but things are so different. People here have no concept of how to line up and take their turn. I noticed that some in Korea, but it is really apparent here. You will get no where if you stand back and try to be polite. The traffic is the same way - oh, my gosh, I would never try to drive in this city. At intersections, even though they do have lights, cars are pulled out in all directions blocking traffic and the honking is crazy! I'm not sure anyone has taken driver's education and the solution to everything is honking as loud and long as you can. I can't leave my window open at night because of all the honking and I live on the 14th floor.

There are no designated taxis in this town. Anyone can be a taxi driver. That is the way local people make money. So when you want a ride you flag down the first person that stops. It is very cheap transportation though. It cost about $1.50 to go anywhere in town. Everything else is so expensive though. I took my first bus ride here the other day and it was only 25 cents, but you better hold on and pray for your life.

There is a big grocery store pretty close to us. Art told us that the people that work there have a completely different attitude about customers. They are not there to serve customers and make our life easier. I didn't pay much attention to all that, because I don't usually have trouble getting along in those situations. However, my first trip to the grocery store was a huge eye opener. I love walking down all the aisles trying to figure out what things are. I was standing at the yoghurt counter trying to figure out what was what. A clerk was there unpacking all these boxes. I hardly had any room to get close to the yoghurt. The clerk at one point tripped over my shoe. I looked up to say sorry (although I was just standing there) and I was faced with the meanest glare. I have encountered these glares a few times and will have to shrug them off.

I was looking for some margarine to put on my fresh baked bread that I bought and when I got home it looked like chocolate pudding. I took a big bite and had to spit it out. It was chocolate butter. It's good on my bread and made a great toasted cheese sandwich!

I went to a big bazaar yesterday with my teacher pals. It was like the markets in Korea, but they call it the bazaar. I am going to go back when I can explore more on my own. It's hard to stay together when there was four of us. Part of it was in a covered building, but the rest was outside with tarps keeping out the rain. More later, Love Rachel