Thanksgiving in Kazakhstan

I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving holiday. Thanksgiving is not celebrated here, but the Muslims had a national holiday on Friday so we got the day off of school. All the school staff met at the director's house on Saturday for a big Thanksgiving meal. There was not one turkey in the whole town of Aktau, so we had stuffed chicken instead. It was delicious! This is the sun going down over the Caspian Sea right outside my window.







I got to have Thanksgiving with one of my students. Her mom works at our school. Isn't she beautiful? I was going to take a picture of the whole gang, but we got so full that everyone left and I realized too late that I had forgotten to take pictures.

I forgot to take a picture of all my pies before they were eaten. One whole pie was already gone. I also made a carrot ring with creamed peas inside. Nobody had ever had a carrot ring and it was a very popular dish. My mom always made carrot ring with peas. I remember when I was little she made it one holiday and forgot to put the carrots in. We all still loved it!

I invited one of our staff over to my house to help make pies. She had never made a pie before and after her husband had tasted one of mine he wanted her to take pie lessons. Here she is enjoying the blackberry pie bowl.

She is rolling out the crust for the first time. She did a great job. Her 7 year old daughter took this picture of us. I wish I could keep my eyes open and take better pictures.

The Cat Woman in Aktau

When I first arrived I started feeding one cat that always ran over to me and seemed so hungry. As the weeks went by I started feeding more cats and now my number is 8-9 every day. They are basically the same cats every day, but then I get a new one even cuter than ever that comes and joins the bunch. I have favorites that I would love to adopt and bring home with me, but I remember my experience in Korea with cats that destroyed my apartment and how I was heart broken when I had to leave them. The landlord who lived in my apartment had cats before I moved in and they were scratching up the brand new couches. I guess around here you don't have to have permission to move in pets. You just do it!!! I am so tempted, but I am also getting a big joy out of feeding my cats every day and evening. Now I am buying the big bags of cat food. The little gray striped cat that isn't eating in the back is one of my favorites.

There is only one cat that will let me pet it. It's the black one in the middle. The rest will come get my food, but will run away if I try to pet them. So in the afternoons when it is nice I hang out with them trying to get them used to listening to English. One great thing about feeding the cats is that I have gotten so many people that stop and talk to me - in Russian of course- but they seem very happy about seeing all the cats. Moms with their kids will stop, but it is mostly old ladies and a gentleman here and there. I don't think they hate cats like they did in Korea. I see elderly people carrying around sacks of bread crumbs that they leave for the cats. In fact one day I saw another woman back against the building feeding the cats. I'm happy that the cats don't have to just depend on me for their food, but to be truthful I felt like going up to her, hitting her with my bag of cat food and telling her to leave my cats alone. I hope you know that I am kidding.

Here's another spot that I find 3-5 cats every night. The gray one on the left finally let me pet her this morning. It was so much fun to see how she has learned to trust me. So I have had the best conversations with people because of the cats. I have a feeling that Iam considered a crazy woman by the looks I get when I first start calling, "Here kitty kitty."

This isn't about cats, but tonight in the grocery store I picked up 4 shallow boxes that are perfect for transporting pies, so I was carrying them home. I stopped at a small fruit market to buy a pumpkin to make pumpkin pies since there is no such thing as canned pumpkin in the store. (I read on the Internet that pumpkin was scare this year and people will be disappointed not having pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving.) Well, I hope this pumpkin or whatever it is will make a delicious pie. Anyway as soon as I took those boxes in with me, the lady working there took them and threw them in a pile of her boxes. I tried to explain that I wanted those boxes, but she didn't understand. So I got some huge, sandy, muddy carrots and the pumpkin and then got the boxes and put them on the counter with me. The lady came over and took them away and threw them over in her boxes again. She was saying all this stuff in Russian that I didn't understand and then a few customers got involved and were saying things to her in Russian. So I paid for my veggies, went over and picked up the boxes and tried to go out the door. She was very friendly by now and was wanting to know my name and was telling me her name. I wasn't sure she was going to let me get out of the store, but she finally opened the door for me and let me go ( with my boxes). It was just a funny encounter. I wish I knew what she had been saying to me.

Our staff at school are going to have a big Thanksgiving meal on Saturday night. I plan to take mom's traditional carrot ring with creamed peas, and some pumpkin pies. And maybe some cheesecake if I get ambitious. There are no turkeys in Aktau, so we will be eating chicken. Yum! Yum! Happy Thanksgiving to you all. Love, Rachel

Mindfulness and Joy

Anybody might think that I had the most boring weekend, because I stayed in my apartment for 2 days - getting out only to run across the street to the grocery store. Maybe this is showing my age, but I had the most lovely time. I loved every minute of my weekend and still have four more hours to enjoy. I listened to a tape by Thich Nhat Hanh, reminding me about being mindful and cultivating awareness and joy in our lives. So everything I did I tried to do it in mindfulness and with joy.
My main project was making 9 animal tails out of fabric for a Christmas program our school will be putting on in a few weeks. Out of all my 30 years of teaching I don't think I have ever had to put on a Christmas program - the music teacher always did it. At QSI the Christmas program seems to be a pretty big deal. At first I was in a panic about what I should do and then I sprang into action. Luckily I had a book and tape with me on the Gingerbread Village and another cute song about the Cookie Snatcher. Since I'm really not a singer, this tape is going to save me big time. The older class is painting a background of a gingerbread village and I will hang up all the little gingerbread boys and girls my class made. When they start out they each will be holding their large gingerbread man that they painted. They are all so cute!! The third song is about running away from the gingerbread man, so each child is a different animal with a tail. Then we will sing the Hokey-Pokey so they can really show off and shake those tails.
One thing I have in my favor is that whatever the little kids do - it is always so cute!
We have been spending so much time practicing. I was so worried that the songs would be too hard for them to learn and nobody would sing, but now they know the words and actually yell them out instead of singing. Out of my nine students, three of them don't speak English so aren't learning the words very fast, three are so shy that they barely open their mouths, so that leaves me three singers.
This weekend I also paid some extra money, so I could get more English channels on my TV. I thought I couldn't take one more episode of Hannah Montana. Now I have 3-4 movie channels, but I sure miss my BC World News channel. Thich Nhat Hanh said on his tape that we turn on the TV and watch programs that we don't even like just to run away from being with ourselves. So maybe I shouldn't have paid more money on TV. I haven't had a chance to watch TV since the year before I went to Korea, so I must admit that I love turning it on in the evenings. Bad, bad, bad girl!
And I also used my treadmill for the first time and lifted some weights. Maybe that will make up for watching too much TV. Everything needs a balance I guess.
I also got into reading a great book that I couldn't put down and stayed up Saturday night reading until 1:00 in the morning. It was delightful!
Friday night I was so tired that I went to bed at 8 PM. I shouldn't admit this to anyone, but I didn't wake up on Saturday until 11:30 AM. I must have been tired. It was also delightful!
I hope everyone had a great weekend also. Talk to you again soon.
Love, Rachel

I am still safe and sound in Atkau. I had a new student for 7 days that turned my sweet teaching job upside down. I knew within the first half hour that he was a special needs child, somewhere on the autism spectrum. I will call him Dustin to protect the innocent. (If I had a boy I wanted to name him Dustin, but I will never know if the name would have passed or not.) Both Dinara and I were exhausted around noon of every day. Dustin needed one-on-one constantly - he had no clue how to sit on the rug without falling over on another student, he was always running into students and knocking them down, pushing, pinching, punching, crying, and making loud noises. He was bigger than any of my students, so could easily knock down 3 of them at playtime with one run! He would make a great football player. I put him in a time-out chair whenever he did the above and he HATED that chair, so I was wrenching my back trying to get him to his chair. His favorite thing was just flopping down and refusing to do anything.
The biggest mystery was that his parents claimed that he he has been in preschools since he was one year old and nobody ever had a problem with him. I guess they wanted me to believe that the minute Dustin took one look at our classroom he decided to try out all these new behaviors. My director set up a meeting with the parents, but they came a few days early and we hadn't really worked out a plan yet. So when the parents came I took out a piece of paper to write down a special plan for Dustin and within 15 minutes Dustin was withdrawn from the school. The director said something about our school not having special facilities for children like Dustin and the family decided to move on. They claimed that nobody had even mentioned that he had special needs. Anyway, I should have felt relieved, but Dustin had already gotten into my heart and I thought I could make a difference with him. However, in the meantime, my class was starting to imitate some of his behaviors. It is really nice to be back to my sweet class again.
I went to a Russian Christian church for the first time today with Nick. He told me that there are 4 Christian churches in town. Two of them are held in people's home. Also, one of them had been closed down by the government and had to meet in secret. I couldn't understand a word of the sermon, but Nick was trying to translate as best as he could. I enjoyed listening to the music and the beauty of a different language.
On Saturday our group went to the new bazaar on the city bus. I call it the yellow bazaar. I could go every weekend. I just love the atmosphere at city markets. I got myself a long sought out dish drainer rack, a few Kazakh traditional things, and some fabric to make tails for my students for the Christmas program.
So my life may seem boring to you this week, but everyday I get one or two more smiles.
Love, Rachel

Apples Are From Kazakhstan / My Birthday

I just finished the book, Apples Are From Kazakhstan, that Megan gave me for a present as soon as she heard I was heading to KZ. I got blogged down with so much history, but it is worth the read if you want to know more about Kazakhstan. I just want to quote a few paragraphs. There has been lots of sad history in this area. They only received their independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
"Kazakhstan might have been independent, but it was also very much alone. The country had been left with all the old creaking Soviet institutions but with no plans or money to replace them.
Life in Kazakhstan remained grim for years after independence, as the country went through the painful transformation from one economic system to another. Under the Soviets everyone had at least the basics for life-suddenly there was nothing. Nothing in the shops and no money. No money to pay teachers, no money for students. Old people didn't receive their pensions for a year at a time. Every day the rouble fell 5 - 10%. Inflation was so bad that industrial production just shut down. And as paper money became worthless, people bought everything to hoard - sugar, salt, canned goods. And that meant there were even greater shortages. The whole country was reduced once again to a barter system - I'll give you a sheep for gasoline. Agriculture collapsed. There was zero construction - not a crane was working in the whole of Kazakhstan."

After reading all this tragic history, it is hard to transition into talking about my birthday. Here in Kazakhstan there is a tradition that the person having the birthday is the one who brings the cake and puts on a party, so it was up to me to decide what I wanted for my birthday. I spent weeks thinking about it and decided to make a carrot cake on my birthday day to share with the school staff and then on Saturday I would invite everyone over for a lasagna supper.
When making something from an American recipe, I always spend days trying to find all the ingredients. This time the challenge was cream cheese for the icing. They have cream cheese, but it comes in all flavors and I wanted plain. After buying several brands and getting home and discovering it had garlic in it, I had Dinara write PLAIN CREAM CHEESE in Russian.
I went to a store and showed a clerk the note. She just pointed to the back of the store and went on her way. Went I got to the counter I could not tell which one was the plain type so I asked another clerk. She yelled out a name and here comes the first clerk I had asked. She was NOT a happy camper. She seemed so put out with me that it almost brought tears to my eyes. I finally bought 2 containers. That night while making the frosting I saw specks of stuff in the cream cheese which turned out to be bacon. (The frosting was too runny, so I kept adding more cream cheese and powdered sugar - another hard to get ingredient - until I had a HUGE bowl of frosting.)
The cake was labeled absolutely delicious by all the staff, but the sad part was that a Muslim teacher and her two girls ate the cake and they are not allowed to eat pork. They were not upset with me, but had to do alot of praying for forgiveness.
I had so much frosting left over that I decided to bake another kind of cake for my birthday dinner.
On Friday night I went over to my usual place to exchange money and she wasn't open, so it spoiled my big plan of getting the last minute things I needed. I only had enough money to buy ingredients for the cake. This one I found on the Internet and was called Death by Chocolate.
On Saturday I jumped out of bed in a panic. I realized that I needed 2 pans of lasagna with 15 people coming over, so I needed to buy another pan. The money changer was AGAIN not there, so I had to walk to find another one. Life was seeming so hard at this point, but I kept walking.
I did finally get my money changed and then ending up having to go to 3 places to get what I needed. I got home and started cooking like crazy. The most crazy part was that I decided to make some blackberry pies along with the chocolate cake.
I just had this energy and baked all afternoon. The dinner turned out to be delicious according to everyone. The husbands of the Kazakh ladies all wanted me to teach their wives how to bake lasagna and pies.
When I first saw my apartment I had this vision of people dancing in my huge living room, so I had gotten a tape with rock and roll music using bean bags from school. I was throwing everyone a bean bag and made everyone get up and dance. It was really fun dancing around to the old 60's twist music. After the first group of people left I came back and said, "Now we have the wild ones left." They all laughed and told me that the wild one was the person that lived here. At midnight the last guest left and I felt I had a wonderful birthday.
On Sunday I couldn't believe it. I crashed! I slept until 11:00, ate breakfast, did a few things, and then took a 3 hour nap. I guess I'm not as wild as everyone thinks. I just hope I can get to sleep tonight.
Thanks to all of you out there on Face Book that sent me birthday wishes and to the ones who didn't. Oh, here it is the custom to give wishes to the birthday person. The parents of my kids gave me the sweetest wishes. One father from Turkey wished that I would have all the love that I ever needed for the rest of my life. I certainly feel loved.

Solve the Mystery

I have mentioned on and off about my landlord and cleaning lady. As far as I know they are the only ones that have keys to my apartment. The cleaning lady used to come on Monday and every Monday when I got home my TV had been set to Russian and I couldn't get my few stations in English. Sometimes when I would push every button on both remotes I would get it figured out. But the next Monday it would be back again in Russian. Well, the landlord came to school one day because he wanted an advance on 3 months rent because he said he was going to London. My director usually doesn't give advances, but he ended up paying him for the 3 months rent. I translated to him about my problem with the TV and he just smiled and actually said "cleaning lady" in English. He told me that he would be over that Friday to fix it. I got home on Friday and found the TV still not working, but I knew he had been there because he had eaten one of my prized plums! On Saturday I unopened my door and the computer (not my personal computer) had been left on and the TV was working.
Going backwards in my story ---- right before I went to Almaty for the workshop I had $300 saved up to take with me. I had even asked the other staff how much money they were taking and found out $300 was a good amount. When I went to the drawer to get the money I only had $200. I tried not to freak out, because I could have made a mistake, but I keep track of my budget on a piece of paper and it also showed that I hadn't spend that $100. I let it go.
Then right after the landlord ate my plum I looked in my bright green envelope that had $92 in small bills and there was only $42 and I know for 100% certainty that I hadn't spent it.
So someone had been looking through all my things to find that money.
I went to my director, Art, and he was so angry and upset for me. And the other staff all were so angry too. It was so weird because I felt more angry at the loss of my plum than the money. I kept wondering what was the manner with me that I couldn't get angry???????
Anyway, the landlord was called and he blamed it on the cleaning lady and said nothing like this had ever happened before. He called the cleaning lady and told her to bring my keys to school. Well, she never came and when I got home she was there cleaning my apartment. She had gotten the call about the missing money and in Russian she was trying to tell me that she didn't take it. I got Dinara on the phone to translate and she was pleading her innocence. I didn't have the heart to fire her because I believed her. I had already felt like it was my landlord, because if he could have eaten my plum he was sure capable of stealing money. So I ended up getting the key from her and she comes when I am home. This week when she came I found out that the landlord has not paid her and she can't get ahold of him.
So who do you think is the thief?