Kazakh Chronicles #6
*Present-day preamble: A quick look through my Kazakhstan “travel log” shows me that I can no longer find my 5th Kazakh chronicle. It’s probably for the best. I’m quite sure if it did exist, it would have been filled with lies about how we were adapting and adjusting, and not mention anything about the devastation of celebrating our son’s second birthday without him. Nor mentioning that our daughter no longer slept at night. Or during the daytime. Or even suggesting that we were in an utter state of panic when we started to regularly see spots of blood in her stool. Having lost our son to a completely unexpected medical mistake in Canada, it was beyond terrifying to try to get to the bottom of what was going on in a place where the starting point for medical advice was “get it outside of the country”. It turned out that she was milk protein intolerant, which somehow isn’t a big deal, as long as we (both she and I) avoided any form of dairy, considering she was exclusively breast fed. This turned out to be more of a hardship for me than for Maya, as I wasn’t too sold on the meat there, but the dairy could be pretty divine. We basically became very bad vegans. I would go to the grocery story (access through the parking lot as you recall, so I never even needed to put on a jacket even through -40 temps), and purchase a bag of beans or pulses, go home, open up my Russian/English dictionary, discover what I had bought and then make dinner out of it, using a recipe I then found online. One particular such excursion led me to discover why it is that they feed millet to chickens.
Jumping ahead then to February of 2011, where instead of writing, I chose to entertain with pictures!
Just a short update before we head off to Vienna tomorrow for a week. It will be Curtis' first trip to "civilization" since we got here.[1] He is looking forward to going to his favourite brew pub in Vienna. I'm guessing this means he will eat there every day, if it is left up to him. Curtis and I will be going on our first date since we left Canada. I will try to steer him away from that brew pub...
Today I am sending you a couple of pictures, in order to make up for the shortness of my email. Because, you know, 6 pictures would be like 6 thousand words. Bet you wish I'd used this approach earlier.
This past Sunday, I had the pleasure of going out on the town with a couple of friends. Mind you, it was the middle of the day. And we went to the aquarium.
But no matter, I got out, and I would have gone pretty near anywhere and been happy about it. So, we went to the aquarium. It was a bit disturbing. But they had a cool tunnel that you walked through, where the fish were swimming over and around you. So, I got to swim with the sharks.
To exit, you had to go through the souvenir store. That was a bit weird. We asked the lady at the entrance where the exit was. She yelled at us, that she told us already, and was tired of telling us where it was. The three of us conferred amongst ourselves, and none of us recalled having been there before, or asking her before. I wonder if it was one of those things where "you" meant "people in general", and she was just expressing a part of her job that she hates. Regardless, it was my lucky good day: some of you recall that I have it in my mind that the only thing that would look good on top of one of our bookshelves is a ship in a bottle. They just so happened to be selling them at the souvenir shop! Mind you, it is fairly small, so if you have already bought me a ship in the bottle for my next birthday, I will be happy to display that one as well.
Other than that, I just wanted to show you some random things that don't make sense to me. Notice the picture of the eggs. Notice how they came sold in a thin plastic bag. It boggles my mind, really. When will someone say: you know, that really isn't a good idea. In fact, it is a very very bad idea.
Also, our toilet seat broke. So this is a picture of the new one. Notice how it fits perfectly. I believe the exact quote is, "this is all they had". For the record, I would like to state that it is also uncomfortable. Like a German toilet seat.[2]
Don't feel too sorry for us, though. We are going to Thailand at the beginning of April. Oh, yah, baby. My schedule will be: morning: massage; afternoon: yoga; evening: spa. Repeat. For 9 days!! Plus, we will have some time on either end in Bangkok and Almaty. It will be a great getaway.
And then I wanted to include a picture of Maya. It's blurry though, and I don't know why. I thought I should address that Maya herself is not blurry, but does sometimes move very quickly and energetically, day and night. She seems to be having lots of fun!
[1] By civilization I meant any place where we could drink the tap water, and according to Austrians, Austria has the best tap water in the world
[2] This was just the beginning of things starting to break down. We already had one bathroom that we used as a storage closet because the sink didn’t work and the door didn’t close. This particular bathroom, with the broken toilet seat became off limits once turning on the lights consistently short-circuited our entire apartment’s electricity. We still had two other bathrooms, and one of them had a “full service” heated, bidet toilet seat, with a fan and some other features that are more fun if I leave them to your imagination.
