Apartment...

A tour of Vic, Tara, Tammy and Salta's Apartment :)

We forgot a room....

Life...

I’m still adjusting to life here, but DAD is helping me. Things are good here - different obviously but good. Language is tough and can be real frustrating but my teacher is probably around my age and is a believer and he is real sweet so that’s nice. I go for 2 hours a day – I might extend it to 3 in a week. So yea, I’m back in school every day! It’s about a 35 minute walk to get to it so I’m getting my walking in. We walk EVERYWHERE!

Dad is working – that’s for sure. I got to share my story with one girl who is so close to walking with Dad – I am hoping to spend more time with her. I met another girl on campus the other day so maybe I’ll be seeing her again too. Right now, during summer there aren’t a lot of people at school (just a few extensive English classes) so our focus is on Russian and developing our relationship with Dad – it’s kind of nice to be able to take time to focus on that alone.

I went to a mentally handicapped orphanage a few days ago and I think it was the hardest and saddest thing I’ve ever seen in my life – really. We could only stay for an hour and oh it was so hard. I held a girl who I thought was about a year old the whole time. I found out later she was FIVE. They have no help – no physical therapist, no help for their issues. There was ONE girl watching about 10 kids under 7 that couldn’t move on their own. It broke my heart but I know it is something I definitely want to do somewhat regularly. Anyway, I could go on and on about the hour I spent there but the bottom line is: Dad is showing me that a big part of my heart is with orphans. We are looking for ways to extend ourselves to orphans so now, I am very much involved in that process and very excited about it.

My feet are totally destroyed from walking – blisters everywhere! I was really really sick all weekend – it was awful. At first I thought it was something I ate or from the orphanage or something but 2 other people on my team got it too – so it must have been some sort of virus – it was miserable!I am better now though :)

Here are some pictures for you :)

This is where we spent the day yesterday - It was our day of "thinking"

This is Tara, Myself and Salta (roommates minus Tammy)

Tara and I with watermelon :) (we eat a lot of it)

More will come later this week - I will be taking more pictures :)

First 4 days in KZ

Welp, I made it on time with no trouble! I have been here for 4 full days and I am slowly but surely getting settled. I've been with my team a lot - catching up and getting to know them better! Tara and I went shopping - I bought a pretty bed spread and a few other needs! It is hot hot hot here - and there is no AC so I bought a fan and keep the windows open!! One thing that is hard is the language - it is really frustrating not being able to communicate much at all with anyone but my team so I am excited to develop a bit in that!I begin language school tomorrow so I will let you know how it goes :)

New concept: So, in order to go shopping the other day, Tara and I had to catch a taxi. We walked to the busier road and she stuck her hand out and this white car pulled over almost immediately. She told him where we wanted to go and they agreed on a price and we got in. I noticed it didn't really look like a taxi and I said, "Tara, is this a taxi?", she said "yea, everyone is a taxi." So, pretty much - we are hitchhikers here and it is totally normal! haha!

Last night we had a little get together. The jet lag finally hit yesterday and I have been exhausted ever since so I was struggling to stay awake. It was good for me because it wasn't a huge crowd or even close to it. I got to know one girl pretty well- I was able to share my story with her and she seemed to be interested. We are going to hang out again this weekend.

Also last night we grilled hot dogs. After I was done eating - Tammy looked at me and said "do you know what you just ate?" - Yea, the hot dog was made of HORSE!

Today the team and I went to 2 different campuses that we will be working with. Students t one of them are required to speak English. University here is not like in the US. It is not the next thing to do for everyone - these students are driven and focused and WANT an education. Our team paired up and went to 3 different English classes and spoke. It was an "intensive English class" and all of them were incoming freshman. I met one girl in the class - we ate lunch together and she showed me around campus and her dorm.

Tonight we ate dinner in a Yurt. People live there but apparently they kind of run it as a restaurant as well. We ate Shaslik (no idea how to spell it :) but it is sheep. We also ate logmon which is like thick noodles with vegetables, meat and a soup like sauce. We also had cucumber and tomato salad with chai (tea). It was great!

This is a Yurt:

This is Tara with a cow...

This is my team eating in the Yurt

Tara and I eating Shashlik!