settling in

I've been in Almaty without a lick of travel for nearly two months now. And I've settled into a nice, easy, routine. When I see my office-mate dashing off every other week to here and there, taking 2 AM flights, I say to myself "Better him than me." (Though I am heading to Turkmenistan soon, once all my paperwork get approved by various officials at various levels.)

Work is close enough for a brisk walk or a lovely stroll, depending on how much in a rush I am to get to my destination. On the way there are several fruit/veggie stands, at least 15 convenience stores, and a supermarket. So picking up fresh produce or bread or whatever is easy-peasy.

Some nights I go home, other nights I hop on a bus and head to my friend's apartment. Anara has been very committed and diligent about learning English, and so we meet for 3 to 5 lessons a week, depending on our free time. She's got a great textbook, does her homework, and has a good instinct for English. It's been a gratifying to work with her. I didn't expect it to help my Russian, but it has, especially with precision in my vocabulary and grammar.

If she comes to my house, we hang for a few hours, working through her English book, drinking tea, or sometimes beer, eating pumpkin seeds, chak-chak, or suhariki. Chak-chak rocks. It's a huge, sticky, pile of thin, crunchy, deep-fried strips of dough that are covered in a honey/sugar mixture. Sometimes they add nuts or dried fruit to it, but I like the plain type best. I don't get it often because of the horrific caloric/cardiovascular implications of eating such stuff regularly. But dayyyyyum is it nummy. Suhariki are little strips of dried-out bread, nice and light and crunchy. The rye ones are especially good.

So we nibble and crunch and laugh and groan over her English textbook. She thinks articles (a, an, the) are a nightmare. I explain how their verbs of motion are even worse (every motion has two verbs: one verb to do that "motion" in general, another verb to do that motion to a specific destination, i.e., fly/fly to there, walk/to here or there, run, swim, stroll, bike.... They even have two words for here and there: here/there in general, and here/there if you're using a verb of motion to get here/there. Grrrr.) She claims that in Russian you pronounce every letter exactly as you see it. So our English with it's silent "e"s and "ph" that reads as "f" and "ti" that reads as "sh" and things like "ough" and "igh" are evil. I point out that many "o"s in Russian are pronounced as "a"s. She concedes, but then states that that's the only exception, whereas English has a gazillion variations. I agree, and explain to her that they have 30-something letters for 30-something sounds, but we have only 26 letters for 44 sounds (according to the textbook). Despite denigrating one another's languages and struggling with crazy grammatical/useage principals, it's really quite enjoyable.

Other nights, I go to her house and they feed me before we study. Now that Roma's parents are back from Moscow we are a gaggle: It's Roman and Anara, their son Svyatik, their dog Don, Roman's parents Tamara and Anatolyi, Tamara's mom "Babushka," and Tamara's dog Tyapa. Oh, and Svyatik's pet rat with some funky glorious name I've forgotten. They live in apartments next door to one another, and whether I'm in one place or the other, family members are constantly going in and out, stopping to say hello, have dinner, a cup of tea, chit-chat, ask a question, etc. Last night we were talking American movies with Roma's father, and I found out that the title of the old Marilyn Monroe/Tony Curtis film, "Some Like It Hot, " was translated to "Jazz is Only for Women" or something along those lines. We recommended films we should see, and discussed having a mini film festival.

So goes my routine. Not too different from every-day life in America, no? You get up, you go to work, you eat, you sleep, and in-between you hope for happiness, good health, and that the good times outweigh the bad.