Boat Drinks

Well, Spencer and I have two more nights in Karaganda. It is extremely bitter sweet. Leaving your wife and new child behind to go home is not any easy thing. We really have begun to bond as a family, and learn each other’s strong points.

I sure will miss the Vodka. We’ve concocted our summer “boat drink” of vodka and raspberry juice over ice. It’s really smooth, and goes down well on a hot evening with no AC. Gina and I pour a couple after the kids go to bed and start writing the blog. It’s actually our favorite part of the day…it makes us reflect on what matters most. Plus I get to see Gina do her dance of joy around the apartment!

Spencer and I ventured out today to buy Gina a DVD player since the DVD player on the computer is broken. Gina is out of books, and the TV shows are really bad and in Russian. The only good TV is the one World Cup soccer game they show each night, and Gina hates any televised sporting event. Doesn’t see the point she says – much like I say about her having to watch American Idol.

The DVD transaction went pretty smoothly considering the two sales guys only spoke Russian and German, and I only speak English and very little German. I pointed to the DVD player I wanted. The salesperson said “Sprecken sie Duetsch”, I said “Ein Bischen” and then he proceed to spew a whole bunch of stuff in German (I must look German) . I said “Da” a lot, and then they ended up hooking up the DVD and showing me how it worked. It’s a pretty good DVD for $82/US. Now Gina can watch Bourne Identity for the 125th time….

While out I had to switch out some more of the money for rent. There are currency “changers” on every corner. They sell you Tenge at one rate, then buy Tenge back at about 1% more. So they make about 100 Tenge on every $100.00 (about 1$ US). But today I got the last laugh. The currency exchanger tried to pawn off a beat up $100 bill on me , But now I’m inspecting them closely and said “NYET!”; rejecting it and giving it back to her for a new one! HAH!! Take that I thought, and told Gina as soon as I got home.

You know you’re getting too comfortable in a place when you start to yell at the cars. There was some road work on the way home from the store on the busiest street in the area. The workers closed one lane of traffic forcing motorists to merge through the intersection. When the light turned to allow pedestrians to cross the intersection, the traffic never stopped. Spencer and I ventured off the curb to cross, and a bus driver didn’t stop for us, so…I gave him the what’s up sign, then started running cuz the next guy wasn’t going to stop either.

Gina ventured off to the store on her own this morning. This was a trial run to see if she would get any flack. We figured that no one is going to give her guff at 10:00 am…Unless you count the Russian lady who yelled at her yesterday because Hayden doesn’t have a hat on. She was waiting for me outside yesterday, actually asked me to go back upstairs to get Hayden’s hat. When this lady walks up to her and starts yelling at her in Russian, making very clear gestures that she shouldn’t have Hayden out in the cold without his hat. Right then I got downstairs, and could tell what was going on – and showed the old lady the hat in my pocket. She shut up right away and walked off.

Ah well, tomorrow we’re off to the carnival again. Spencer still wants to ride the horses!

The pictures are of Hayden have a good ol' laugh after daddy tickled him, the second is of Spencer directing the paving crew (engineer in training).