May 16, Part Jen

May 16

Today we officially file for court, actually we don’t do it, our Kazak Posse does. Here’s a view from our balcony. It’s a little grainy because I had to take the picture through the screen…I didn’t want to step out onto the 3x3 totally outdoors balcony for fear of dropping my spanking new Russian camera 8 stories. You can see a little big of the river, if you look really close to the left of the tree. Later this week I’ll take and post some pictures of the River Walk out the back of the apartment--- it’s very nice, and reminds me of EpCot, except people really don’t speak English here. Downstairs there is also a World Class gym, but it’s meant for the Oil Execs and costs $20/day. Who needs to pay that when you have lots of streets to walk up and down and be entertained.

Last night I went to a restaurant that had an English menu, although it was not exactly a good translation. They had much SOAP on the menu, and weird salads like “Mystery Of Wood Salad”, “Long Life Salad” and “Woman Salad”. Salads are not like the leafy green ones we get at home. They are usually chopped up cucumbers beats, corn, meat, nuts, and assorted unidentified items smothered in mayonnaise. I think I have figured out the 4 food groups here: Potato, Beets, High Fat Meat, and Mayonnaise. There are a lot of fruits here, but not many vegetables. At dinner you get the token 6 peas and about 4 pieces of corn.

Today was my turn to wait for the cable internet man, so Rob went solo at the baby house. The cable man finally arrived, and after an hour and a half of comical non-speaking communication we got the blazing 32k cable modem to work with the USB cord instead of the Ethernet wire. We also had to install some software, thankfully in English, and after a reboot it magically worked. Then I tried my best to tell him, in my limited Russian, that it was working and he could go now. I tried Da Da Da (yes, yes, yes), Mal-eh-dyet (cool/ok), Spasisbo (Thank You), Paka Paka (Good Bye). None of those did the trick, until I did the 2 thumbs up. I guess Fonzie is spoken in Kazakhstan, or I supremely insulted him y flipping him the thumb.

The translator arrived just after the cable man left and reported back that Rob was going very well on his own. He changed junior’s clothes (no diapers yet), put on his hat and coat and took him for a walk outside and to play on the swing (not a kid swing, more like a porch swing). I think that’s just what he needed because he was sad last night missing his cats, and oddly enough breakfast sausage. He missed breakfast sausage so much he spent the evening, as I was trying to read the smut/Grisham book, quoting Star Wars movies and replacing key words with Sausage. As in “Some Say Sausage is unnatural” and “May the Sausage be with you”. It was funny for the first 5 minutes, then I started to get the munchies. Hopefully Friday we will find out the court date and he can start planning his trip to the Bear Swamp for some breakfast meat.

The Da Vinci Code movie opens in the local theater here later this week. I was planning to go see it in Russian, and it will be an added bonus if it’s also available in English.

Tonight we were waiting for our translator to run to the copy center to photo copy some papers for the co-ordinator, so we went spent about an hour with the co-ordinator, Baheet, who speaks no English. Believe it or not we talked for most of the time, using the little translation book. We were trying to explain Instant Messenger to her. Then we showed her pictures of our house and cats. I am not sure what Fluffernutter translates to in Russian, but she was quite amused by the name.

We spent the night watching Russian Deal Or No Deal. We had only see people win 5 somethings (rubles maybe), so the banker in Russia must play hard ball.

Last week I went to the fireworks a couple blocks from our apartment. After a couple minutes, these things started falling from the sky and people skattered like roaches at sunlight. I put the pieces next to a pair of sunglasses to give a perspective on the pieces. There were a couple hundred still left on the ground the next morning.......but I think a lot of weirdos like me took them home for souveniers. The big fire works celebrations will be in early July, but i will be home by then.