merry christmas with love

hey all, it's christmas! color me jazzed!!!!

i am spending my holiday in taraz and it's going pretty well so far. today we'll have our christmas dinner. . . i made homemade buckeyes. i'm so brining the midwest to the central asian. i'm stoked.

of course i miss you all and wish i was home with you all instead of halfway around the world, but it's not all bad.

of course now that i'm typing i can't think of anything interesting to tell you about. . . we're just having our typical bonding time of americans in the kz.

my host mom is super cute. she sells avon and she got me some hand cream from avon for christmas because, she said, "it has a christmas tree on it and it has english writing on it. . . " she also said that she would take off of work early on christmas to make me bishbarmak (the kazakh national dish that they make for anything resembling a special occasion -- complete with homemade horse sausage!) and then we will drink coffee the living room and drink "100 ml" of vodka -- she said, "i know you don't drink vodka on your christmas, but we are in our kazakhstan now, you must drink to celebrate your holiday here!" twist my arm. . .

so i pretty much just wanted to say merry christmas to everyone. and i've said that, so there. now go and do it. HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS, DAMMIT!!

omg. . .have to pee!!

hey all. i am on the internet! hoot hoot! and it's only been like two weeks. it seems that the internet gods are only benevolent in the big cities. it looks like from now on, i'll just have to suck it up and spend the 3 hour round trip in a big van so that i can get my internet fix.

anyways. . . in case you didn't know, i have just about the smallest bladder on the planet. i reallly have to pee right now. but i am holding it. i am holding it for you good people so that you may know about my life. it's not easy, but i will do it. . . .until my pee-pee dance starts to draw the attention of other people around me that is. and i can't just go to the bathroom. public toilets are a rarety here in the stan. i will have to walk half a block down the road and pay 15 tenge to squat over a seatless toilet when i actually to get to potty. boy howdy i will not miss this when i get home.

anyways, merry christmas. i'll be spending the holiday with other volunteers in the beautiful pink city of taraz. (well, actually, i've only heard that it's pink. this will be my first visit. i'll update you later.) it doesn't really seem like christmas here though. for one, it's like 60 degrees outside. and for two, people here don't really "do" christmas. so there's no sense of the impending consumer orgy that is the holiday season. they do, however, have new years here (new year's is pronounced "christmas" of course: they have a big 'new years' tree, santa claus, and gift giving). so that's fun.

after new years, i'm going to training in almaty. so i'll be able to use their kickass, reliable internet and i'll probably have fun stuff to talk about. ok, just a few more emails to check, and then i gotta go. . .potty!

love.

its winter in the stan'"

evening folks! good news, i have found a reliable internet source -- ann!! i swear, is there anything that lady can't do? anyways, her host family got hooked up with the internet and, in light of my recent computer woahs, ann said i could use her connection.

speaking of the internet, i have a story: so, like i said before, the internet connection at the post office where i have been signing on is less than reliable and as of late, has not been letting me check my email. so i thought, sucks to this, i'll go somewhere else. in fact, there is an internet club in the village. i'll go there. ann had told me a few weeks before that the "technical issues" that the internet club had would soon be cleared up, so the internet would in fact be available at the internet club. so i go. i walk into the internet club, and i ask, in russian, "do you have the internet?"

the guy that works there looks at me like i am the stupidest person in the world for asking such a thing. he looks at me and says, "i already told you the last time you were here, we are having technical difficulties with the internet and we don't know when we will get it."

omg! i looked at this guy and gave the most angst-filled sigh i could muster (which is pretty angst-filled -- seeing as how i work with teenagers i hear them a lot and have gotten good at mimicking them) and said, "fine." then i left. the whole way home i kept thinking, "i wish my russian were better. i wish my russian were better."

why? you may ask. well, why indeed. there are two huge problems with what this guy said to me. 1.) i had never been in this internet cafe before. ANN had been there. and ann and i do not look alike. true, we are both 22 year old american girls with glasses. but that's all. i am a short little blonde girl that can speak broken RUSSIAN. ann is a very tall girl with black hair and a dark complexion that speaks broken KAZAKH. i know "we" all look alike to these people, but come on. 2.) the place is called INTERNET CAFE, but as far as i can discern, they have never had the internet. ITS IN YOUR NAME!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!! if you want to be a computer club call yourself "computer club". or, if you really must have the word internet in your name what about "we might possibly one day have the internet club." i don't know.

that's all i got. more later. love and kisses.