holy crap, i'm sorry!
holy crap! i'm sorry it's been like, 2 months since i've posted. i am sorry. i will fully understand if none of you want to be my friend anymore -- seeing as how i've been so innatentive to you all. and it's not like nothing's been going on. i've got stories out the wazoo (quite literally), but i just have been too selfish to share them with you all. man, oh man. . .
well here goes, i will tell you the stories in they otder that they occur to me and not necissarily in the order that they happened. so first, on our fall break me and the sitemate went up to the capital of astana so my sitemate could visit her boyfriend and i could go to astana. so anyways we go up there in the beginning of november. . . and i tell you what i was some kinda sick. as my dear grampa used to say, "i had a case of the miseries." man, i never thought a human digestive tract could actively rebel against its owner, but now i know it's totally possible. so for about 3 quarters of my adventure in astana, i was laying on a mattress watching fashion tv on the satillite dish (because it was in english). what's worse for my sitemate ann was that her boyfriend was sick too (although he was spared the miseries and just had a bad head cold). so basically my vacation in the capital went like this -- my site mate sitting around bored/caring for her sick boyfriend and me. but. . . .
story #2, on the last day of the trip, i was feeling better, so ann and me went to her boyfriend's work. where? at a strip club, that's right, her boyfriend was a waiter at a strip club. oh yes. . . strip club! having never been to a strip club in the states, i don't know whether to tell you if it was a good or bad experience. . . but it was an experience. . . that's all i've got to say about that.
what else. . . . ok. so we had like, a shit ton of snow here a couple weeks back. so on the day after the blizzard, some of my older boys asked me (in russian), if i wanted to go swimming. i was confused. i was like, "swimming? what the hell?!" i figured they were joking or something so i said, "yeah, ok. sure." bad idea. by, "miss ashli, do you want to go swimming?" they meant, "miss ashli, can we throw your honky ass in the snow?" so after school that day, some of my 11th grade boys picked me up in the front hallway of the school, carried me outside and tossed me in a snowdrift. then one boy helped me up out of the drift so that another boy could throw me in the snow A SECOND TIME! so, if you're ever in the stan in winter and get asked to go swimming, just say no.
thankgiving. thanksgiving was a couple of weeks ago. so we've got a bunch of new volunteers now and the first time we all met was at thanksgiving. they're pretty cool. we just ate and talked and ate. but, just before we were gonna eat, the power went out in the apartment. you see the building hadn't turned on the heat yet so the girl whose apartment it was had bought a bunch of portable heaters to warm up the apartment. however, all that power running through the soviet-era wiring was too much, and it blew a fuse. luckily, we had some local people at the party, and they (a kazakh and a russian) immediately started to fix the problem. it sounds like the set up to a bad joke doesn't it? "so, a kazakh and a russian are trying to fix a blown fuse with a piece of telephone wire. the russian says to the kazakh. . . . " but they got it fixed and the rest of our dinner was very well lit.
i think that's about all there is for me now. i promise, i'll make more of an effort to post regularly from now on. i don't want you all to get mad. . . . i still need your friendship (and your care packages :) ).
love.
well here goes, i will tell you the stories in they otder that they occur to me and not necissarily in the order that they happened. so first, on our fall break me and the sitemate went up to the capital of astana so my sitemate could visit her boyfriend and i could go to astana. so anyways we go up there in the beginning of november. . . and i tell you what i was some kinda sick. as my dear grampa used to say, "i had a case of the miseries." man, i never thought a human digestive tract could actively rebel against its owner, but now i know it's totally possible. so for about 3 quarters of my adventure in astana, i was laying on a mattress watching fashion tv on the satillite dish (because it was in english). what's worse for my sitemate ann was that her boyfriend was sick too (although he was spared the miseries and just had a bad head cold). so basically my vacation in the capital went like this -- my site mate sitting around bored/caring for her sick boyfriend and me. but. . . .
story #2, on the last day of the trip, i was feeling better, so ann and me went to her boyfriend's work. where? at a strip club, that's right, her boyfriend was a waiter at a strip club. oh yes. . . strip club! having never been to a strip club in the states, i don't know whether to tell you if it was a good or bad experience. . . but it was an experience. . . that's all i've got to say about that.
what else. . . . ok. so we had like, a shit ton of snow here a couple weeks back. so on the day after the blizzard, some of my older boys asked me (in russian), if i wanted to go swimming. i was confused. i was like, "swimming? what the hell?!" i figured they were joking or something so i said, "yeah, ok. sure." bad idea. by, "miss ashli, do you want to go swimming?" they meant, "miss ashli, can we throw your honky ass in the snow?" so after school that day, some of my 11th grade boys picked me up in the front hallway of the school, carried me outside and tossed me in a snowdrift. then one boy helped me up out of the drift so that another boy could throw me in the snow A SECOND TIME! so, if you're ever in the stan in winter and get asked to go swimming, just say no.
thankgiving. thanksgiving was a couple of weeks ago. so we've got a bunch of new volunteers now and the first time we all met was at thanksgiving. they're pretty cool. we just ate and talked and ate. but, just before we were gonna eat, the power went out in the apartment. you see the building hadn't turned on the heat yet so the girl whose apartment it was had bought a bunch of portable heaters to warm up the apartment. however, all that power running through the soviet-era wiring was too much, and it blew a fuse. luckily, we had some local people at the party, and they (a kazakh and a russian) immediately started to fix the problem. it sounds like the set up to a bad joke doesn't it? "so, a kazakh and a russian are trying to fix a blown fuse with a piece of telephone wire. the russian says to the kazakh. . . . " but they got it fixed and the rest of our dinner was very well lit.
i think that's about all there is for me now. i promise, i'll make more of an effort to post regularly from now on. i don't want you all to get mad. . . . i still need your friendship (and your care packages :) ).
love.
posted by ashli at 5:24 AM
4 comments
