In which we find ourselves in the dark.
Before you leave for Kokshetau, the agency, World Partners Adoption, gives you a "What to Expect" handout that includes helpful commentary about your days to come. Included in said handout is a section on essentially NOT being an ugly American.
Kazakhstan is very different from the United States, it says. And there are as many pleasant differences as unpleasant.
One of the differences is light. The sun doesn't rise here until nine-thirty. We're trying to decide if that is pleasant or unpleasant.
We're leaning toward unpleasant.
Mostly, when the young nudist monk pictured at left cries, we don't know if it's the middle of the night or time to get up. Lately Naked Boy has been calling for the 4:30 a.m. snack.
That is NOT time to get up.
The lack of light also tends to make one lethargic. Quite plant like, our leaves have begun to curl at the edges for want of sunshine. This is probably why we jumped at the McCalls' kind offer to join them for lunch out with Inna and Oleg. Our sad puppy dog eyes finally won some sympathy!
Pictured below you can see the six of us enjoying our meal. It was an exciting new place with intriguing food. Robin had a caesaresque salad and a chicken breast that was breaded and then baked with oranges and a honey sauce. I had a salad of chicken, mushrooms, pineapple and mayonnaise followed by "chopped beef meat" (hamburger isn't a recognized word here) topped with mushrooms and cheese. The "fries" had a certain hash-brown quality that, while good, did not curb the craving for a McDonald's value meal.
The cheese, however, fascinated me. Despite all our prayers and alchemic acts of magic, we cannot get cheese to melt here. As you know, the stove works on inferno and conflagaration. The oven does as well. Not even conflagaration will do the trick. Cheese can be cut, but not transformed into its liquid state.
I wanted to ask the restaurant how they did it. I was afraid of the answer.
Lunch was toasted with vodka. Oleg insisted and who are we to argue with the natives? This was the second vodka tasting for Robin and me. Our first was Kokshetau vodka which was very smooth and, basically, trouble waiting to happen. This was some kind of Russian fire water that proved quite easy to pass up.
Post toast, Oleg told us a joke: A man riding his camel across the desert is passed by another man who is pedalling his bicycle as quickly as he can. "Why are you going so fast," the man on the camel asks.
"If I pedal faster, it creates a breeze," the man on the bike answers. "The breeze helps cool me off."
Inspired, the man on the camel kicks his animal into a gallop and speeds past the bicycler. A few hours later, however, the bicycler comes upon the camel rider. He is standing by his camel. The camel is lying on the sand.
"Did your camel die," the cyclist asks.
"No," the rider answers. "He is cold."
I could go for that kind of cold right now. The best I could manage, though, was a little ice cream for dessert.
