In which Americans storm the beaches of Kokshetau.
It's all about freedom.
For Owen, it's freedom of speech. We had lunch with one of the newly arrived families-- Amrina's new Mom and Dad (more on this shortly)-- and they were talking about how quiet their little girl is. Should they be concerned?
If she's anything like her former boyfriend Owen, absolutely not!
As I type this, our formerly stoic little man is shouting his proclamations at the top of his lungs. The napping McCalls must love him. From what we can gather, he's neither tired nor unhappy. Apparently he's just been building up his ideas for one big, dramatic, days-long oratory.
He must have a career in preaching, politics or marketing ahead of him somewhere. Or he could just be practicing for his first debate with Abuelito Paul.
As for his parents, we celebrated the freedom to pursue happiness. Our freedom comes with a price, however: Confession! My much-missed co-workers, I thank you for agreeing to let me off the hook for our long-distance conference calls yesterday. No, we didn't have an emergency here. We had an invitation!
In Kokshetau, one does not pass up the chance to leave The Box.
Our Peace Corps buddies scoured the city for a lunch time tchassliki place. No luck. Could we do dinner? Would the McCalls babysit? Yes and yes!
They arrived a bit after eight with two new friends in tow. We met McCray, a village volunteer from Atlanta, and Gulshaht (please forgive what I'm sure is a horrible misspelling), PC Ryan's lovely Kazakh girlfriend.
Gulshaht, incidentally, means Happy Flower; not whatever I was mis-remembering in my original post. And, yes, that makes her full name Happy-Flower Tell-It-to-My-Face. Is that excellent or what?
They had just come from a local theater production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The Kazakhs had corrected a few errors in the piece. First they made it a musical and secondly they resurrected Romeo and Juliet in the last act to lead the audience in a 20-minute clapping and smiling sing-along.
The Americans tried to figure it out. Why a sing-along? Gulshaht explained it quite simply: No one in Kazakhstan wants to go home from the theater depressed.
Made sense to us.
Off we went into the night searching for shish-kebabs. It took us three tries, but we finally found a restaurant with room to accommodate six people. Interestingly enough, the restaurants are usually completely empty for lunch. But trust my frozen feet, they were all packed for dinner.
The place we found is called something on the order of "The Hunter's Lodge" and comes complete with deer heads on the walls. As we entered, we saw the requisite megawatt sound system and several couples dancing while they awaited their meals.
During the course of our meal, Gulshaht would ask us what we found most different about Kazakhstan. PC Bryan told her that we don't dance as much in America. It's true, I agreed. No one in America would dance at a restaurant during lunch. Especially not a business lunch, PC Bryan amended. (And we have seen this while here.)
"Really," Gulshaht asked. "Why not?" A good question. I'll be bringing a boom box to the next one I attend. We'll see how it goes.
When the shish-kebab/tchassliki arrived, they were everything we'd been promised. Hot and delicious with some kind of fantastic flatbread and that marvel of the western world, french fries! You can see us at the restaurant left, as well as a picture of the awesome spread.
Conversation while we ate centered around the differences in the culture ("There's really no point in looking at the menu," PC Ryan told us. "They'll just tell you what they have.") and the PC boys' adventures. New find McCray has been stranded in India for the past month. His passport was stolen the first day and it took him that long to replace it and his Kazakhstan visa.
We shared our woes with regard to midnight Russian prank calls and asked if they could help us with any "strong language" to use next time it happened. What followed was a treasure trove of Russian sailor talk that would have done any dock worker proud. Sadly, I only recall one of the words (which should do quite nicely next time the phone rings, thank you!) and an interesting expression. In English we talk about naughty four-letter words. In Russian, the bad words are three letters.
Incidentally, I am NOT sharing my new word on the Internet.
About eleven we said our good-byes and went to bed. The McCalls had tended Owen beautifully and we mostly got a good night's sleep and awoke to celebrate our next freedom: The freedom to assemble.
Over the course of this week, three new families have arrived in Kokshetau: the Connollys, the Stannards and the Murphys. (Click the name to see either the Connollys' or the Stannards' sites.) As mentioned, the Connollys are adopting Owen's girlfriend and are the first residents for the newest apartment opened in Kokshetau for visiting American families. The Stannards and the Murphys are adopting from nearby Shuschinks and are both staying at the local hotel.
After their daily visit with Reid and Lucy, the McCalls and Connollys invited us to lunch. You can see our group picture at left. We went to the Kazakhstan Restaurant, a place that specializes in traditional meals. The fabulously adventurous Jim Connolly ordered the horse. (And, yes Eileen Benson, I tried it. I hope you'll find it in you to forgive me.)
The one thing I'll say about the horse, if you're going to eat your friend Flikka in Kazakhstan, you don't let any of him go to waste. When they serve horse, they serve a lot of the horse.
Lunch was great fun and we enjoyed meeting all of the new people. Inna and Oleg were excellent hosts, as usual. And, per tradition, Oleg insisted we all try the vodka. Now experienced, Robin and I were able to steer the table to the Kokshetau version.
I took advantage of the lunch to test my new word with Inna. It should work perfectly on our pranksters.
