News: A boy in my 5th grade class had a sweatshirt on that had the ‘Puma’ symbol on it. Instead of saying that it said ‘Black Panthers’ and it was unintentionally hilarious.

Huge news: Neil informed me that Blink-182 is getting back together.

Huger news: A-Rod made doing steroids cool. I can’t hate that guy, he’s the man. At first I was crushed but here in Kazakhstan there is only me to comment on baseball because no one else knows what it is so I’m gonna say that it’s totally legit. (In reality, I’m crying as I type this because I can’t lie to myself)

Hugest News! – I learned why I can’t fish or swim in the lake. First of all, Akkol is Kazakh for ‘white lake’. Ak is white, Kol is lake; simple. I can’t fish in it because there are no fish. Okay that makes sense. The reason for the lack of fish and the advice not to swim is because the hospital illegally dumps their medical waste in the lake. GRRRRREAT!

Included in this edition are ***2 Special Inserts*** (RECIPES because I cook more and more here) and a fun little game I like to call “I-Spy!” I posted a picture and I would like comments on the comment page of “I-Spy…Akkol Kazakhstan still life photo” or whatever it is that you see in it. It’s a goodie!

The week after my last post was pretty sweet. School was cancelled almost every day so I didn’t really have to work. This was due to the weather being extremely cold. yay. The best was on Wednesday when my host mom was like “I called the school and only first through fifth is cancelled today”. So I was like still asleep because it was before my alarm and was like “grumble mumble I don’t teach those classes today I gotta go”. So off I go to school. I stop to look at the temp and it says minus 35 and I’m like ‘hmm it’s colder than before, that’s weird there’s school’. So I’m almost there and I catch up to Svetlana and Valentina because I walk super fast and Valentina falls on the ice like 10 meters ahead of me and then instead of being shocked due to her fall she sees me and is like ‘ I told you not to come it’s too cold!!’. And I go ‘Nah, it’s cool Galina said I’m on today.’ She says, “I tried to call you but then I talked to Galina and said it was cancelled through 9th and you don’t have 11th or 10th today so you should stay in bed then I texted you too.” I go, “I can’t hear my texts when I’m listening to Blink this loud on my pod, you hear they’re back?!” So I sat in the school until the sun rose so it’d be warmer and stuff but it wasn’t. The 11th and 10th graders that actually showed up did a practice ENT (it’s like that test kids in America take so they can graduate). FACT: Beards keep your face warm. My beard is so thick now that I don’t have to wear a face mask at minus 35. But it freezes from the condensation of my breath and turns frosty white. It actually looks pretty cool. Moral of the story: I can’t understand the difference between the numbers 5 and 9 in Russian when I am asleep. The week ended with classes being changed and/or cancelled so I barely worked at all at school that week.

My host mom went off to Karaganda for a thing in which her nephew and the family meets his future wife’s family because they just got engaged and I had to stay at home and care for the livestock. I’m all domestic now feeding sheep and checking for eggs in the chicken coop. It was a pretty exciting Valentine ’s Day overall. Besides working with the animals and teaching I met up with these dudes Aitugan and Renat and went skating and then got some food. They build and program satellites for the Kazsat (the Kazakhstan space center place that’s located in the forest). The one dude plays World of Warcraft and was really excited to find out that I too played it at one point back in the day. He showed me his level 80 mage. It was pretty tite. Anywho, that night I headed home and decided to watch the most romantic of James Bond films, ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’. It’s so badass. I also saw a chickflick called ‘Definitely, Maybe’ recently and I have to admit that it’s awesome (for a chickflick). After telling other male volunteers how much I liked it they were like ‘lame’ and then they all watched it after I said that and then they were like ‘you were right, it was pretty good’.

***SPECIAL INSERT***
Ok, here’s a little recipe I whipped up for a soup using some things I had at my disposable in addition to the vegetable god blessing my village with some peppers in one of the stores.

½ kilo of red kidney beans – soak them overnight in water
1250 ml water – about 5 cups
500 ml orange juice
some bouillon – a lil’ bit (I didn’t actually use any, I used pelmini seasonings cause we had none at home for the broth)
olive oil
a bunch of onions – about 5 of them ranging from small to medium size – maybe 3 cups in English units?
half a head of garlic
lil’ salt
black pepper – 1 tbsp
paprika – 1 tbsp
2 big sweet peppers – like red or yellow or whatnot, use multiple colors for presentation (it’ll be like half a kilo)
about 5 small-medium sized carrots
1 orange
some curry powder/paste – I used yellow curry

1. Soak beans for 24 hours then put them in a pot with a liter of water and the bouillon and bring to a boil, add curry powder and then grind the orange peel (I don’t know the official term for getting the goods out of it) into the water and cover and simmer on low for an hour. Stir occasionally like once or twice to get the curry to dissolve all nice and good throughout.

2. While the beans cook, chop the onions, carrots, peppers and smash the garlic. Put some oil in a pan and throw in the onions, carrots, salt and some of the garlic. When the carrots are starting to get soft (just poke them with a fork) throw in a little more oil and put in the peppers and the rest of the garlic. Let them all get cooked up.

3. When the hour is up, you add the vegetables into the beans and stir. Dump in the orange juice and the black pepper and red pepper. Smash up your orange and throw it in too (not like slices for eating, like smashed to smithereens). Then go back to the fridge and take the orange juice back out and put a little more in just for good measure and the rest of the water if it’s necessary. Stir it all up and bring it to a boil. Drop the heat, cover and let it simmer for like 30 minutes.

4. Pour into a bowl, allow to slightly cool and then you eat.

5. And I’m like “that’s it” as I shrug my shoulders.

It’s both hot from the curry, black and red pepper and sweet. But it’s a dry heat – not a spicy heat like Cajun or Mexican, just pure heat. That’s why it’s a good combination with the fresh peppers, the orange and orange juice. It adds a nice sweet layer to the soup. It’s vegetarian and healthy. Enjoy!
***End***

Then came smyoter week. It was like school concerts and stuff. I got to watch the kiddies dance and sing and not work. All the classes were shortened for practicing. I went to the concerts and stuff. I got some vids. I missed the taping of the cutest segment ever, but I got ones almost equally as cute. Then my student that speaks English had to do a thing in Kazakh to praise the health care and hospital or something and I was like “dude this is your chance to light the town of fire (figuratively) make a stand on stage and cause a disturbance in protest to the hospital in front of all the town officials” but he didn’t. Official PC policy tells me not to do it so I tried to convince him to do my dirty work. Instead the pollution and death of the village will continue. I heard that if I make a “recommendation” about the safety not being up to “international standards” Kazakhstan might heed my words.

On the weekend I got out of work to go work in Makinka with Chrisconsin, Sagar and Mike Quinn. I talked about nature and videos with Sagar. I mentioned Chris last time so this time I’ll describe my friend Mike Quinn. He’s a cowboy from Wyoming. He’s been here for a year already and teaches college in Shchuchinsk (that is spelled correctly). He went to high school with Sagar but he’s two years older than us (that’s why they are put in the same town). He was a small town cowboy from Cheyenne when he went off to Yale. He’s a really smart dude and writes and edits the PCV newspaper here. He studied Russian so he can speak like super good. He’s always chasing after the Kazakh babes. I think he’s as successful with them as the rest of us, which is not at all. He’s really entertaining. Anywho, after chillin’ I headed home on the elektrichka to my village. On the train I met this cute girl and we talked for a while then she decided to talk in English. As my brain exploded because she totally dropped a huge bomb on me by being able to communicate in my native tongue I forgot to get her phone number because she lives not far away in Astana. As I was exiting the train I was like ‘oh shit’ and took out my sharpie and ripped a paper from notebook and wrote mine on it. I don’t know if she’ll call me though. I barely made it off the train in time; it was a risky maneuver for most likely naught. Oh I forgot to mention that the train had no heat. And it was minus 35. Yay Kazakhstan.

School happened again. Some nights I hang out with Aitugan and chill. He’s tite. At school I was like “can I start a cooking a club and use the kitchens with the kids?” They told me no cause like what if they get sick or something and I tried to reassure them that no one has ever gotten sick from my cooking. The answer was still no. Bummer. In other news, I’m the Akkol School Number 1 And-1 Team Streetballers number one fan. They’re in one of my classes and love basketball so I taught them awesome slang like ‘ups’ and ‘boomshakalaka’(from the glory days of nba jam t.e.). Oh I speak some more Kazakh now, so when I whip it out people are all like “damn boy – that’s fine!!” or at least I pretend that because 99% of the time I don’t understand their answers in Kazakh.

***SPECIAL INSERT 2 (PCV EDITION)****
This lil’ recipe is all stored up in my brain and adapted for Kazakhstan

what you need:
half a kilo of FARSH (ground beef)
sukhariki, I recommend the cheese flavored ones
basil
garlic – a bunch of cloves
tomato paste – 500ml bottle
onions
1 egg
water
spaghetti
olive oil
salt
sugar
paprika

1. Smash the sukhariki into a fine powder. Mix it into the farsh. Add basil, some garlic, the egg and mix for like 3 minutes – not too long. Form small balls.

2. Put olive oil in a pot. Heat and add onions, garlic and some basil (if you can score like oregano or something – more power to you) saute until the onions are translucent then dump in the tomato paste. Fill the jar with water and dump that in. If you think you need more water, dump it in! There’s no rules in Kaz, do what you want. Add basil, some paprika and stir. Let it heat for a while and get good. Taste it. Add sugar and salt until it tastes better. Heat for a while, keep simmering.

3. Throw the meat balls in the pot of sauce, bring to a boil then simmer for like an hour stirring occasionally. Let the meatballs cook in the sauce, don’t precook the balls in a pan, not my style. After an hour check if they are cooked by cutting one open.

4. Make the pasta

5. Combine everything on a plate and eat.

****End Special Insert 2****

That’s about everything. That has happened recently. I’m gonna see if I can ever get some of these vids I made up in here. This is like shortest post ever. Here’s the picture for the game… its at the top because if i move it in the blog it doesnt blow up

pa-ka!