June 14, 2012

I hardly slept the whole night as the traffic outside the building never abated and we even had to suffer through some drunken men shouting in the middle of the night probably from the terrace of the hotel across the street. I felt simply exhausted as the noise level here is even worse than the one outside of Ryan’s apartment. I got up at six, made myself a cup of coffee, and started to read through the guidebook on Kazakhstan Ruth had given me a couple of weeks ago. I kept getting distracted as I couldn’t keep my eyes off of the stunning view of the Altai Mountains the rain had brought into sharp display.

I had agreed to go with Valerie on her round of assignments for the day so I could get better acquainted with the layout of the city. We started by going to her university where she had a conversation class with some teachers. The building was much more modern than the PedInst with wide hallways covered in tile flooring and ample windows that let in lots of light, but also strong sunshine. The room where they met had no fan or air conditioner and only five teachers showed up that day. I felt myself drifting off due to my lack of sleep, the slowness of the session and the insufferable heat in spite of my fanning myself continuously. When the session was over, we went looking for a currency exchange place and a decent place to eat, but it took forever to walk to the different places as most eating places around us were just fast food joints catering to the students and commuters.

Valerie remembered a restaurant nearby that Harry had taken her to and we went there to find a very pleasant place with lots of plants and very efficient service. We had a local variety of soup called solyanka which featured cubed beef and ham and two slices of lemon in it. I ordered French fries as I felt a craving for it and a local beer. Valerie ordered the same soup, the grape leaves stuffed with rice and plain water. The bread was cold and not particularly appetizing, but overall, we had a nice meal for about $27.00. We went back to the apartment hoping to take a short nap, but the bus system here is extremely slow and unreliable and we reached the flat just with enough time for Valerie to pick up the materials she needed to conduct a music club session at the American Corner and her evening conversation class for the Lesbian-Gay Coalition group.

We had walk great distances to reach the right bus stop and then had to wait there for the appropriate line with much hesitation on Valerie’s part as she had recently moved into a new neighborhood and was still becoming familiar with the bus lines serving different parts of the city. I felt my energy level precipitously dropping as the afternoon drone on. We got to the American Corner and found around ten people of different age levels waiting to participate in the session. While Valerie set up, I went next door to buy some water as I felt dangerously dehydrated at that point. The store was owned by a Korean family and the mother was very nice in explaining what type of local currency I needed to pay for my purchases. They had an attractive fruit stand set up outside and I was tempted to buy the fresh strawberries and apricots, but knowing we weren’t going directly to the apartment after the session, deterred me from doing so. I was tempted by a bar of ice cream covered by chocolate and ate one of them while standing on the sidewalk and watching people go by.

Valerie presented “Thunder Road” by Bruce Springsteen beginning with a biographical sketch of the artist, some vocabulary included in the lyrics and then had the attendees read each stanza while explaining the meaning. At the end, she played the song only once. We then took another bus to what seemed like the end of the world as it was rush hour traffic by then and the buses don’t have air conditioning here while being packed to gills with commuters. We were lucky to find seats after a little while and were then packed like sardines until about an hour later when we were able to exit in a run-down part of the city where the main business seemed to be auto parts stores. We walked to a dilapidated set of buildings, some of which had their windows missing and covered with just plastic sheets. The place looked desolate in spite of the few children playing in the concrete courtyard. We took another rickety elevator to the 12th floor and had to walk to the 13^th before knocking on the door of a dreadful flat housing an NGO funded by USAID to distribute condoms and provide health counseling to gay and lesbian people in the area.

The class ran from 6:30 to 8:00pm and the topic this time was travel. Valerie started by asking the six participants to write the name of a place they’d like to visit in the future and not show their paper to anybody else. We then had to guess who had written which country. There were five men and one woman in the group all of them with very low levels of vocabulary and thus much of the discussion took place in Russian. I was so tired that I could barely keep my eyes open and even stepped out into the tiny balcony for a few minutes to get some fresh air. When the class was over, we took yet another bus to the supermarket so I could buy a few things for breakfast including coffee, milk, bread, yogurt and cheese. I found a vast array of Korean salads on sale and bought two containers for dinner. We waited for the bus for quite a while, but our number never showed up. Valerie suggested walking to another intersection for a different line, which I regretted for my bag of groceries was getting heavier and heavier and then couldn’t find that bus either.

We offered up to pay for a taxi home and didn’t get there until 10:15pm. I was starving by then and greedily ate most of the combined salads I had purchased, along with one cup of yogurt. I forwent my evening shower and got ready for a much deserved night of sleep.