Layers, Staircases, You Know What I Mean, Right?

Have you ever thought of the vocabulary it takes to accomplish/dictate/oversee certain tasks? Instructing or delegating in the kitchen requires whomever you are working with to know the differences between dice, slice, chop, etc. If there is some kind of barrier to understanding you then have to show an example to get the desired product.

So what happens when you don't have the necessary vocabulary or an example? You pray and hope for the best.

When we moved here I was overdue for a haircut. We've been here over five months and obviously my need for a haircut has not diminished. I have taken note of the hairstyles of the women at church and found there was a sister who had a nice style, and her hair always looked good (she maintained the cut with follow-up cuts). I spoke to her daughter, and they were happy to help me get an appointment with the hair stylist. So, last Saturday I went in and watched the stylist cut Nursia's hair and then took my turn. I explained to her daughter, Mira, that I wanted bangs, liked layers, but didn't want my hair short. She relayed the information to the stylist and he spoke to me and indicated a length for the bangs, which I agreed to and off came the hair...

It was interesting telling Mira what I wanted and showing her what I meant with gestures to try and clarify the meaning. I have no idea what the words for bangs or layers are in Russian, but I think the word for layers may translate closely to staircases because that's what Mira kept saying when she couldn't remember the word I used.

My new look is definitely different than any I've had in a long time. For whatever reason, when I see myself in the reflection I laugh.

Our Little Raider

In order to be productive in the kitchen we often have to be pretty resourceful in occupying Baby. One effective method I use pretty frequently is something I saw my mom allow her grandbabies to do. Raid the cabinets.


Sometimes she just grabs things and pulls them to the floor, other times she will investigate an item until she loses interest and then drop it onto the floor... the options are endless. Unfortunately, the items in the cabinet are not...

Jack Sprat

Jack Sprat could eat no fat.

His wife could eat no lean.
And so between them both, you see,
They licked the platter clean!

My parents were fond of noting that Chris and I are the complete opposite of this childhood rhyme. Chris loves fat. I do not. He would prefer whole milk, I would prefer skim. We compromise with 1%. He likes dark meat, I like white meat, it's a perfect marriage, really it is.

During the winter it is common to serve salo with bread throughout the former Soviet Union. Salo hails from the Ukraine, where it is a favorite food, perhaps even considered a delicacy. We have been served it a few times. This is what it looks like:


So, what is salo? Raw pork fat. The fat is purchased and you take it home and season it with garlic, salt, herbs, other seasonings, and then you let it sit and soak in all the flavor. This is salo that our friend Anya made and brought to our home. I have tasted it, and while full of flavor, I'm not quite sure about the texture. Chris loves it.

The Saga of the Missing Key

Preface: Chris has been taking Kazakh lessons for the last month and a half. Because of our lesson schedules it worked out that once a week I would meet Chris after his Kazakh lesson to "hand off" Baby and I would then go to my English lesson.

My last week of lessons I happened to misplace my house key... I couldn't find it for days. We weren't really inconvenienced by the loss until my second lesson of the week. Chris was due to return home from running an errand and was running late. He called me and we arranged to meet at the bus stop so he could take Baby and I could run across the street to catch a bus headed in the right direction. When I went to the door to leave I realized I was locked in! (I often have Chris just lock the door after himself when he leaves so he can let himself back in. We can unlock the door from the inside, but we have to have one of our keys and since mine was missing... I was stuck!) I waited for Chris to get home and since we were then running late, he had to walk back to the main road with me to help me get a taxi.

The next day we were well aware of the one-key issue. It was our day to meet between Kazakh and English lessons and pass off Baby. Chris left and made sure to stress the importance of remembering to give him his keys when I gave him Baby. He even told me to put the keys in my jeans pocket so I would feel them and not forget to give them to him. At some point I thought it would be even better to just put the keys in the basket of our stroller, but decided against it as I wasn't sure how secure the keys would be when going over big bumps.

So, we met and passed off Baby and I walked a ways before getting on the bus. Already on the bus, halfway to my destination, I got a call from Chris. I remembered the keys were still in my pocket as I answered the phone. It would have been fine if he interrupted my lesson to get the keys, but traveling there wasn't very practical. I was able to quickly suggest that he visit our neighbors, as I was sure Anya and Stacia would be home.

I hurried home after the lesson but my total time away was about three hours. Just enough time for them to have quite the adventure. It went something like this:

About ten minutes after getting to Anya's, Baby's diaper was soaked through. They had to change her diaper and pull off her pants (also wet), and weren't exactly sure what to do next. (Since this was just a trade-off trip, the diaper bag was not carried in the stroller.) They put a pair of little girl panties (fresh from the box) with a small cloth on our 8-month old daughter. Minutes later Chris was holding Addie in the kitchen and she managed to wet herself and pretty much start spraying the kitchen too. Chris and Anya used a large dish towel with our snappy (works in place of diaper pins) and covered it with our plastic diaper cover. Anya found the smallest pair of Stacia's old tights and they put them on Addie to get her dressed and keep her little legs warm.

I think Chris was a little traumatized by the experience, but Addie didn't seem to think there was anything particularly unusual about the bulky terry-cloth diaper, or the amazingly long pair of tights. If only we could all be so easily pleased! =)



As for my key? I found it the next morning when my Russian tutor, Mira, came and I pulled out my Russian materials. Obviously, I'm not studying enough... =]

Walker Time

Addie is definitely at home in her walker. She is a big fan of the freedom it provides and isn't too happy with us when we close doors limiting her freedom for exploration.


Her first paparazzi picture. =D

The Gnome Hat

This is the "gnome" hat that Addie wears with her bear suit. Hopefully you can see that I wasn't kidding when I said it was long!

Addie and Her Daddy

I love these two.

Valentine Weekend

Last weekend was great! We were able to enjoy a visit from Chris' parents as they had some business in town. It is our tradition to celebrate Valentine's Day early, on the 13th, but Chris had an evening meeting so we had a very limited "celebration" on Friday.

Addie and I were able to visit with Grandma & Grandma Friday evening during Chris' meeting and again Saturday afternoon (Chris was again unable to attend because his Kazakh lesson was rescheduled). Saturday evening we ventured to the church for our branch Valentine's program.

What fun! There was an interactive skit and a few music performances, including a dance by the primary. I have much of the dance on video but have failed on numberless attempts to upload it to this post (hence the late post & pictures instead of video).


We had a really nice time, but were glad to get home and get into bed, it was a long day!

We said good-bye to Grandpa a few hours after church on Sunday, but we were able to visit with Grandma an extra day! It was fun to visit with her a little longer, and we especially liked that she sent us off on a lunch date! Aside from two temple trips we had before leaving the States, we haven't had anyone watch Addie for an extended period of time, so this was our first real date without our baby with us in 8 months!

We went to a really nice Uzbek restaurant that is designed to like Central Asian Islamic architecture. It was a fun atmosphere to be in. Chris took these pictures with his phone, we should have taken more to try and capture it better.

Pretty in Purple

Lagman **pronounced lawg-mawn**

A few weeks ago our Relief Society had an activity. We met at the church at 11:00 a.m., then left a little after noon, to go to the home of our branch president and his wife. (If you thought "Mormon Standard Time" was bad in the States, just imagine what it is like when you rely on public transportation!) Our branch president is Uyghur ethnicity, and although his wife, Elmira, is Ta-tar, she has learned some of the Uyghur dishes from her husband's family. This activity was so she could teach us how to make lagman.

The pictures below are of some of the sisters in our Relief Society. It took us a while to get started as there was another car of sisters on their way. (President Sultan drove from his house into the city to pick up the rest of our group from the church--it's at least a 30-45 minute drive.)


Lagman is a noodle soup. The soup has meat in it, but it is fully of veggies and noodles. These noodles are not your standard macaroni. They are homemade and yummy! They are also a lot of work.

The large picture in the collage below shows us working on step 2 (or was it 3?) of stretching the dough into noodles.


To be honest, I can't remember exactly how many times we stretched the noodles. It was at least four times, but may have been five. The dough starts out as one very thick "noodle" (they compared its size to a sausage), then you stretch it and divide it into a few noodles; the resulting noodles are thicker than a hot dog, and can be divided. The process of stretching the dough is similar to making snakes with play-dough except it is much more difficult. {The dough takes much much more work to stay in the stretched snake form than play-dough, I'm not sure why or what causes it, but it has a much different texture (more dense/tougher??) than play-dough and needs more "encouragement" for formation}

The picture in the upper left of the collage below shows Elmira standing behind me a little to the left. She is stretching the noodles in this picture, and doing it speedily with great precision. Watching her makes it look like a cakewalk... she was kind enough to reassure me that she used to stretch the noodles with as much difficulty as me.


One of the amazing things about stretching the noodles was becoming aware of the muscles in my fingers and arms that I apparently don't work very often. Although I wasn't sore later, these muscles were telling me they were tired long before we were finished.

You boil the noodles and then divide into bowls:


Then you top the noodles with the veggie-meat part of the soup and broth. Then, serve.


These are the women of our Relief Society. While a few are missing, these are most of our sisters. These women are amazing! They are simply so committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ and have great faith in Him and this work. I believe most, if not all, have had to gain faith in not just a few of the principles or doctrines of the gospel of Jesus Christ, but in Jesus Christ himself. It is humbling to see and hear these wonderful sisters bear testimony of the change that has come into their lives as they have heard the good news and embraced it with full purpose of heart. Their desire to learn and live according to the Lord's commandments is amazing. Their love for each other is quite an example as well. These gatherings are more than just a bunch of women getting together, it is truly a bunch of sisters getting together and the bonding and exchanges shared are proof of that unity and sisterhood.


When it was time to depart we were divided into the two cars according to the regions of the city so the drivers could save on gas. As we left the neighborhood I saw two wild dogs that both looked like wolves. I gasped and said something like, "Oh! Look at those..." and then realized (and said aloud) that none of the other passengers in the van knew English! It took me another second to remember that President Sultan does know English, and we both started laughing. It was an interesting experience, and a first for me. Never before had I been unable to communicate with people I knew.

The Shirt Practically Says It All

This is an idea of what happens when Addie gets her sippy cup of water. She definitely wears more than she actually drinks, but she loves it all the same.

If you look closely, you may be able to notice that her left pant leg doesn't look quite white, because it too is wet and her skin shows through.

Tags

Addie loves tags. Any shape, color, or size. The tag is, hands down, her favorite part of any thing she gets her hands on.

Chase

Addie loves to chase and be chased. This is a mild, but fun example of the game.

A Little Bit of Cereal

So, we started feeding Addie rice cereal a while ago... but haven't mentioned or pictured it yet. Thought we'd remedy that, so here you go:

This is her first actual taste of solid food. Please excuse our silliness.

We initially had difficulty finding a baby cereal without milk, sugar, etc. so her first taste was homemade rice cereal... a little chunkier and harder than it probably should have been.

No child was harmed in the making of these videos.

And since the videos are a little dark, here's the photo summary:

Spending the Holidays in Kazakhstan

Holidays don't become memorable or special because someone dedicates a specific day for celebration. I say that because...

The primary religion in Kazakhstan is Islam. Next is Russian Orthodoxy. Muslims don't celebrate Christmas (hopefully that's not a revelation) and the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas on January 6th (Three Kings Day).

All of this means... that December 25th is just another day to the majority of the country and people of Kazakhstan. Since it was still a special day for us, we decided to do special things. Christmas is what you make it. We dressed up Addie on Christmas Eve, and Chris traveled around the city picking up "special-specials" for our special day. ;) We didn't purchase a Christmas tree because they were way too expensive... as were all the other decorations. So our apartment was not very festive... until Christmas morning.

I am sharing our "special-specials" because they are definitely courtesy of a Christmas in Kazakhstan. Quality merchandise here is about three times the price you would find in the States, which means we avoid buying things in general (other than food, of course).


The imported generic-brand American cereal and pop-tarts were a real treat... at their going rate, we won't be buying them again!

The best thing about the "Christmas chair" is the lovely bunch of evergreen on the top. Chris stepped out Christmas Eve to pick something up from one of the little stores near us. I asked him to take Addie with him which he hesitantly did (very unusual). Some time after their return (the trip took an unusually long time) I was looking at Addie and realized she had dirt in her eye! I couldn't figure out how it got there, so I mentioned it to Chris. He said he thought she might. (!) He wouldn't tell me why or how she might, and the topic was dropped. Later that evening, Chris talked to his parents on Skype and I joined the conversation a little while after it was started. His mom mentioned something about our Christmas branch, and Chris got a little flustered and said something to her about spoiling the surprise. I was able to begin connecting the dots and Chris filled in the blanks on Christmas morning (he is very good about keeping surprises a surprise). He decided to get our "tree" from just outside our apartment building and did it with Addie in the carrier. As he was working on removing little branches Addie was content with staring up, mouth wide open, catching dirt and everything else that fell onto her. Hence the dirt in her eye.

So, we had a really nice morning and then went to an Indian restaurant for lunch--and found out they have a buffet! The food was pretty good, but definitely not the best Indian food we've had (we've since been back, and the buffet is gone, but the food was much better). After lunch we walked around one of the shopping areas (similar to a mall) for a while and then walked home. Later, we joined our neighbors for a Christmas/birthday dinner. Their daughter turned seven, so we celebrated her birthday as well as the holiday. It was a lot of fun. We were able to introduce them to cinnamon rolls, which we've decided will become another Christmas tradition. Aptly named Clone of a Cinnabon, they are yummy!

The Saturday after Christmas was our branch Christmas program. The members presented a re-enactment of the story of a woman who prepared for a visit of the Savior, instead hosts various other people who are in need (shelter, food, etc.), and at the end of the day, is disappointed that the Savior never came. She prays and realizes that in serving those various people she was really serving the Lord. It was a nice message, and it was followed by various musical presentations of Christmas carols and hymns. I snapped a picture of our primary girls (we have one boy in primary and he is three!) all dressed up like angels.

The biggest holiday in Kazakhstan, and probably the entire former Soviet Union, is New Years. Traditionally families get together on New Year's Eve and have a late dinner and celebrate the coming of midnight together. We were invited to join two different groups for the festivities and we were really excited... until we got sick! We attempted to cancel both our plans, but our friends Aundrey and Anya refused to let us miss out on all the fun. =) So around 9:30 p.m. we wondered next door with some cinnamon rolls (another batch!) and waited for Grandfather Frost (Santa Clause) to come. (S)He did, and we had a blast! Some of Chris' family may recognize this Grandfather Frost, as it is our very own Sveta.

Some of their traditions for New Years are quite similar to what we do for Christmas. Everyone puts up a New Year's tree with all the trimmings, they give gifts, Grandfather Frost comes and gives gifts... BUT! There are some very distinct and fun differences! Children dress up for this holiday, as you can see by Stacia's fairy princess costume. (They don't mess around either, these costumes are amazing!) Grandfather Frost actually visits with the children, and in order to receive their gifts they have to solve or retell riddles they are given, sing songs, etc. It was a lot of fun to see and experience. Also, the city is bright with fireworks. We heard them going off for days before and after New Years, but the sky was bright all night long on New Year's Eve. I was actually awakened at 5:00 a.m. by fireworks going off near us, and heard them go off a few times the following hour.

Little Miss Independent

Now that Addie has her own set of wheels to move around in, she has gained the ability to do what a girl always wants to do: check out shoes.

Being a fan of cute shoes myself, I find myself simultaneously pleased and displeased. Pleased because maybe one day she'll enjoy shoe shopping as much as I do (and hopefully with me), displeased because sucking and biting are not good ways for anyone to check out shoes.


Most of the shoes are too heavy for her to actually hold, so she gets them in her little grip and then drops them when she pulls them off the shelf. Addie then peers over the edge of her walker, and looks at the shoe (now on the floor) with a little bit of wonder. She also does this "peering over the edge" bit when she drops toys from her walker and her high chair.