OnTheGo

An excerpt from an email her first summer in KZ. They had gone to a distant village for a 2 week English camp.

Highlights from my trip:

I was chased by 2 geese…it was totally unprovoked. I was even walking on the other side of the road because I knew geese are agressive.

I saw a lady attacked by 2 dogs. The owner got them off and we called Joyce, who is a nurse, and she came to check on the lady.

I discovered that I love raspberries. I hated them in the states, but when you can walk outside and pick them off a vine and eat them they are so good. They are even better over vanilla ice cream.

I went swimming in the river with the kids.

My classroom for English camp was in a yurt.

I got the stomach flu for 24 hours. A lot of people got it, but I was the only one that had it for the full 24 hours. What fun!

We stayed in the Craven’s house, which is the one that burned in February. It is mostly fixed up but some things haven’t been totally fixed, such as the bathroom has a door but it is bigger than the door frame so it never shut completely and the bathtub is not bolted down so if you step too far forward or backward the whole thing comes up. When we got there it still smelled of smoke but we left the doors and windows open and it aired out before I left.

The father of one of the girls from English camp and the church had cancer for 4 years and he died before I left the other day. She is only 14 and her sister is in New Jersey working at a camp for the summer, so she can’t even be here with her family. They do not embalm here and the body is usually kept in the home until burial. I went the first day and it was awful. They don’t do anything to the body at all. They had placed coins over the eyes to keep them closed and tied a cloth around his head to keep the jaw shut. He had lost so much weight that he was all skin and bones and was a grayish color. The body was in a pine box sitting on a table in the family room of the house.

I learned what the phase “until the cows come home” means. The people pay the shepherds to take the cattle out on the steppe and graze them in the summer. At 8:00 pm sharp the cows come home and someone has to be there to meet them and get them home. Usually, this is the kids’ job to get their cows and get them home. At 8:30 pm the sheep and goats come home from the steppe. When the cows came back it seemed remarkably organized. The cows seemed to know which direction to walk in and started towards their home. When the goats and sheep came back it was mass chaos. They went in every direction. Shepherds and children running around crazy trying to get them grouped together correctly and walking in the right direction.