late october

Pics: My co-teacher during training and our 8th grade class – mostly Russian kids.

I recently saw a talent show at a nearby school and it was great. Multiple acts were simply teenage girls doing unrehearsed, naughty dances to rap music to a crowd of silenced teachers and roaring children. Before the judges voted, they were pursued by the performers with baskets of fruit and fried bread, perhaps to win them over. Among the other sections of the show were a breakdance routine by 10 boys (who did flips off the stage) and a ballroom dance routine by 8 couples to “Only Hope” by Mandy Moore from A Walk to Remember. Magical.

I met one of my co-teachers. She's a lovely woman that's close to my age. We're basically going to be best friends because she loves horror movies and likes to dance. Me and some friends spent the night in Almaty recently and it was a beautiful disaster as usual. We rented an apartment for a night, got the key from an office and walked 20 minutes in the rain to the room. I broke the key in the keyhole (it got stuck), so we had to return to the office where the receptionist luckily gave as another room (which was in a completely different part of town). We walked 20 minutes there and after putting our stuff in the room, I accidentally locked the door without the passcode to the door. So we had to yell for help to second-floor tenants and after 10 minutes of this a stranger finally yelled out the code. I was a complete screw-up. Twice. We went to a restaurant after and a Russian woman said, in English, “Shut Up” because we were excitedly talking. Later a Kazakh businessman sat with us to practice his English. He cracked up when I said a Kazakh word (as many people do) and knew more about American agriculture and demographics than most Americans. He asked if we were protestant missionaries, in which we emphatically told him we're just teachers.