Kazakhstan - Entry #6

April 5, 1999

Greetings to all our friends and thank you to all who have responded lately. It means a lot to me to receive E-mail from you, especially since I don't often receive snail mail anymore. It was interesting to celebrate Easter in a country where very few do. Even the Russian Orthodox celebrate next Sunday, a full week later. For them, yesterday was Palm Sunday, (which is celebrated by using pussy willow branches, instead of palms). Egg dyes and food coloring do not exist here; I learned that eggs are dyed by using beets for red, turmeric for yellow, red cabbage for blue, etc. I will be prepared next year. Actually, it is difficult to bring eggs home from the market, because they are sold individually. I have saved one plastic container that holds 6 eggs that I will use the next time I go shopping.

We had two interesting experiences this weekend. Lydia was spending the night with a friend, so we decided to take Rose to an opera, The Barber of Seville. We arrived at the concert hall, which was beautiful. Tickets for the three of us cost about $5.00 total. It was the first really warm day, so we walked around the courtyard and the fountain. A restaurant across the street was cooking the traditional outdoor grill staple, which is lamb meat on a skewer, cooked over a wood fire and served over rice. I have not tried it yet, but plan to, as it smells wonderful. We have a friend who is local who has offered to teach us how to marinate the meat and cook the dish.

Back to the concert. We examined the upcoming event posters and Ted showed us how to find the dates (performances always start at 6 PM) and the ticket prices on the posters. He can figure out a fair amount of Russian when it is in writing. Inside the hall was beautiful, all red velvet trimmed with gold tassels, and in good repair. The back of the stage contained an organ and the back wall was filled wall-to-wall and to the high ceiling with the beautiful silver organ sound pipes. Towards the center of the stage was a grand piano with a single music rack to the side. On the front edge of the stage was a beautiful spray of fresh flowers, at least six feet across. No programs. Ted said, "maybe this will only be the music from the opera." Rose was disappointed, it was the acting that she was counting on. Anyway, the program began and we were in the wrong concert hall, but the concert, a violinist from Israel and a local accompanist, was very beautiful. I have never heard such silence from an audience during a performance. There were about six children there, younger than Rose. There were at least several hundred people in the audience, but not a cough, not a cleared throat, not a rustle. At places where we would have clapped, no one did. People applauded at the end of the first program of about three numbers, right before the intermission, then again at the end of the evening, and after each of three encores. Even Rose was pleased that we had heard and experienced it. Later we looked at the list where we had learned about the opera and the information was listed wrong. We will try again with another opera in the future.

Very early on, Rose noticed that it is not accessible for people with disabilities here. Even our house has a raised sill at each inner doorway that is about two inches high. We quickly learned to step up at each doorway. At the concert hall, (and this is typical) the toilets are down about three flights of marble stairs. The toilets themselves are in very narrow stalls and are sometimes "water closets" and sometimes similar to seats like an outhouse. Even though most seats are raised, from the footprints on them, I would guess that most people stand on them to use them. All very interesting.

In an earlier journal entry, I mentioned that behind our house is a steep hill that has a chair lift running up it on a system of cables. A friend had come to visit on Saturday and she mentioned that she had taken a taxi up the mountain and then walked back overland, down the hill to town. She didn't recommend the walking part, because the hill was almost too steep to walk on. At the top, in addition to the television tower that marks the high point in the city, she said that there were tearooms and restaurants and a wonderful view. So now that we knew that there was a road leading up the mountain, we decided to see what we could see. We wound higher than we had believed we would from looking up at it from the house. When we parked the car on the top, the drop-off was so steep that Rose did not want to get out of the car. But the view was breathtaking. The snow-capped mountains that we have looked up at each day, were right there, and we were looking over at them, feeling almost level with them. We did not have the camera, but we will have it the next time we go up there. Lydia was not with us, so we will return soon. My heart is still mesmerized with that experience of being so high in so beautiful a place. We could see our house and yard very small below at the edge of the city. When you went to the far side of the hill, it was a different world; all pastoral and green grass, no development or streetlights, or even roads. We found where the chair lift came to and it was a full gondola car, with room for 15 people to stand in. From our house it had looked so much smaller, for about 3 people, but it is a fully enclosed carrier, the kind made popular in adventure films where people are always terrorized or stranded in these. We found where it lands in the town, not far from where we live, so we plan to ride it soon.

We are meeting more friends each week. Our immediate neighbors are from the United Kingdom. Lydia has a good friend several houses down who is Korean and in her class at school. The plan was for us to have a host family to help us learn what we needed to know to adjust here. For three weeks, people have explained to me that our host family is out of the country. Finally someone said that the wife had been "medivac"ed out to Europe for emergency surgery. After three weeks, the husband and two children returned two days ago without her. The husband works with Ted, so he will find out if we can help somehow. Maybe I can do something that would allow her to be able to come back.

Well, all for now. Check out the web page if you have not yet. Ted says we will change the photos about every two weeks. Send our best to all who know us. Life is a wonderful adventure.

Brecken