(Note, sorry to leave anybody hanging with the last post. Matt is fine, his host family is a great Russian couple and their kids. He is hanging out with his host-papa in his man-cave, playing guitar and eating blinis. It's a good life)
So, a little about my host family and my living situation. My host family is really just the mother, younger sister and brother. The other sister lives in her own flat now, though her (fat, round, adorable) baby is here in the day time. Both the younger sister and brother speak English and they enjoy talking to me (I think), so it's easy for me to feel at home. Ethnically, they are Kazakh, so Kazakh is their native language but they speak Russian fluently as well. This is perfect for me because I'm supposed to learn Russian, but I want to learn a little Kazakh as well, and they are eager to help me with both.
I know it has only been one day, but I haven't lacked any motivation to study and learn words. When someone is sitting right across from you, encouraging you and trying to help you, it doesn't feel so difficult. Plus, Mama doesn't speak any English, but she is eager to talk to me, too, so learning to communicate with her even on a basic level will make us both very happy.
The fact that I can learn a little Kazakh is useful because the majority of people living in Kazakhstan are native Kazakhs and even using just a few simple words like "hello" and "thank you" goes a long way to warm people to you. I may never be able to say full sentences in Kazakh, but I should come out of this with some basic greetings and pleasantries.
Our house is on the edge of town and is probably similar to what those in the villages experience. We live behind a heavy, locked gate that opens onto a kind of small, (charmingly) ramshackle complex. There is the main house where the family has bedrooms, the living room and kitchen. Then there is the little building I am in, which from a divided entry way houses Azamat's room and my room. My room is kind of like it's own flat – I have a bedroom area, a shower/sink area and a small refrigerator and dish sink area. Janma and her family lived here until I came along (homewrecker!).
Beside my building, there is an elevated room decorated a bit like a fancy living room. Nuriya said that this is where guests usually stay and the whole family often sleeps there in the summer time because it is cooler. In Kazakhstan, it is not unusual for a family to sleep all in the same room – they don't share our American insistence on individual space and extreme privacy. We've been told to prepare ourselves for our host families to walk right in our rooms without much notice, but my host family is very considerate about giving me some warning.
The one thing you may have noticed that I left out is the bathroom. That's because the bathroom is, well, left out. Even though I am rather lucky because I have electricity and running water, the toilet is a squatty potty in an out house near the gate. It's really not so bad – I'm used to sqattys because of Japan and this one is kept clean and while it's obviously an outhouse, the smell isn't awful or anything. The only real inconvenience is that it's outside and that means at night, I have a bit of a trek AND there is no light inside the shed, so I have to make sure I position my feet correctly BEFORE I close the door. A misstep would not be pleasant.
I also have to be careful about paper usage because a) Kazakh people don't really use toilet paper – my family seems to mostly use squares of newspaper b) my host mom kindly bought me a roll of toilet paper (it's kind of like those brown paper towels you see in public bathrooms, but a little softer), but that's just ONE roll of toilet paper and it's apparently all mine. I'd be embarrassed to go through it quickly since it's kind of an extravagance for them. So, I've been supplementing with some tissues I brought with me just for this type of situation, but I don't have an endless supply of those either. Oh, and c) you put all paper in a trash can beside the drop spot, no matter what it was used to clean up, so excessive use by me of my fancy paper would be pretty noticeable AND reasons FOR excessive usage have to be somehow discreetly dealt with. I realize perhaps no one wants to hear about my toilet paper woes, but this is a rather big learning curve for me and I just wanted to share my amazing ability to adapt ;-)
That's it for now folks, except to say how happy I am that I finally heard from Matt! My family has internet and so does Matt's, so he was able to send me a message that he's alright. It wasn't a long message, but at least I know he didn't book a flight home just yet! Till next time…
Oh, and my host-mom was born in Uzbekistan and she wants to teach me some Uzbek dances. Aren't you jealous now?
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