2nd October

2nd October

I haven’t had much chance for reading over the last few days, so you are spared another Dune quote.

I spent the last two days in a small village 2 hours south of here, with a volunteer who came in the group before me, so has been in Kazakhstan a year. I went with Steven and Jason, ostensibly for ‘Baseball day’, but mainly as an excuse to get out and see another site (and person of course). She lives in a tiny village, about 700 people, and her school only has 175 students! Its is also at the foot of the mountains, and her house has a cow, and pets, and chickens, and a big garden. The milk from the tea came from the cow sitting in the garden…and… and…

I have ‘village envy’ unfortunately, but I know I will get over it. It’s just a shame that this village meets every one of my criteria for a perfect village! I bet it even has an ice skating pond in the winter - It had an arm-wresting table for goodness sake!

Baseball was fun, surprisingly so actually, seeing as we had to teach the kids the game from scratch, including throwing and catching – they don’t play tennis, or baseball, or cricket here, and so it was amazing to see how well they did with their hand to eye co-ordination.

Hitting and the basic idea of the game were grasped fairly quickly, and we had a great 3 hours of getting sunburnt in the field, which was grass! Not the dust bowl I have here.

The village was lovely and quiet, and dark. The view of the stars last night as I was brushing my teeth in the garden was just amazing. I really should find a star-chart and work on my constellations, or at least work out which is the North Star etc.