Free Time, Friends & Food

With the guys having practice twice a day, our free time during the day is limited to only about five hours.  I'm not sure if they'll still have that same schedule once the basketball season starts so Heath and I typically do our exploring in between both practices.  Here are some pictures from Monday when Heath took me towards the direction of the "beach".  I didn't go all the way to the water because I didn't want to get my shoes too sandy!

Kapshagay is a lot bigger than I thought.  We only venture around downtown because our apartment is closest to that area, but I've heard that we have an entirely different side of town with hotels and houses too.  The casino is too far too walk to, but I hope to get pictures of it during my time here so I can experience everything about the town.

Billboards.

Flags at the town entrance. 

This is near the town entrance as well.  I'm not sure about the statue and don't know the meaning of the poles either, but I thought it was a good picture opportunity.  The guys walk through this on the way to practice.  The sports complex is only 5 minutes away from our apartment. 

That blue you see in the distant is the "beach".  Kazakhstan is a landlocked country so there are no oceans really, but they refer to this large lake as a beach.  There is a sidewalk that you can take on foot towards the beach, but there is a drop off and only a sand pathway when you get closer. 

This is where the guys practice.

I was surprised to see houses!  This is when I learned Kapshagay is bigger than I've seen.

Sweet gates.

This is a large school near our apartment.  The playground is in rainbow colors as well as their staircases and doors.  I'd love going to this school because it's so colorful! 

I had to take a picture of the sandbox outside of our apartment complex.  There are several kids that live in our building, and they play outside every day.  It's so different seeing kids outside here because I barely see kids play outside in America.

Remember when I wrote a post about obtaining my letter to complete my visa?  And how I was very adamant through email to make sure the club knew what I needed?  Well, that correspondent is now my new friend.  I guess she couldn't sense my frustration through those e-mails.  Thank goodness.  We spent over an hour yesterday evening teaching other words from our different languages.

Gilya (pronounced "gee-la") is the sweetest!  She's been the club's secretary for three years now, and is hoping to learn better English to become a flight attendant one day.  She went to a university in Almaty and lives with her family in Kapshagay.  Her apartment is close to ours so she also came over last night to hang out!  We showed each other pictures of our friends and family.  I think this friendship is going great already... especially since we share the same interests: shopping, cooking, drinking wine and loving on our niece and nephews!  (She has two nieces.)

She had a translator up on her computer.

In most of our free time at night, we like to play games!  Heath and Nate make it very competitive, and I'm just there as a moderator.  No one ever cares if I win or lose.  Not even myself.  But with them??  You'd think winning a round of Farkle is like winning a national championship.  We only have playing cards, Phase 10, Farkle and Dominoes- what could fit in my luggage amidst their requested hot sauce and Pop-Tarts.  Playing games at night really helped me stay up longer so I can adjust to the time change, otherwise I would be asleep by 8 PM every night if I had it my way.

This is an example of how the guys make these games so competitive.  We finished a game of Phase 10 before lunch today, but it wasn't like any other rounds we've played.  Heath and Nate had a bet that the loser had to eat half a hot pepper without drinking water for 30 minutes- seeds and all.  Obviously I wasn't dumb enough to agree to this bet because we all know I would've lost regardless.  Guess who lost?

He couldn't even wait 5 minutes before he took a drink of water!  Just FYI, Heath has won more games than Nate since we've started playing games here ;)

It is with sadness that I tell you I did not participate in National Taco Day today (my day is almost over- we are 11 hours ahead of Central time).  I would give anything to have $1 tacos at Fuzzy's!  Heath and I agreed to participate by having something close to tacos for dinner- a Kazakhstan chicken burrito.  I made a new batch of salsa, even spicier than the last.  I was SO excited to get chicken burritos for dinner!

Saying that I like them is an understatement.  I could eat one every day, especially at $2.28 USD for the entire thing.  Sadly, the chicken was sold out by the time I tried to grab us some for dinner.  They had beef, but I WANTED CHICKEN.  What baby wants, baby gets... Unfortunately, that wasn't the case tonight.  I'm just stuck eating chips and salsa now, which isn't so bad.  I may or may not be having something similar to Ramen noodles later...

Remember when I accidentally got canned tomato paste instead of canned tomatoes?  To fix my mistake, I made a simple marinara sauce.  I added onions, olive oil, one chopped fresh tomato, minced garlic, salt, pepper and water to get it to my desired consistency. 

I then cooked the other half of the ground beef leftover from the taco mixture with yellow bell pepper, green bell pepper and onions and added it to the pasta sauce with fresh parsley.  I had to work with what I already had. 

We had some whole wheat pasta, so this is what we had for dinner two nights ago!  That 28 oz. can of tomato paste made SO MUCH pasta sauce.  Looks like we will be having pasta for a couple of backup meals.  In a dream world with an oven in the kitchen (which we lack), I would make a casserole of some sort with shredded cheese on top with the leftover meat sauce.

Since we are on the subject of food, this is what I had for lunch today.  We went back to Heath and Nate's favorite place downtown, which I translated the restaurant name to "Svetlana".  This is a cucumber, chicken, egg salad mixed in mayonnaise and topped with fried potato strings.  The only two dressing options are mayonnaise and oil here.  This reminded me of a chicken salad from America!  The crazy thing is their salads cost as much as their entrees. 

Unlike the lagman I had for my first local meal at this restaurant last week, this noodle dish had shorter noodles and did not come drowning in an oily sauce.  This almost reminded me of a Chinese noodle dish.  It had chicken, green and red bell pepper, cabbage, onion, diced long green beans, parsley and I obviously added sriracha hot sauce.  Yes, I carry that around in my purse.

As promised, check back tomorrow for a post about my new way to understanding Russian when at a restaurant.  It's my new hobby... Besides cooking, cleaning and doing my husband's laundry, of course.  The Real Housewives of Kapshagay, minus the plastic surgery and never ending drama.



Until next time,