Strange Company

Well, just when you think Spring is about to come, you get a heavy dump of snow that undoes all the work that Mother Nature has been doing in melting the ice. I really thought we were done with this whole foot of melting ice business.
Anyway, In Kazakhstan seasons start on the first of the month so Spring began on the first of March. I’ll believe it when I see it. Tues brought about the first day above freezing since November and I was almost moved to tears. It’s been a long, hard battle but I now have reason to suspect that this winter won’t last forever.
It has been an interesting week. On Monday I helped a volunteer from Karaganda with a seminar directed at English teachers, students, and librarians. I was a little concerned as I was to lecture to the librarians who spoke no English, but I had my friend/Russian tutor Gulzhan on standby for translation and talked about Literature in the modern age and techniques for getting kids to read for about 2 hours. It was actually pretty rewarding, as I was able to give my first real class in the field I love, but on the whole I’m not exactly sure why we had the seminar in the first place. I just don’t know what we were supposed to accomplish. Still it got Robert and I a spot on the evening news so I’m pretty much famous now. After the seminar the library presented a small lunch for us that consisted of butter and sausage sandwiches (like Grandma used to make) and some finger foods. It was pretty tasty but after about an hour I was starting to wonder why I was still there. Turns out the reason for that was that the director made us put our coats in her room and then promptly left the library with the only key and locked her door. So we waited for about 2 hours for our coats to be liberated. If this was GA I would have said “Who cares?” and gotten my coat at a later date, but in these climes there is really no way to step outside without several layers on. Hell, I just got to the point where I don’t have to wear 2 layers of thermals to walk to school.
So after the seminar, Robert and I went to pay our phone/internet bills and happened upon an interesting situation. Let me preface this by saying that the phone company has automatic teller machines that most people pay their bills on, but there are several disadvantages to these machines especially if you happen to have lived in a society where you want… let’s say proof that you paid your bills. Basically if you pay on an ATM an amount pops up when you type in your phone number and you put a bill in the machine to pay. However you don’t get change for the amount you put in, you only get a “credit” on next month’s bill and you never get a receipt. Sound sketchy enough yet? So naturally we prefer to talk to a person and get a receipt printed out of the bill, but this process is heavily discouraged as the person who works there actually has to do (God forbid) work. So long story short I give the teller my phone number to get a receipt and she puts it in one number off. Unfortunately, the phone number she enters in happens to belong to a family that has almost the exact same name as my host family and lives in the EXACT same building number and apartment number on a different street. Since she is rushing to get us out of there I agree to the name and apt/building number she reads me to confirm it is my residence and end up paying the bill of another family. Luckily, this bill is only about 6 dollars and fifty cents, as opposed to the nearly 100 dollars I needed to pay for my family, but the phone clerk informs me that there is absolutely no way to rectify to the misbilling and payment of the other bill. How a country can operate when there is no way for an employee to fix a mistake is beyond me.
The clerk attempted to fix the situation by calling the family and explaining the situation (or rather we complained so much that they had to do something to get us to leave), and while the family agreed to pay the bill on the phone if we came over to get the money, they proceeded to dodge us for a few days before answering our phone call and explaining that they wouldn’t pay based on the principle of the matter. You would think they would be happy to pay since basically we saved them a trip to the phone company, but instead they decided to remain 6 dollars richer. I’m glad it was only six dollars and not say, sixty, but I’m still a little angry about the whole system of incompetence that got me to this point. Anyway I learned a valuable lesson about the difference between the names Sargenbaev and Sargentaev.
Sunday is Women’s Day so apparently I have to buy a present for every Kazakh woman in my life, when I’m trying to save money for my travelling at the end of the month, but I digress. We are having a party at the school tomorrow and have Monday off so that’s pretty cool. I can’t wait for the end of the month when I get to see all the other volunteers for the first time since Nov. 9. Hope you are well.
Drew