An exciting thing happened this weekend: the ice on the river broke. It happened literally overnight – we went to sleep on a Saturday with barely a strip of water visible between the river bank and the ice flow, then the next morning, the only ice left was floating rapidly downstream in large chunks or piled on the shore. Some people reported hearing a great wind in the night that heralded the melt. Sunday was the birthday of my host family matriarch (how old are you now? I asked in Kazakh that I tried to put a Tartar accent on to make it easier to understand. She thought for a long minute, and then replied: 83… or 84. The family eventually confirmed 84).

So after the now-routine Sunday brunch celebration in her honor, we all walked over to the river. This seems like a village ritual, and many people were strolling by with small kids in hand or bravely sitting on the edge of a sand cliff to watch the water. Everyone was sad that the break-up happened at night. One ex-teacher told about how they used to leave school on ice-out day with all their students to watch and listen to the big plates of ice scraping over each other or crumbling into the water. The tradition is to send all the bad things down the river as it melts – I decided to send bad health away. There have been some fun experiences these past weeks, including a sprained wrist from playing volleyball and some glorious stomach rumbles. The wrist helped me cement my reputation here as a “sportswoman,” which is useful now that I’m outside being active – no one questions what the champion skier and volleyball player is doing out running, they just cheer her on. So worth the pain, but I’ll have to remember at the big tournament we qualified for in May that volleyball is not Ultimate Frisbee and that indoor layouts are never a good idea.

That really is all the news at this point. The river melted and we can go outside with spring jackets and no hats. I know there are some big events happening/being processed in the USA right now – I pick up that much from my glimpses of the news. If you feel like being a news reporter, send me a more accurate version of events than what the Russian news media reports.

Oh, yeah, and I turned 22. Yippee! It was low key, but with lots of singing students and fun treats. And now the pressure is on: no one in this village wants to see me turn 23 unmarried... anyone in America want to volunteer to become my boyfriend/fiancée so I have a good excuse?

Peace,
Nora

PS – if you’re looking for more Kazakh info, my friend Jose’s blog looks strangely like mine (we seem to have the same formatting tastes). His address is on the comments from my last entry. And props to the RPCV that left a comment – I’ll be one of you at some point…

PPS – yes, packages have been getting through. Mostly pretty quickly, but sometimes they sit in limbo for quite a while.