3 Wonderful Things

One of the things I do quite often in Kazakhstan is write lists. Favortite forms of Kazakhstani transport, pictures I wish I had taken, pictures I'm glad I couldn't take, things I've picked up to threaten stray dogs with, books I've read in country... and so forth. But last week I had a list of 3 Wonderful Things That Happened in Two Days.

The first is just cool: I saw a shuttle launch from the Baikonur space center, where the Soviet space program was based. To this day it sends up missions and space tourists, and their path out of orbit arcs over our village. Despite all the years of the space program, my host family had never actually seen a launch. But about a week ago, as I was peeling a mountain of garlic and my host mother was stuffing said garlic into green tomatoes to preserve them for winter, my host brother came dashing in, cell phone in hand, to announce that host dad was watching a "rocket" from his fields of wheat and rye. So we raced out to the garden (already long stripped for winter) and stood freezing in our slippers, full dark at 7:30 and clear; perfect shuttle watching weather. It could have been a comet, a red speck trailing white curtains like the Northern Lights. We watched until the speck burned out, the clouds must have slowly faded.

I never would have seen this in America, I don't think, and I doubt I'll ever see it again. Still, despite having larger concepts of space travel and the atmosphere to comtemplate, this sight suddenly remined my of just how far I am from home.

Wonder number two: while teaching my second graders family vocabulary, I brought in a picture to share. As I toured the room ("This is my father, this is my mother"), one of my more precocious boys, who happens to be a neighbor, piped up in Kazakh: "Your father's name is Anthony Blair Williams." "Well, yes," I replied, though I refrained from asking how the devil he knew that. One minute later, he contributed that my mother's name was Kathy, though he didn't know her middle name... Later I remembered that my parents' names were listed in the local paper when they came to visist, little Timerlan must have picked it up from there. But in the classrom it came as quite a shock. Later, I met with his mother at a post-Ramadan feast; she related that he had come home from school that day with big news: "It turns out Miss Nora has a brother and sister, too!"

Wonder number three: I'm getting a sitemate! One of the other two schools in my village requested a volunteer this year and were lucky enough to have one assigned. This makes my life a bit more interesting and complicated, of course, and there is a lot more to be said and thought about on this topic, but we'll leave it at that for now. This is a place that I love; I hope he comes to enjoy it, too. And I'm looking forward to having someone to speak fast English with.

Peace,
Nora