Day 5: Rest

Sunday - the day before classes, or better yet: the last day of rest. Today I woke up earlier than I expected. I beat my alarm clock and spent the morning finishing up yesterday's blog post. At around 10:00AM the whole family was awake and we ate breakfast together. Breakfast for today included toast with Nutella, tvorok (творок), which is made of milk curd, dates (finik, финик), and cheese. One of the cheese was from a sausage-like container!

After breakfast, Adilbek took me to the green bazar to fetch some groceries: meat, vegetables, fruit, and some slippers for the house. The bazar was two stories high and there was everything you could imagine! The meat and produce that is sold in this bazar is all local, from Kazakh farmers. This ensures the freshness and quality of the food. It's really interesting to see all the meat laid out in full, thick cuts, whereas in American grocery stores, everything is already packed and pre-sliced for the customer.

We returned home and Adilbek left the house, so Assel and I put away the groceries and salted the meat. Assel sliced the meat into smaller portions and I rubbed salt all over the cuts of beef, so that it would taste better when cooked later in the future. Assel showed me some of her marriage pictures and gave me a book by Pushkin to read in my spare time. Her wedding dress is very pretty, and the marriage pictures are of a high quality! We then drank a healthy drink of dried fruit and berries called kampot (кампот), ate some berries, and discussed various topics relating to everyday life and the changing traditions of modern societies.

After this, we both went to take a nap and I dreamt about my uncle and auntie who currently live in Toronto. A few hours later, Adilbek woke me up and it took me a hot second to remember where I was! I dreamily and quickly washed up and headed to have dinner with Adilbek and Assel. On the menu for tonight was stewed beef over rice, borscht, tea with lemon, and some bread. It was very delicious!

We went for a walk at Gorky park and there was a lot of things to do there. Almaty is very active at night, whereas Portland is already asleep by about 8PM. At this park Adilbek showed me how to shoot a rifle at some targets, but I am a terrible shot. I missed every single target, but Adilbek was very good at shooting. After all, he served in the military and when he was young, his father taught him how to shoot.

We talked about Kazakh history and marriage in traditional Kazakh culture. There are three tribes that people descend from, and it is forbidden to marry and have children with people from the same tribe. Adilbek explained that this is how they kept the bloodline clean and prevented birth defects.

There was a concert at the top of a mountain, at this place called medeo (Медеу). It was an international concert with Kazakh musicians singing music. It was so cool to hear Kazakh music live, in person -- some of these artists I had already known and listen to on a regular basis! I could feel the bass vibrating my pants and reverberating throughout my entire body. It was chilly at this concert, but the air was fresh and felt very refreshing.

Returning home, I was ready to sleep. We stop a local convenience store and grab some keffler, which is a carton of yogurt. At home, Assel blends some of this yogurt with the berries we bought earlier in the day and we drank this type of berry/yogurt smoothie. It was very good! I washed up and right now lay in my bed, finishing up this blog post.

Tomorrow is the first day of school at Al-Farabi Kazakh university, and we will be taking our placement exams. I hope everything goes well!