Laundry Day

2 May 2009

Vy gavarite pa angliyski? = Do you speak English?

Taraz City Flag

Well it has been almost 3 weeks since we left Maryland and we have been in Kaz for 17 days now. We awoke to a heavy rain so we decided to tackle the laundry that has piled up. We sent the pants and bulkier shirts down to the hotel laundry and did the rest in the bathroom sink. I will be very happy to get back to using a washer and dryer. I have a great deal of respect for our ancestors who washed their clothes by hand all the time and hung them out to dry. I can see why they wore them for a while between washings. It gets old fast doing it by hand.

The rain has now stopped and it looks like the sun is attempting to make an appearance. The festivities from yesterday continued on into the late evening in spite of the occasional rain. It has been pretty quite outside so far and the street out in front of the hotel isn’t blocked off anymore so I guess the party in the square is over with.

Since the sun came out we decided to make another trip to the bazaar with the Docters. I still can not get over the size of the bazaar. It seems to go on forever and it is easy to get lost in there. We had to ask twice how to get back to Toli Be (the main road). Here are some pictures from the bazaar.

We ventured across the street to another area that had mostly shops instead of stalls. It had eateries, a vet, liquor store, dress shops and other shops and several barbers. So guess who decided he wants to get a haircut…yep, Wayne. For $2 and change he got a cut, shampoo and blow dry. They seemed to get a kick out this Amerikaner coming in for a haircut. They were quite amused when we left and during the process a couple of the other locals came over for a look see. I took some photos because I know most of you won’t believe me.



We have seen several wedding processionals down the street. It appears to be a tradition to have a parade of cars down the street and honk your horns as you go. Kind of like we did in high school after football games and homecoming. The day before the big festival they already had the street in front of the hotel blocked off all the way down to the square. This posed a slight problem for one bridal couple. They parked in front of our hotel and walked down to the Marriage Court on the square.

Then one evening, as Wayne and I were headed to our local grocer across the street, we saw a car coming down the road with someone sticking up through the sun roof. He was video taping the parade of cars from a wedding. The white limo carrying the bride and groom had two big gold rings in a floral bouquet on top with ribbon going from the front to the back on both sides. I wish I had my camera. Hopefully I’ll get another chance to get a picture.

Here are some photos from the dress rehearsal for the May 1st Festival (We found out this was actually a National Labor Day Celebration which explains why they had all the different workforces in the parade). You’ll notice in some of the pictures the mountain range to the west of the city.






This is a photo of the local Police and a sample of their cars I took for Jimmy.

Here is a shot of the Sakartvelo Restaurant we ate at yesterday and some of the food we ate.





This is a shot of a Kazak Ice Cream Sundae from Bosfor Restaurant
And we can’t leave out showing some photos of Lukas, even though we haven’t seen him for two days now. There is a couple from Spain that arrived Thursday. We don’t know what agency they are with but we understand they got to go to the baby house today. Needless to say we were a little annoyed that we didn’t get to go. We think Janette figures our return flight doesn’t leave until May 13th so why rush things. I guess she had other things to do this weekend. Who knows? When in Kazakhstan do as the Kazaks do! We’ll just make the best of our free time and get to know the city our son hails from.






Paka until tomorrow,
Lynda and Wayne