Back to the roommates. Here is the couple I live with. They're incredibly wholesome. Here they are last Saturday night, staying in to make jam. Of course, this also tells you that I was also in last Saturday night, watching them make jam. Which is even weirder.
Making everything yourself seems to be the Kazakh way. Why buy a jar of pickles when you can pick a bushel of cucumbers and make them yourself? Why buy a hamburger when you can raise a cow and harvest your own wheat? We've grown accustomed ourselves to some penny-pinching ways, eschewing normal barber-shop haircuts in favor of $1.25 haircuts from a woman in the Chinese fleamarket. Sure, you may get tetanus. But you'll have enough money left over to be able to treat it.
Also, this is where I eat when we go to the Chinese fleamarket. Yum.
When we're not haggling at the market, it seems like we're always doing something outdoorsy. Like hiking. Again. It starts off innocently enough.
But before you know it, this is what happens. I'm halfway down a mud slope, grasping onto a tree for dear life.
I'm refusing to let go of the tree because at the base of the mudflow is a nine-foot drop. This drop:
And this is the only way down.
So you can guess that this is a pretty sarcastic smile.
Anyway, once I actually let go of the tree and get on with my life, the scenery is beautiful.
This being Central Asia, you can find odd things in the mountains. Like discarded Soviet-era computers.
To end the post, another in the series "People Eating Weird Things." Today: manti. Enjoy!
