Walk around Taraz

December 22, 2009

We did not see Dylan today so Fil and I went walking around all day LONG. We were told of a place that made espresso, café au lait and cappuccino with Lavazza coffee, so we took a walk there. Got to the counter and wanted to order a café au lait, the girl responded nyet (no), I then asked for cappuccino –> nyet, espresso –> Nyet!!! So I looked at her and said, kaffe? She sticks out an envelope and in this envelope is instant coffee with coffee mate, I started laughing and I ordered an orange juice!!!! I think their machine was broken. Can you tell I’m in desperate need of a real coffee?? LOL!!! I ran out of Tim Horton’s coffee after 1 week here and all they have here is INSTANT COFFEE and all the teas that you can think of!!! Actually we found Ethiopian espresso coffee that we use in my 1-cup filter gadget and it’s not bad but an Italian coffee would have been really nice! My roommate said I would probably have been disappointed anyways if they did have it, and I said yes that’s probably true, because I’m a Diva….a coffee diva!!! (the picture of my 1 cup filter coffee gadget is attached)

We then continued walking and tried to look for stores to buy something for Dylan’s room that represents Taraz, Kazakhstan. We couldn’t find anything interesting and we were close to our house and decided that we wanted to go to a market called “Small” which is equivalent to our Wal-Mart. It was a bit of a long walk and decided to take a taxi. WOW!! What an adventure. We called our co-ordinator and asked her what to tell the taxi, she responded tell him the market called “Small”. Fine. So Mary and I started to kind of hitchhike to get a cab. Lol. So we were walking and this taxi driver stops and he already had 2 people and wanted to pick us up as well. We were both laughing and said no. lol. Finally a taxi stops and I told him to go to the market “Small”. No reaction came from him and didn’t know if he understood me, so I called back Vera and she spoke to him and told him where to go. It was so funny. Before she hung up she told me it shouldn’t cost more than 300 tenges equivalent to $2.00 canadian. Wow. He was a nice gentlemen and only charged me 200 tenges ($1.25 canadian). Oh the drive was between 5 to 10 minutes.

My bladder……yes I have a weak bladder and I need to go to the ladies room pretty often and it’s very interesting the toilets that I have visited here. 1st of all they are all "squat toilets" but that’s ok I’m used to them now but the best one so far is the one I went to today. I had to visit the ladies room and as I walked in, there were about 6 to 8 stalls but the only problem was that the walls were about 3 feet high and you had to go up 2 steps to get in.. Ok enough with the details, what I’m trying to explain is that when you go up the 2 steps to go into your stall you see everyone else in their stalls….and NO I did not turn around and leave, I did go………BUT there was nobody in there when I went in…… it was really funny, I guess you had to be there!!!