Bus, Taxi & Bazaar!!

April 27, 2010

Today Dylan was a great boy!!!! Like usual. Lol!!! The day before he was a little fussy cause we think that he has another tooth growing and was drewling a lot. When we were feeding and playing with him, he felt disturbed. But it’s ok cause you can’t always have a great day. Dylan was playing more and he ate well. He didn’t nap which was very good, we’re trying to make him play and walk as much as possible so he doesn’t fall asleep.

After the orphanage we had lunch and decided to go to the BAZAR!!! It was torching hot but we managed. Mary wanted to get the feeling of taking the bus which we haven’t tried yet and it was a good experience. We didn’t know which number of bus to take so Mary was asking a few people on the street, it was really funny but we managed. The bus was so crowded; thank God we were sitting down. We did not know how much it cost and we saw nobody paid as they entered the bus. But then as we got off the bus is when we had to pay the bus driver’s assistant. There are many different looking buses on the street of many sizes, some are mini vans, some are electric buses and some just regular but very old buses but all of them have an assistant who collects the money for the ride. We get to our stop for the BAZAR, all of a sudden a crowd of people waiting to get in. We couldn’t even get out; they just don’t give you a chance. It was like people going and watch a concert and who would be the 1st one in, Unbelievable. While at the BAZAR we got a call from Katrina (German couple) and asked us if we wanted to have supper together at the Medlan at around 7:00 p.m. and we said ok no problem. She was going to call the American couple (Jeremy and Becky) and Cristophe. Nathalie left this afternoon for Switzerland for a couple of days to go get a new visa.
The bazaar!!!! Oh yes the bazaar!!!! Most of you know it was an experience when we went the 1st time in December…….wow what another experience we had!!! We thought it was bad in December but now in the heat it’s even worse. All I have to say is it’s the same thing plus heat!!!!!!! The meat, fish, cheese, chocolate cookies all in the open in the HEAT!!!!! By the way it’s been 28 to 30 degrees everyday for the last 2 wks!!!! We saw a man smoking and cutting up meat, then we saw a lady counting dollar bills right on the meat, then we saw 2 men playing cards right next to the meat on the same table and as you walk by the meat the salesladies hold up a piece of meat and try to sell it to you, yummy finger licking!!!! I have to say one thing is that people here are really really HARD Workers!!!! We bought ourselves 1 pair of sunglasses each and we paid about $4.00 for both!!!

It was around 4:30 pm and we were going to take the bus back home. But instead of going back home, Mary said why don’t we go to the park or “The Bear” restaurant and kill some time. We live about 40 minutes from downtown by foot. Sure enough we decided to take a cab and we were trying to explain to the cab driver where to go. We were under the impression that he understood. We will never forget this experience. So the cab driver is driving and all of a sudden he starts pumping the gas but I thought he had a nervous twitch with his leg and I was like what the hell is he doing, at the same time I see the light is red and cars are stopped and I started to panic cause he wasn’t putting on the brakes. I thought he was going to hit the cars ahead, he put his hand breaks, swings on the right side and of course there are like cement blocks, I was saying to myself, he’s crazy and we will crash cause he wasn’t putting the brakes), swings by the cement blocks turns the street on a red light and drives on the sidewalk and then he finally decided to put on the brakes!!!!! While he was doing all that I told Mary, “THIS GUY HAS NO MORE BRAKES ”!!! Wow!!! I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t brake. Then Mary told me the car shut off so he was trying to jump start the car before the car came to a stop. So of course the car did die out on us and he went out of the car and put water somewhere underneath the hood, played around with some other parts and kept trying to restart the car when finally about 10 minutes later it finally did. My God we wanted to crack up of laughter when all this was happening and Mary kept telling me to shut up because she couldn’t keep it in. Oh by the way it was a 1960 LADA!!! Wow!!! Cab driver got to start the car and I had a feeling we were going the wrong direction and he miss understood where we wanted to go. So I called Vera our Co-ordinator and told her to please tell him where we wanted to go. She told him and yes he was going to the wrong restaurant. By the way before we left we negotiated the price at 300 Tenge ($2.00 Cdn). We finally got to our destination and we decided to give him 500 Tenge ($3.50 Cdn). We felt so bad for the man.

Jeremy, Becky, Katrina and Ernie met us at the Bear restaurant around 6:00 pm to kill some time and we were waiting for Cristophe to join us.
We headed to the Medlan restaurant and we had a great time.