wooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh.

It actually works! I swear I haven't been ULTRA lazy- for the longest time, whenever I went to the blog page, it would never load all the way and didn't give me a 'log in' option no matter how many times I tried! Really!

But k so. Haven't written in a good long time so I should probably have a lot to say. Let's see here. First thing I think of, well ok the VERY first thing should be Merry Christmas and Happy New Years everyone! Woohoo 2011...nasty odd number year. Oh well I'll try not to be too prejudice. Although in ... one month and 2 days I will turn a nasty odd number age of 23. OOf! Actually, it's not so bad. Around 25 I think it will start bothering me. And I think I decided I want to have some sort of karaoke fiasco in celebration, yesssss.

2nd thing that comes to mind is... I am coming home in April!! Well the very tail-end of April, until the first week of July!! Wooooooohoo! I will make rounds to Tucson as well of course, but I plan to spend most of my time 1) petting Xena 2) studying for the GRE 3) visiting long lost buddies 4) whoops, secret :D Just know there is a forth. I'm super excited to be going home for a bit as well anyway, but also to be leaving before it gets to it's hottest! As I type that, it is starting to intensely snow here. khakhakha. First time since the new year though!

SO things that are new here. Oh well I guess I can tell you for New Years I went to this small town with one of my fellow teacher friends, Dinara, and Danielle of course. It's Dinara's hometown, and it was SO nice of her to invite us to spend time with her family for the holidays. It was comforting to have a borrowed family, complete with a mom who wouldn't stop feeding us :D And I got to try the national dish, Beshparmak, which is a huge plate of these Kazakh noodles, onions, and ...horse. Various parts of horse. Yup. It's freaking good! Oh but before that we went to a Russian banya and steamed ourselves clean for the new year. Let me clarify a bit: we took a taxi to some random house, walking by a large pack of dogs barking and some guys digging in the snow, to go into this shed-like place to strip down naked and stand in steam rooms washing ourselves. I of course found it hilarious, but I can't say I'm not a fan now. Unfortunately there weren't any of the branches to beat each other with, so I guess I'll just have to try going again somewhere else! We also went dancing in this restaurant (I know it sounds strange, but it makes sense if you see these places) with some of her friends and a million people wanted pictures with us (Danielle and I) since we are these amazing American creatures..ha. We went to various members of her family's houses and ate and ate and ate. Oh and drank tons of tea. I'm an avid tea drinker now, I like it much more than coffee. So odd. I'm sure I'll be drawn to Starbucks the minute I get back though. Hell, the next one I see (so maybe in a London airport or whatever), I'm going to get one of my iced coffees just to see if I'm cured.

ANYWAY, the most ridiculous part of going to Аркалык (previously mentioned small town) was the 2 day train ride to get there!! And of course 2 more days to get back! And when we were getting tickets, there weren't any more of the normal cars left, so we were in the 'plus cart', which is like a massive sleep over with everyone in your train car, because there are no doors or any type of separations/ privacy. QUITE eventful of course, complete with heater issues, blanket issues, leg-sat-on issues, and of plenty of encounters with numerous strange individuals. Although there were also not-so-strange individuals just wanting to talk to us, which was quite entertaining. It's hilarious to be thought of as such an unusual sight that people you don't know feel the need to take pictures with you as if you are the guy in the Mickey Mouse costume at Disney World or something, and ask you a million questions and talk to you all night. But hey, it does keep things interesting. Anyway, we brought a bunch of food and feasted on the train, and were given food by Dinara's friend's car-mates (she was in a normal car). I forgot, Dinara's friend also came, Zuliya. I really liked her, I'm a little surprised I forgot. Overall, it was an hilarious experience, and the best Russian practice I've had since being here (none of her family spoke English :D) and I definitely had a good time/ when I didn't (for example, certain times on the train) I knew it would make for an amusing story, to me at least, later.

The length of this thing is getting out of hand, so I think that's going to have to be all for now. Hopefully blogspot won't start acting up again and keep you all from my wildly interesting adventures/thoughts for too long ;)