The nature and BFFs

I had this really great plan to put some insightful update here, and then I discovered the "we read" feature on Facebook, so I just spent a lot of time updating that... Sorry faithful readers (mom). So quick update:

Last week I was at a Frisbee camp at my friend, Jeff's site. It was really cool to watch the kids improve and eventually be able to play without our help. And it was fun to run around and not teach English for a week.

This week I've been in what has been called "the most difficult place to live" in Kz. I'm here with my friend Mary for what we've decided is "camp Jessica" since I am as into making friendship bracelets as children are. Mid-week we took a hiking trip into the wilderness and went up the highest "peak" in central Kazakhstan (stop laughing CO people, it's still pretty). After, we descended and stayed with a family in a village on the other side of the mountain which was cool. I am always blown away with how hospitable people are here. Here came three dirty, hungry, maybe grumpy travelers that they didn't know that well and they opened up their home, fed us and I made best friends with their 8-year-old granddaughter.

"Jessica!" She whispered at dinner
"What?"
"Where are you sleeping tonight?"
"I'm sleeping in the next bedroom."
"Yeah?" I could tell where this was going.
"Yes, but I think I'll be sleeping with the cats, and Mary might have to sleep with me."
"But Grandma sleeps in that room."
"She told me I'm sleeping in her bed"
"... Alright." She got up to walk away then whispered, "Wherever you sleep, I'll sleep."

I gave her a friendship bracelet to make our BFF status official.

Sum sum summertime

It's summertime! Things are green instead of white, the sun barely sets at 11pm only to rise at 3am (compare with winter's setting at 4pm and rising at 9am), and the children we teach no are the ones who actually want to come to English camp (as opposed to the children who are dragged to English classes every week). Summer life in Kazakhstan is not bad at all.

So for the next couple months I will be traveling to different sites and helping other volunteers with their camps, and hopefully I'll be able to put “highlights” here.

This is a picture of a camp held at Lisa's school, which is a couple hours away from my site. We reviewed the past simple tense, then gave them pictures of people and told them to write sentences about what they saw. So, naturally he said, “Yesterday, I killed this bear.”