An ode to leaves

May has been a pretty feel-good month. My birthday was great - I rented out a big sauna for the local volunteers (remember those guys from my Christmas posting?), and we ate, drank, sat in a hot, sweaty sauna, and took daring (but possibly unhygienic) dips in an icy pool. A two hour reservation got drawn out into a four hour celebration of camaraderie, life, and the unbeatable carnal pleasure of a cold, fresh beer after a steamy, hot sauna. It's not just relaxing- it's sooo comfortable, so CLEAN. I am totally hooked.

For the last bit of April and the first weeks of May, there was this thick anticipation of leaves. It was like everyone and everything was lacking life for 5 months, and then it started to warm up, and melt, and dry off, and then you could see little branches start to grow on the trees that had been totally dead, and little brown growths that appeared, and started to get ripe, and riper, and then....LEAVES. My count down to leaves was prolonged and tense. It got to the point that on my walks around town I was scouting out the trees that I thought would sprout some green first, because I was so impatient to see it. There was a promising tree over by a field that Melanie and I run in sometimes, and I would take little detours by there to see if my prediction was right. I walked around for about 5 months without seeing green, and then one day it was everywhere. There was one drizzly day and all the buds just exploded and the whole city was full of that fresh light green color- not a mature shade but a totally delicate and almost neon one.

Around that time I watched American Beauty and there was one scene that perfectly captures that feeling of standing on the street and looking at that neon green: It's when Kevin Spacey's in bed looking at the ceiling and fantasizing, and he says:

Spectacular.

That's how it felt. Anyway. As previously noted in my last post, Spring also means freedom from training in that smelly, dusty stairwell. Now instead of weirding out my neighbors, we weird out local elementary school kids as we run around the school track while they do their Soviet-style P.E. drills. Even creepier is that Melanie and I randomly have a lot of matching clothes...somehow we both came to KZ with the exact same pair of Nike pants (by now, affectionately referred to as 'the uniform'). The surprise highlight of training so far has been my new guilty pleasure: Mel's Billy Blanks Cardio Bootcamp DVD (Don't judge me), but I also had a chance to break in my new boots out on the steppe on a nice, long hike last weekend [photos included in the slideshow]

I'm in finals week right now- working to end 'Intercultural Communication - Spring 2009' with flair. The final exam includes information about Mel Brooks, Weezer, West Side Story, and other fabulous little cultural media that were conveniently hiding on my hard drive, and I think my students had a good semester on the whole. The colleagues I've been working with have also been troopers, going with the flow when I wanted to try out some wacky methods [like making a scoring rubric to grade the oral exams].

Am I going to post again before I leave on June 1st? I want to say yes, but let's be honest. I might not. So I will leave you with some highlights to look forward to in the next post: tentatively called '3 Peaks & Oman debrief.'

-Will we climb the 3 highest peaks in the UK in 24 hours? Will the perilous 'loose shale' and 'gale force winds' the preparation guide warns of get the best of us? And does it really even matter, since it's just an awesome chance for 3 sisters to get together and do something crazy?

-Will I rock the hijab in Oman? Or maybe go with a tasteful sari? Will we swim with the sea turtles? Do they even exist? Once again, I have a feeling it won't matter since this is going to be hands down, the coolest trip I've ever been on.

-Also stay tuned for the final tally: How many 30 Rock jokes can Melanie and Christina crack in the period of 24 hours, and how much will it annoy the rest of our team?

Vremya pakazhet. Or, as my host brother Adilet says: Only ze time will tell.

We're still working on our fundraising goal, so if you haven't checked out our web page, go have a look:

http://www.justgiving.com/IHikeForAKaz

The 3 Peaks Challenge kicks off about a year long project that will end in Melanie and I designing a similar event in the mountains above Almaty next summer. The inspiration for our making this trip to the UK is the incredible work that the Ubuntu Education Fund is doing in South Africa, and we're hoping to learn from them and from the 3 Peaks to make a similar difference for forward-thinking nonprofit organizations here in K-Stan. Anything you can give helps, even $5, and it's easy to donate online.

Big hug

Christina