It’s been an interesting few weeks

Last Sunday we heard that one of the PCVs in my group had been injured in a car accident. She sustained a serious head injury and a broken wrist. Since the accident she’s been unconscious. After her initial treatment in a Kazakhstan hospital, Peace Corps was with her as she was transported overland to the U.S. air base in Kyrgyzstan. She spent some time there before being flow to Germany (with a brief stop in Afghanistan) for further evaluation. Her family was able to meet her in Germany. As of today, she was being flow back to Washington, D.C. Stable with strong vitals, but still unconscious. Unfortunately, the other two people in the car were killed. So if you’re the praying type, please say a prayer for Jamie. If you’re not so much the praying type, please keep her in your thoughts. In case you’d like to keep up with her recovery, Jamie’s sister-in-law is keeping us all up-to-date on her blog

It’s been cold lately. Though I feel like I’ve adjusted more to the weather this year – I can get by just fine without wearing quite as many items of clothing and I haven’t covered my face once this year – it’s still cold.  I wanted to say that I’d survived -40 weather. I’ve done it. Several times. At this point I wouldn’t object to warmer temperatures. That would be quite nice, actually.

The first half of this week was spent in Pavlodar. I helped out with a conference at one of the Universities. Emily, one of the university PCVs from my group works there and she invited all of us to help out with the conference. It was fun. Although getting there and back was pretty cold each day! Yesterday was my last day at the conference, but before I left I got to catch a hockey game. Our local team, Irtysh, stomped the competition 7-0. I think the other team was called the torpedoes. Insert torpedo-related joke here. It was a lot of fun. I went with Paul and Susan, a married couple from Kaz-21 who are serving at a NGO in Pavlodar, and Chris, a university 21. The price of the game was 250 tenge. I could get used to that. A Coke at a cafe is usually 300! Also of note is that pre-game marked my first visit to Burger Maxx. It’s the hamburger restaurant that the folks who own the Amanat Maxx chain of grocery stores in Pavlodar opened. Not too bad. Sure, even a Big Mac looks gourmet in comparison but sometimes you’ve just gotta make do with what you’ve got. The funniest part of the whole experience is when I ordered. I briefly glanced over the menu and then asked for a “gamburger c ceerum”. That would be a hamburger with cheese, in Russian. And without skipping a beat or batting an eye the girl looks at me and says, “Cheeseburger?” Sure enough, it was on the menu – чизбургер. In fact, a lot of the menu items were simply Cyrillic transliterations of the English equivalent. Good for me, but how it helps the locals is beyond me!

Other excitement was found in Pavlodar over the weekend. Emily and I had just picked up some supplies for the conference at a local teacher’s store and were returning home when we saw a car blow up. Yeah. At first I thought it was just a backfire, but then I noticed that there was a fire underneath a car stopped at the next intersection. Emily wanted to get closer. I wanted to go the other way. Gas + fire = boom. I’m allergic to death, so I was a little reluctant. But I eventually gave in to curiosity and joined the rest of the crowd in rubbernecking. Even managed to get a few photos. Though I almost lost my hands to frostbite in the process. As the car burned, traffic kept coming. No one seemed to think driving through a puddle of burning gas was a bad idea (says the guy who thought standing near a burning car was a good one). After a few minutes the police and fire department arrived. The flames were doused and we left. It was pretty crazy though. Especially when the windows exploded. Yet the windshield melted. Crazy stuff. I also was intrigued that the only cop there who had a gun was toting what appeared to be an AK-47. Then again, it might have actually been an AK-47 pistol. I didn’t know such a think even existed until I read about a guy carrying one in a Nashville park. Either way, when that’s the dude in charge of crowd control you can consider this crowd of one successfully controlled.

Guess that’s about it. Keep Jamie in your thoughts and prayers.