Expatty day

Friday is probably our most expatty kind of day, especially as during the summer there are just so many blooming people around.

We are on a new regime now, drunk nanny Allia's daughter who used to clean for us has gone to seek a new home to push a mop around. We are trying out a lady called Nailya for the deep cleaning (bathrooms and bed changing etc) who is a neighbour of our new Super Nanny Gulya. New Super Nanny is awesome, a totally lovely person, incredibly enthusiastic, she wants the whole world to be a better place and is determined to do her bit to make sure her little corner is happy and organised and our house is a happier, shinier place as a result of having her here for a few hours every day.

Added to this, we have Baktiyar's brother Sasha in the garden, picking up the rotten apples and mowing the lawn, brushing the paths, and Baktiyar himself off cleaning the car and filling it with petrol for the weekend. It is mad. Four blooming people.

What am I doing? Well of course, have put on my best, high-heeled, pink fluffy slippers and satin dressing gown and I am lying on the sofa drinking a gin and tonic, smoking a cigarette and talking to my girl friends on the phone! ha ha ha Only joking! Still in my pyjamas, ready to unload the dishwsher, go out shopping, buy the food and drink for the weekend (10 people coming to lunch tomorrow) but with time to play a bit with Connie and write a quick blog!

Considering if we lived at home I would be lucky to have someone to clean the house once a week, I do feel mighty lucky to have plenty of help. But it also feels extremely strange to be so overwhelmed with personnel that I almost need an Human R esources diploma to cope! It is a weird, weird life!

Kid chat

My children are 8, 6 and nearly 2. I dearly love them. But sometimes I feel battered.

Here is an example of why.

Kids arrive home from school, hungry and hyperactive.

"Mummy, can I use your computer? I need to look something up,"

"Yes, sure, but tea is nearly ready so you will need to stop when I serve it up,"

Sigh from child

"Alright, how do you spell Linguascope?"

"What is for tea?"

"Pumpkin soup and freshly baked bread - look - it has just come out of the machine, doesn't it smell delicious?"

"Ugh, I hate pumpkin soup,"

"Yeah, me too."

"If you make us eat that soup I am going to stab you, Mummy," says older child.

"Oh no, not stab me! Don't say that," I plead.

"I'll get the knife for you," says other child

"It's nice soup, and it is all there is I'm afraid. Put that knife back!"

"Tea's ready, sit up, girls"

"Ugh, this soup tastes like putting puke in my mouth."

"I don't care, eat it up or you can go straight to bed."

Harmonious, eh?

Thrilled!

I was browsing through a few websites waiting for husband to arrive home and smelling my pumpkin soup getting colder by the minute ("I'll be home by seven" he said, it was by then 9pm). 'I'll just go and have a look at that Expat Mums blog I found the other day at www.expatmumsblog.com' I thought, and who should be the headline blog post? L'il old me, Big Beluga as featured on another blog site! Thrilled.

Thank you, ladies at Expat Mums Blog. I got a really nice buzz thinking that you enjoyed reading my ruminations enough to print them again. It reminded me of the good old days at the Evening Times newspaper in Glasgow when I was a trainee in the marketing department. When my "Tinned Spam" promotion was printed for the first time and I thought I had died and gone to heaven!

Budakofka Waterfall, trolls and pixies

Another hiking expedition this Monday, and with the sun bursting the sky, 21 people turned up to sample the delights of the Kazakh countryside. We walked through Budakofka national park which is just outside Almaty town. Drive up Dostyk Avenue towards Medeu and Chimbalak and turn left at the large blue sign which says Budakofka in Russian. Follow this road along until you come to the park gate where you have to pay a small fee to enter the park. Continue up this road until you see a large riding stables on the left hand side (you can tell it is a riding stables as there are horse heads in the pattern of the fences around the development (and often quite a lot of horses around as well! ha ha)), cross the little river and park. The track then heads obviously up the hill.

After a shortish hike up hill, we took a small footpath to the left and then followed it over a small river and started clambering up a load of large, easy-to-climb boulders which are actually a sort of rocky stream bed, all the way up to a pretty waterfall. One of our hike leaders told us that it is absolutely stunning in winter when it is frozen solid. And as an easy hike (it only takes an hour to get up to the waterfall) it is completely suitable for families with kids our age, so watch this space for some snaps in winter. On the way down, with everyone chatting together in little groups which was fun, we passed a load of grazing horses in the photos below. These shots are so typical of time in the hills around here and I still find the landscapes magical. I feel that if only you could climb past the next mountain you would find a land of elves, pixies and trolls!

But it turns out that there are plenty of trolls around these parts, it is just that the trolls around here are the gossips of the expat circuit, who should really know better than to say some of the things they say! Big Beluga can obviously divulge no more, suffice it to say that her eyes have been opened recently to the capacity of some people here to spread absolute nonsense about other people here. Rumours which are based on nothing but their own sick imaginations and, occasionally, even dreams! Amazing! And pretty scary.

Fortunately though, I think that on balance there are enough happy pixies and good fairies around to keep our mountainous kingdom a mostly harmonious one (boo to the trolls...).

Spaghetti Bolognese and cupcakes

We decided to take a proactive stance on the subject of eldest daughters "lost" friends at school. On Tuesday, she hastily copied out an invitation to five girls in her year to come back to our house on Friday afternoon for a play after school and delivered them to her classmates.

And Friday saw a flurry of activity as new super-nanny and I prepared the house for this important event! The house was scrubbed (we even cleaned the sofa!), we visited five supermarkets looking for icing sugar for cupcakes (there was none...), raspberry icing-less buns were nonetheless prepared. And a chocolate and banana loaf for those who don't like raspberries.  I made bolognese sauce and pesto in case anyone was a vegetarian, roses were picked and arranged from the garden, and juice and tea was prepared for the girls' refreshment. 

I think they had a good time. Five girls is a lot to entertain for three hours, and my daughter took it all in her stride, invented lots of games and looked after her mates. They watched a little TV, but when I pointed out to her that one of the the five probably couldn't understand the english in the film, my daughter encouraged them all to stop and go back into the garden for some more hide and seek. There were no arguments to speak of, and it was really nice to see her with a small crowd of girls for a change. 

Seeing her running around with her mates was great. Our lifestyle means that we have to put up with losing friends regularly, but we can also make new friends quite quickly. It is brutal and upsetting at times, but by putting in enough effort, we can make the best of a difficult situation. I think the main thing for us as parents, is to be aware that from time to time the kids need a helping hand to manage their social life. But also that they have to get on with it themselves, be friendly and welcoming to their classmates, and learn to look after their guests.

Internet drama and cold sweats

I woke up this morning and the big red russian screen on my computer said "Niet (no)". 

"You cannot have internet today, for you have a DEBT!"

"We have not sent you a bill, but neither have you pro-actively contacted our company and requested a bill. So we have cut you off. Spaceba and Das Vidanya (thank you and good bye)."

Everything is running pretty smoothly at the moment in Big Beluga's life. Smoothly enough that I am mentally in the "brace" position, ready for something to go wrong. Losing my internet connection really, really bothers me. I have remembered pain from the dark days of the three months last year that I was off line. 

However, I can relax. Husband's secretary has been on the blower and as is often the way in Kazakhstan, by paying a big wad of cash to someone and receiving a small bit of paper ripped off the bottom of a computer print out as a receipt, the problem will be solved by this evening! 

Fear of Flying

I don't know about anyone else, but I get a little nervous when my husband goes on business trips. It is a totally irrational fear but it makes me feel further away from good old Blighty than anything else. Apart from being diagnosed with some horrendous disease, the second most scary thing I can really think of is being widowed. Agh! Just the absolute pits. Even writing this down makes me nervous, in case I am tempting fate. I have no idea what I would do if the worst happened, but it is unlikely that I would remain in Almaty with three kids and no gainful employment. 

And I suppose if he were just nipping over to Paris or Brussels I wouldn't bat an eye, but he texts me from the airport to say: "On my way, Check out AN24 to see plane on net. Love G". Husband was off to Dushanbe which, you would be forgiven for not knowing, is the capital city of Tajikistan. 

I looked it up. The first line on Google was:

Antonov An-24 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 - 3:50am

RTÉ News, Ireland (2007-06-24). "Angkor Wat tourists in plane crash". 

Followed by: 

AN-24 plane crashes in Russia's North - BarentsObserver

According to a spokesman for the Northwestern regional center of the Russian Emergencies Ministry, an An-24 plane with some 50 people on board today crashed ...

Agh! 

Anyway, then I saw a photo of the AN24, not so bad. Quite a large prop plane, so I stop worrying so much. 

And he has done his research. Tajikistan Air does not have an adequate safety record, so he will fly with SCAT (click on the link, you will see it is reassuring!) and then make a huge trip back via Istanbul with Turkish Air to Almaty, so that he does not have to wait the full seven days for the return SCAT flight. No complaints about Turkish Air, although they did crash in Amsterdam last year but at least they can keep their website working, if not their planes. 

He has arrived intact I am glad to report, staying at the Hotel Tajikistan where he inflicted a friction burn on his arm by turning over on the cheap sheets of his bed in his sleep! The Hotel Tajikistan is an aspirational place, judging by their website which proudly proclaims: 

The hotel Tajikistan – is a magnificent eight-storied building, the windows of which command a lovely breathtaking view on the city. The restaurants and Bars, Beauty – Palour, Fitness Centre and a specious SPA centre “ESPA”, including a swimming – pool, saunas, steam – rooms, that is a list of opportunity for a good rest, which is to some extent still incomplete.

They also offer a "regularly retiled personal bar" (terrible when your bar has not been recently tiled!). 

I dread to think how difficult it is to run a hotel in Dushanbe. I suppose the fact that the website is half in English is better than nothing. Lonely Planet offers the following tip "English may be spoken in the reassuring lobby but everything else here is 100% Soviet and horribly overpriced. " but even LP does not manage to publish the website address correctly and it is an English-language organisation, so I should not be too critical.