A few summer pictures

My friends Whitney and Alyson came to my village for some beach time and a night out at the disco at one of the hotels. Fun times! And lots of fun with the self-timer function on my camera.





Here you see mostly Kazakh vacationers tearing it up on the dancefloor to Euro-pop’s trashiest, finest hits.



I met an English-speaking Kazakh businessman Nikkolai who said he played tennis so we made plans to play at the hotel courts the next afternoon. I wasn’t sure what to expect but I showed up at the courts and he turned out to be an amazing player. He’s no Mary Ellen, but still. An instant respect comes when you hit with a new person and realize he has nice strokes. Ah, yes, my friend. You too spent many hours on the tennis court growing up. We played two days in a row and then I was so sore I could hardly move. He couldn’t really understand the concept of Peace Corps and wondered why I wasn’t more concerned about building my life back home. Hrmph. Then he said “You should be home getting married and having babies.”
“You’re joking,” I said.
But he wasn’t. All I could do was roll my eyes. I think I do that a lot here.

I still can’t really figure it out, but after five months of not playing tennis I was on fire! Absolutely ripping groundstrokes, corner to corner; I couldn’t miss. Every time I hit a winner he laughed and went, “Oh, you have such a typical American game. Just standing at the baseline and hitting it as hard as you can. So American.” I was like, “Um, yeah, and I just won the point.” His wife came on the second day to take pictures of him on the court, and I shanked a ball and almost hit her while she wasn’t looking. Oops! I apologized profusely. She laughed. “It’s okay,” she said.
“But I’m really sorry,” I said.
“It’s really okay,” said Nikkolai. “She was the goalie on the Kazakh national ice hockey team for eleven years. She retired after the Salt Lake City Olympics. So she’s not scared of a tennis ball.”