Spring

an ode

Since my last missive I have turned 24, received my federal tax refund (shoutout to MyFreeTaxes), welcomed my mom to Almaty and sent her home, been walked in on in the same bathroom twice, participated in the national pastime of “going to mountains” thrice, cried in four restaurants, befriended the owner of a new Indian restaurant, eaten several new lagmans, met up with someone I hadn’t seen or talked to in seven years, said my goodbyes to my students, refused to round up several grades, procrastinated writing my program report for over a week past the deadline and then discovered Canvas was down, walked approximately 341,250 steps and steadfastly refused to tell anyone here that my dog died, lest that make it real.

So let’s get into it.

In early April I turned 24, which is crazy. I have nothing more to say about that and shan’t dwell, except to say that I find the Kazakh word for four easier to remember than the Kazakh word for three, so this has overall been a win for me.

---

As some of you know, I actually love doing my taxes, both because I make very little money and so always get a little something back and because I love forms. Declaring my Kazakh income was easier than I expected and the whole thing went very smoothly except for a conversation with my bank that went like this

“Well, to access your interest forms, you just need to log in to your account.”

“Yes, and the system is asking to send a confirmation code to my American phone number to log in, but I don’t have access to that number.”

“Okay, so you can just write on a piece of paper that you’re you and sign it and upload it to your portal, and then we can give you access.”

“How do I log into my portal to upload the permission to log in without the confirmation code if I can’t log in without the confirmation code?”

Silence.

I eventually got it to work on the app. Port your number to Google Voice ahead of time guys. It’s not worth it.

---

Just a few days after my birthday, I went out for a late-night lagman with Pearl, took a quick nap, and took a taxi to the airport to meet my mom’s 1am flight. In classic family tradition, I pretended to be stuck in traffic and then snuck up behind her.

For the next week, I showed her around Almaty, meaning that we ate at all the restaurants I can’t afford to go to.¹ She took the gang out for dinner and ice cream for Jillian’s birthday, got breakfast at the art museum (an unimaginable luxury) and one morning treated us both to three fancy beverages before lunch. I am irreparably spoiled. We did the Julia tour of Almaty, which skips all the stuff they recommend to tourists that actually sucks (Kok Tobe I’m looking at you) and includes cool things like going to a Kazakh drama with Pearl, the best karak tea place on the walking path, and buying me expensive groceries (whipped cream ($4)). It was very fun to have her.²

On that Friday, the two of us and Jillian set off with Assiya (of last episode’s birthday party) and her family for a tour of some of Kazakhstan’s most famous natural wonders. It was raining that afternoon, so we skipped Charyn canyon (for now) and headed straight to Assiya’s childhood home in a village named after her grandfather. There, Assiya and her mom made the world’s best beshbarmak and absolutely refused to let us help with anything including cleanup. I tried to repay them by repeating my toast from the birthday party for everyone’s amusement.

Beshbarmak-ing

In the morning we started early with a bowl of kasha (though I was basically still full from the night before) and then headed out to the Kolsai and Kaindy lakes, which were gorgeous.

For lunch, we made manti, a dumpling stuffed with meat and onion. After expressing several times our real and true desire to assist in some way and learn something, Jillian and I were allowed to attempt to fold the dumplings, although several of our early creations were rejected and refolded. Along with the manti, we had Assiya’s mom’s homemade baursak, and such good bread and village butter that my mom and I had filled up on that by the time the dumplings were done steaming.

Manti

After lunch we headed out to Charyn canyon. We walked the 40 minutes or so across the wide, winding canyon and then took a lurching truck back up. It was like a mini roller coaster ride, with gorgeous scenery. Exhausted and full of delicious food, we headed back to Almaty.

The river at the end of the canyon

Over the next few days, my mom and I had a couple more nice dinners, she was guest of honor in my class and at my speaking club, and then it was time to put her in a taxi and fold the sofa bed back into a couch.

A few days later, my parents called, together, in tears.

---

Toby came to live with us so long ago that my first photos of him are surrounded by Harry Potter memes that I screenshotted from QuizUp. He had just had surgery on his eye and needed another one on his leg. For his first few weeks, he was quarantined to a pen in our living room designed to keep him from walking too far. Soon he recovered and began to sit and lie and snore all over our house. He loved sitting in corners with his legs sticking out in front of him. He loved lying in the sun and playing in the snow. He was a beast, a tank. He weighed 50 pounds and you felt every ounce of it. He could make your foot fall asleep by lying in your lap for ten minutes, and he often did. When he walked, his whole torso waggled from side to side. He snored loudly, he breathed loudly, he ate loudly and drank loudly and barked loudly. I mastered the art of putting him in a headlock to clean the folds on his face, which were deeper than you’d think and grosser than you can imagine. He was maybe not all that bright. He tore toys apart in minutes. He would do anything for peanut butter and he absolutely refused to eat cucumbers. He loved ice cubes but always ended up pushing them under the fridge accidentally and barking as though that would summon them back. He would try to attack the sunlight if it reflected off your watch or your phone or the window.

Whenever I came home from college he’d be delighted to see me for about two minutes. Then he’d forget I was ever gone. He’d panic the second the suitcase came out again, following me from room to room.

Everyone loved him (mostly). He had a circuit of local businesses that gave him treats, a fan club of our neighbors. He’d let anyone pet him but was truly only interested in food.

He’d lick your face. He’d lick your foot. He’d lick your arm obsessively for no reason at all. If you wanted to sit somewhere, rest assured he was already in your spot. He had two very small bottom teeth that stuck out just a little. He was my Tobleroney for more than half my life.

And a few weeks ago I said goodbye over Facetime and went to bed, to toss and turn while 6,000 miles away he got some bacon from Club Charlie’s, his favorite bar, and had a burger at the vet’s office, and slipped away from us forever. He had the softest ears in the universe.

the bestest beast there ever was

---

Probably some other stuff happened after that. I carried on mostly like normal, or tried to, because really nothing in my day-to-day life had changed. Yet. Pearl’s friend from high school came to visit and we showed him around. Edna and I watched so, so, much Love is Blind. I planned and taught and graded. I finished up the university semester and pretended to start thinking about the summer camp we’re running in June. Some of the Bishkek fellows came for a short visit, and we went to an art-themed bar where the bartender insisted on talking us through the entire menu in Russian so muffled and muttered that even our Kyrgyz friend couldn’t understand him.³

On the first day after my university classes ended, Pearl and I went to visit a pizza place in the mountains run by a Kazakh guy who is obsessed with Italy and speaks fluent Italian and has Italian radio running all the time. I discovered that between my knowledge of Spanish and having recently watched Love is Blind: Italy, I could pretty much understand his Italian. And the pizza was great, and the mountains were beautiful, and I wandered restlessly around the garden.

---

And then Danny the Wonder Cat came.

I let him in the building because our across-the-hall neighbor has a cat⁴ and I figured perhaps this cat was his cat. It was not. He had a name tag that said “Danny the Wonder Cat” and a phone number on the back, and he followed me all the way into my apartment, rolled under my bed, drank some water, zoomed from room to room, and lay down on my windowsill. It was 1:30am, so I was not surprised when texting the number (which turned out to belong to the flower shop next door) yielded no response. I put out a bowl of water for him, and when he was done exploring he spent the night, laying on my knee until it was excruciating, just the way that Toby used to.

In the morning he lay on my lap while I read, and when he left, things felt a little bit lighter. It was 75 degrees and sunlight shone through the impossibly green leaves outside my window. A beautiful day.

1. A “fancy meal” in Almaty is approximately $15 USD, and a fancy beverage maybe $4, but I make closer to a Kazakh salary and spend more than half of it on rent, so this was a big win for me.

2. You, too, can enjoy the Julia tour of Almaty. You don’t even have to buy me groceries. Pull up. You have two months.

3. And the drinks were terrible, frankly, but somehow it was still fun.

4. As I learned in the “my 65 year old neighbor is trying to recapture his cat in only his underwear and I am trying to leave for work and it’s 7:45am on a Monday” incident