"Hey, here comes that frog! All right!"

Our banya—which is actually my host aunt’s banya, since ours is broken—is infested with frogs. I spotted the first one a few weeks ago, when it crawled out from under the planks and nearly caused me to scald myself. (The banya is a really bad place to be startled—between the giant furnace, the slippery surfaces, and the gaping spaces between the rickety floorboards, there are countless opportunities to do yourself serious damage). But the frog clearly had no more interest in harassing me than I did it, and, as Mitch Hedberg put it, frogs are always cool. So the frog and I were co-existing in relative peace—until last Sunday, when I noticed the frog seemed to be sitting atop a weirdly lumpy pile of rocks behind the furnace. The pile was weirdly lumpy, I soon realized, because it was not made of rocks, but in fact of other frogs. Seven, actually, all just chilling out in their bug-eyed manner. Occasionally a couple of them would head under the floorboards—I guess there was something cooler happening down there—but they mostly stayed out of my way, and seemed content to just pulsate in their frog pile. I’ve decided that if I ever start a Moscow-based punk band—weirder things have happened in my life—I’m definitely calling it “Frogs in the Banya.” (Imagine that screamed over and over again at top volume, and I think you’ll see why). My biggest concern is the three kittens and their mom currently bunking in a box just outside the banya door—if there’s anything creepier than unexpectedly seeing a live frog while naked in a steamy confined space, it’s stumbling on a messily dead one under the same circumstances.

The end of winter is bringing out a lot of wildlife in Zhetysai, mostly of the insect and avian variety. I’m glad the bitterest of the bitter cold has passed, but the blanket of snow was starting to grow on me, especially when I realized walking through a wonderland of slightly dirty snow could, with some imagination, feel like walking on an endless plain of Oreo ice cream. (I feel an acid trip mentality improves most things in life, as long as it doesn’t lead to terrible decisions—like trying to eat all that delicious-looking but actually disease-filled snow-cream). I was all ready to declare the season officially over a week ago, when the days were hot and sunny and we moved all our dish and face-washing activities outside. But we had a crazy rainstorm on Thursday that, sometime during the night, turned into snow. The snow was gone by the end of the day, but I’m a little more wary of the weather here now. Still, it’s pretty warm for March— which makes me dread the summer a little, since will apparently involve 100+ heat, countless mosquitoes, and an annual infestation of giant bats. I’ve been through plenty of sweltering Southern summers, but I usually spent them immersed in water or A/C while wearing as little clothing as possible, which isn’t really an option in Zhetysai. Luckily I’ll be traveling for at least some of that time, so maybe I’ll avoid the peak of giant bat season.

March can be a fairly awful month in any part of the world, but Kazakhstan has made it a little more bearable by throwing in a couple of holidays to break it up. There was International Women’s Day, on March 8th, which was an official school holiday and a three-day extravaganza of gift giving, chocolate eating, and an insane amount of fake flowers. I now have a whole bouquet of fake roses, countless chocolates, various cosmetics, and a shampoo/conditioner set with the following instructions:

“Use method: after cleaning the hair, wipes the hair does, right amount this will trace evenly on the hair, the light canadian massage retains 1-3 minutes, finally strips with water cleanly then. Notice: avoid contacting the eye, if carelessly pleasant, please namely thoroughly flush with the clear water.”

I’m not really sure what a Canadian massage is, but if I attempt it I’ll try my best not to be carelessly pleasant, as that always leads to danger. Women’s Day here basically combines all the elements of Mother and Valentine’s Day, except that there are no relationship or child-related requirements for getting gifts. There were also a lot of concerts, and flowery greeting cards, and—as with pretty much any occasion over here—a lot of sparkles. Sparkles and exaggeratedly cute decorations are a big thing in K-Stan—Lisa Frank would be huge over here. I’m not what you’d call a “sparkles” person (if someone had to come up with 850,000 word combinations to describe me, “sparkles person” would not make the list), but I now own more sparkly, pink school-related items than I have since the third grade, due to the fact that those are pretty much the only kind you can buy at my school’s canteen. I’ve filled up all the notebooks I brought me, so I mostly write lesson plans in the exercise books the kids here use—my current one, a gift from a student, has Cinderella on a white horse against a bubblegum background, which is a pretty good representation of my life and interests. I found out about the sparkle fever pretty immediately upon arriving in Kazakhstan: our first day in Orientation, the Peace Corps gave each of us glittery exercise books with obnoxiously cherubic children praying over the golden, curlicue-adorned words “Valley of Angels.” During one of the more boring Orientation sessions (which will probably turn out to have contained some vital information that could save my life, at some point), I turned the valley of angels into a valley of horned, vaguely androgynous demon creatures, which has been a little awkward to try to explain anytime anyone’s caught a glimpse of it.

The other big March holiday is, of course, Nauryz, the South’s biggest celebration, which happens a week from yesterday. It’s also the end of our third term at school, which means there’s just one more until the summer. I’m trying to hit up both Turkey and Uzbekistan this summer, along with some in-Kazakhstan travel, so I’m pumped for the vacay. And yeah, I just said vacay—clearly my English degenerating far more rapidly than I suspected. Don’t judge, guys, don’t judge.

IMPORTANT: Because of mysterious Blogger-blocking on this side of the world, I'm moving this blog here: http://katharinedoeskazakhstan.wordpress.com/. See you there whenever my Internet works (so for about fifteen minutes every couple of weeks)!