What have I been doing lately?

Working, mostly. And fearing the premature end of summer, as the weather has dipped to a low of 41°F. This change came about rather suddenly a day or two ago; it feels like mid-October instead of mid-August. Hopefully, it's just an aberration. I don't remember it being this cold this early last year.

Despite the heavy workload recently, I've managed a few new cultural experiences in the last month. A couple of weeks ago, my Kazakh colleague Tulesh invited our entire office to a picnic on the steppe near his native village, about 2.5 hours from Astana along a very bad road (I drove my car in the caravan, and it felt the pain of multiple potholes). Tulesh and his family and friends from the village set up a yurt for us, kill the sheep, and cooked a lot of traditional Kazakh foods, including bishbarmak, the national dish. I've been wanting to try it for a long time; it involves a giant pot filled with most of the sheep parts, some horse meat, noodles, and onions, and is eaten by hand. Some bites were delicious, some not so good; I guess it depended on which part of which animal you had in any particular mouthful. We also had some delicious shashlik (kebabs) and some other traditional stuff, and spent the afternoon sitting by the lake, swimming, and relaxing. I posted some pictures on my web album.

Last week, I flew to the city of Aktau in western Kazakhstan for a business trip. Aktau is located on the Caspian Sea, and has a lot of beaches and a definite beach culture; it's also near a lot of Kazakhstan's oil fields, and has seen a lot of growth due to the oil industry. Aside from the businesses and people involved in the oil industry, though, it's a very poor place, and very desert-like. I saw camels wandering by the side of the road on my way in from the airport. I went swimming in the Caspian Sea, just to say I did it (I was in the water for about 60 seconds). Then I went back and swam at the hotel, which was much nicer. I also posted a few pictures from the trip.

Finally, I recently went to the sauna, a very popular thing in this culture among both Russians and Kazakhs. Locals will often spend 3-4 hours there at a time. There is a very large, new sauna in town; the building is divided in half, and is completely segregated by gender. Each side has two floors of various saunas, baths, and a pool. They have Finnish-style saunas, which are the kind of sauna I've seen before in hotels, etc. in the USA--very hot, dry air. They also have a Russian-style sauna, or banya, which is a wet sauna with very hot steam. The seating is tiered, and the higher you go, the hotter it is. Every so often, someone pours water on the hot rocks, and a cloud of searing hot steam rises through the room. I happened to be sitting near the top when someone poured a large quantity of water on the rocks; a few seconds later, I thought my hair was going to catch on fire (some people actually wear special hats and gloves into the banya). It doesn't take long to work up a massive sweat. Usually, you sit inside for about 10 minutes, and then go out and take a cold shower or jump in the pool of cold water. As strange as it sounds, I found the whole thing very therapeutic and relaxing, and it was very good for my muscles. One of the stranger traditions I witnessed, though did not try yet, is the practice of hitting yourself with a bundle of sticks while in the banya (small branches with the leaves still on them, though I forgot what kind of plant; you can buy them there, and they have a very nice smell). People do this very aggressively, smacking themselves all over their body, and getting their friends to smack them on the back, spraying sweat everywhere. I'm not why this is beneficial, but my friends assure me that it's great, and is essential to getting the full purifying effect of the banya. Maybe next time.