Private Chuckles

One very common part of my every day life here in Kazakhstan are moments, usually one or two a day, where I find something pretty amusing – not enough to laugh out loud or to feel the need to share with anyone right away, but enough to distract me from what I should be doing, maybe even get me in trouble. They happen on the street (I wrote about the 10-year-old’s full fledged wipe out) where I am free to laugh if I want, but they also happen at school – like today for instance. After our 6th lesson, Saule said she had a staff meeting (she hates meetings and is prone to skipping them if she doesn’t think it’s worth her time) and that I should tag along, that it wouldn’t be long, that we’d eat at the cafeteria right afterwards. So I went, and at the meeting on Gallina, the supervising English teacher (chair of the department if it were a university), gave me a wrapped candy bar. I personally am not a fan of the orange and chocolate combination that was advertised on the package, but I gladly accepted because I was indeed craving some sugar. The meeting went on, about something that I didn’t understand very much of – I knew it was about grades and how some classes were being graded differently than others – but I couldn’t follow enough to hold my attention. I wrote a text message to a friend in Lisakovsk, but then decided I could use my time more wisely. I listened for words in the conversation that I had heard before but didn’t know what they meant and wrote them down so I could ask about them later. I tried to read a poster on the wall, but I didn’t have my dictionary with me, so I didn’t get too terribly far. So, finally, I examined my chocolate bar. Some days, just sounding words out in Cyrillic is enough to make me feel accomplished, so I read the name: сэйндвич. Sei… sei…nd. Seind… vee…Seindvee… ch. Oh. It says “sandwich”. I caught myself mid-chuckle, but not soon enough, as some of the teachers were looking my way, surely wondering why I was so giggly about a chocolate bar.