May 16, 2013

I was up early once again as sleep eluded me one more time. I decided to tidy up the flat as I was expecting Laira to come over for coffee this morning. I was busily typing away when I got a text from her asking if she could come up at 9:00 am instead of 11:00 as was originally planned. I had no problem with that.

She came in looking quite glamorous as she’s indeed a gorgeous woman who worked as a TV host before getting married. I made coffee and we exchanged pleasantries as she told her younger daughter was turning four tomorrow and she was on her way to ordering a custom-made Rapunzel cake for her. She also showed a video clip of herself dancing bachata at the Bishkek Place shopping center where free classes are being offered on Saturday afternoons.

I returned her book, “Stolen Lives”, and gushed about how fantastic it had been only to realize she’d never read it and that most likely it belonged to her husband. We promised to get together again when I come back and try one of the clubs that offers Latin nights.

It was time to buckle down and write all the missing “Highlights Reports” Jennifer had been begging me to do after seeing my photo postings on Facebook as she needed to report on the ELFs' activities as well. I had only completed three so far and needed an additional fourteen.

When it came to be one o’clock, I took a break to go have a pedicure done at the place Gulnara had arranged the previous day. I walked to Sovietskaya on another fabulous day and then called Irina from there. She spoke no English, but had a customer there at the moment who instructed me on how to find the tiny beauty salon where she worked.

The whole process was comical to say the least for as hard as I tried to follow Irina’s instructions, she had to move my feet herself into whatever position she needed. She started out by shaving all the dead cells from the soles of my feet and then clipped my toenail into a more natural shape. She charged 450 soms for all that hard work, so I tipped her an additional 100 soms for a total of $11.50 as I was very happy with the results.

I walked back to the apartment and sat down again to continue to write the reports and attach the corresponding photos. Took another break when the weather got really hot to buy myself a beer across the street. I then had to go back when I remembered I needed 3-1 coffee for the weekend at Issyk-Kul as I have no idea what the coffee situation will be there.

I did another load of laundry and got most of my suitcase ready. I should be able to pack my laptop inside of it since I don’t need that many pieces of clothing for just a three-day weekend. I figured that since the conference is taking place at a resort, a suit should be unnecessary.

The book “Where’d you go, Bernadette” is simply hilarious and the fact that the plot takes place in Seattle makes even more so as I can recognize the landmarks and attitudes of the local population. I stayed a bit late reading it.