"We'll now return you to your regularly televised program"

February seems to be one of those months that always kick Kazakhstan volunteers in the groin. It is the shortest month of the year, but it tends to be the time when people are at their crankiest. By February, the good feelings of New Years are done, the daily grind of work and school has taken over, and everyone is generally pissed because they have been cooped up in their houses too long. It could also be the weather, an awkward in-between phase when winter is done, but spring forgot to show up. And that is if you are lucky, because some volunteers in the northern freeze clear up into April.

Although I was gone for most of February, the last part of the month got me down, resulting in the funkiest of funks, and I’m not talking about this type of funk. The weather also didn’t help. The last two weeks have been a foggy, rainy, snowy mess. The roads have turned to rivers of mud, and the finale of this half month of misery was a complete drenching by a car that swerved onto the shoulder of the road to hit a mud puddle.

The only thing that has been consistently good throughout February is working at my organization. I’ve said this many times before, but I am so happy to be working with such dedicated and nice people.

Since coming back from vacation, I’ve changed my personal ideals regarding how I’ll do projects going forward:

The “S” word

Anyway,

Unless it is a Star Trek marathon (and not Deep Space 9), I rarely watched TV in the states. I watch it even less in Kazakhstan. However, this past two weeks I’ve been addicted to the Winter Olympics. When I first moved to my new place in December last year, my landlady gave me a TV, and installed cable “so I wouldn’t be lonely”. The first time I turned it on was when the Olympics started, and I haven’t been able to turn it off. There is a Russian sports channel has 24/7 coverage of the Games, and it is the only channel I watch.

I’ve found that watching sports in Russian is great language practice, as the commentators speak really clearly and I have a high interest in sports. Throughout the games, I’ve learned so many new words and phrases in Russian, such as “cleaning the ice” (women’s curling), “triple spin,” (women’s ice skating short program) and “they aren’t playing nice” (said about the Belarus hockey team during a scuffle). These phrases will probably never be useful to me, as I’m not into winter sports (except curling, which is the most interesting Winter Olympic Sport). Kazakhstan had some athletes in the Winter Olympics, and gained a silver medal in the women’s biathlon. You can read about that medal race here.

Now that the Olympics are done, I can’t wait until the summer, when the World Cup starts in South Africa. Until then, the TV stays off, so that I don’t have to watch more of this crap.