Chicken and Banana Bread

iI don't get to do exciting stuff every day yet every day here is exciting for me. I really thing that life is full of experience. There are those who will grab it and run and those who are bored and dissatisfied no matter where they are in life. I choose to be the former!

Every day that Dinara is here we both benefit. She cleans and helps with Colbie, I pay her well and we are both teaching each other our native tongue. Russian will help me get along in the city and English will help her in the workplace. It's win win. We translated "Head Shoulders Knees and Toes" into Russian and have a blast singing with Colbie. I also make her watch the "Teach your baby to read videos. She loves the twilight series so I asked her if she wanted to borrow the books. Her english reading is not up to that level but maybe in a year or so she can try.

I made Banana Bread this morning and she loved it. She asked for the recipe and together we did all the translation and necessary metric conversions. I did have to send her home with baking powder because it isn't a local ingredient. Around dinner time I pulled out a chicken, showed her my drawer of spices and asked her what she would use. She picked some out, we seasoned it, stuffed it with carrots, onions and garlic and it is happily roasting in my oven. I am learning Kazakh cuisine, she is learning pizza, banana bread and taco soup. After stuffing the chickens butt we both got a kick out of how silly we looked shoving veggies (she calls it rabbit food) into the cavity. Poor chicken. We had lots of fun seasoning and stuffing the bird.

She is a very motivated young lady and I adore her more and more each day. With my russian lessons from Chevron, Rosetta Stone and speaking with Dinara I should be able to communicate effectively in the next six months. It is very liberating. Of all the crazy things Jason and I have done this is one of the things that has really changed my life and opened my eyes. I feel blessed every day we are in this wonderful place. I really love Dinara and am so happy to have her working for us. She is a ray of sunshine in our house and a really hard worker. She is a bit of a stickler about me using Russian. Sometimes I am brain dead but she will repeat and repeat until I get it right. I have learned to just do it and she will give me a break. I know I am the boss but she really wants me to learn Russian because she knows it will give me an edge. She has good intentions. She even started throwing in Kazakh. I'll never use it (unless the Lord has plans for me serving a mission here someday but it is always good to be prepared.) Knowledge is power.

Here we are happily stuffing our bird!