Saturday, January 23, 2010

A cold morning in Almaty

I'm quite proud of a telephone conversation I had with a Kazakh repairman this morning. Our furnace broke down. So, with some trepidation, I called the maintenance office. After a year and a half, I still can't speak Russian:

Dave: Dobra oo-trah (Good morning)
Repairman: Dobra oo-trah
Dave: Mya doma holudna (my house cold)
Rm: Nyet arasho (not good)
Dave: Nyet. (no) (laughing)
Rm: gydah (where?)
Dave: pah-dees-yat, pyat (#55)
Rm: dee-set minota (10 minutes)
Dave: Okay
Rm: Okay (laughing)
Dave: Spaseba (thank you)

Russian is extraordinarily difficult to learn and we just don't have the time to study it. Plus, we live in a 'bubble.' It's all English at school and on weekends we hangout with our Western friends. I was extremely reluctant to phone the maintenence office, but the kids were starting to get cold. It's -5 this morning. All last week it was -20.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So what's happened at the end? Did you manage your problem?
Actually, it is really difficult to predict Almaty's weather :)