smells like starbucks coffee, lemon tea with honey, tons of chocolate cookies, good old movie nights and laughter. oh how i wish i could be there at Ryan's birthday!!! Happy birthday Ryan!!! i wonder what kind of cake it's gonna be this year? one thing is for sure--30 candles--way to g(r)o(W)!!!oh, and the little birdie said wine.
Cheers and love amigo mio, Diana

i woke up a happy person today, sometimes it just happens to you, you wake up and you realize you are a really happy person. it happened to me this morning probably for the gazillionth time in my life and still it doesn't make the sensation any smaller. i'm happy--that's it:)
first of all it's this Melanie C clip : hey what r you looking for? i still don't have any clue of what i am looking for but the sunsets and the kids and the girls on the bench were very convincing. it was kind of like i am not ALREADY 22 but i am ONLY 22 and the bigger part of my life is still ahead of me and i will try to live it the best i can. actually, i won't TRY, i just WILL. i am sure:)
second i had lemon tea and a pear and there is probably nothing in the whole wide world that tastes better. chocolates and ice cream and chicken pizza and chebureki and chocolate chip cookies and coffe cake don't count because of the
calories although i don't care about the calories, anyway...i mean that particular pear was plain great so i didn't have to think about the rest:)
third i looked at my thermometer and it said 19'C!19'C mean hello summer shoes and good bye fall pink coat:)
next there was a surprise of some extra cash i found in my drawers which was a definite shopping time proposition. i will say the truth--i couldn't resist...and a really really cute skirt and a belt that i found for a 60% discount were sooooo much worth it:)
then has anyone ever noticed how beautiful people look when it's an Indian summer fall day? the sky is deep blue and the sun is so bright that you can't even look up but then if you look at a person who's passing you by you see a whole bouquet of sun rays in their eyes and everyone is smiling to you and you smile back because you know that if you smile your face will too, shine and your eyes will too, send out bouquets of sun rays:).
at the end of my walk another surprise fell onto my head: i happened to stop by CCUSA office and saw MU there, my philosophy teacher from college. we met accidentally a week ago at Taiga and decided to go to movies on Sunday if we didn't
forget about it. i had alreday made the same plan with Alexey the day before but told him that if it started raining everything would be automatically cancelled. it started raining--everything got automatically cancelled and so i forgot to call MU. he also forgot to call me but now we both remembered and so tomorrow we'd be all( the three of us) going out. man, when i think of how long it's been since my last trip to the movies ( end of July i think) i start feeling unwell...when i
think of how long it took me to get in touch with my friends i just can't believe myself. i've had a sticknote that said' diana, please call MU and so on and so on' stuck to my computer since i got back from Almaty in July and a new after my August trip but i never made it until this happy day. i don't know why.
oh yeah, and i finally bought a phone card for my cell and texted a message to masha in Kyrgyzstan. It was signed like this " from your dearest friend ever, Diana":)
From your dearest friend ever ( oh, i'm just kidding, but if you are someone to whom i gave this blog address you are no doubt a dear friend to me),
Diana.
PS. Have a happy day!

a hard question you asked me, Ted. i wish i had someone to tell me the answer. i know there are many unfair things in this world but at the same time i don't think that a homeless person in San Francisco is happier than a homeless person in Petro.
does it matter because of what one dies: icy Siberian weather or desperation? what DOES matter though, is HOW: alone and despearte and angry with the world. please don't get this idea that these people are content, you are very much mistaken if you think so. i served as a volunteer with the disadvantaged for 3 years, i know it. i heard stories that would make your hair stand on its end. and other than that what kind of life is that when a young man can not invite the girl he likes out?
or when kids can not go to school because they do not have money for stationary and appropriate clothes? or when a 5-months pregnant woman comes to Soup Kitchen with her hair shaved off, all stinking of urine, nearly making everyone aroud her faint?
of course in a way if i were a homeless and i could choose i would better live in SF, that would at least spare me of the giant freeze burns on my face in winter. but it's all very sad anyway. the world is at its weird equilibrium of disbalance: a
very famous american actress has just bought a 4 million dollar house for her dog. a woman down the street that no one knows about can not afford buying a lip balm for her daughter. the thing is that i am ashamed to talk about it because words without actions are pathetic. and i really don't like being pathetic. but one thing i know for sure: if you yourself do at least one good thing for a person in need it would be a worthy response to the problem. every kind action gives way to new kind actions. you know it's the big snowball of life and relationships. it's truly up to each and every one of us to illumine the earth. to me the story of the woman from Ust-Kamenogorsk( a city of 350,000 in Eastern Kazakhstan) is a good proof of it.
Her 19 year old son had cancer and only an $ 80,000 operation could save his life. a hard thing to do with one's anual income of $ 1,500? what she did was she bought a telephone book for $5 and beginning with letter A started calling people
telling them what happened to her son. she was saying ' at least 10 tenge please ( 7 cents)'. can you imagine anyone saying 'no' when asked directly like that? and so her son lived.
but my best advice wouldn't be about money. do clothing drives if you have extra clothes ( i do, i am sure you too) or give them food to eat. i am really sorry we are not doing Soup Kitchen anymore. if there ever was a thing that made me feel worthwhile that was a thing that made me feel worthwile that was it.

speaking of worse things happening...one month ago in a southern Kazakhstani hospital the doctors infected 48 kids with AIDS. when the director of the hospital learned about it he died of a heart attack right away.

on my 1st day of school this year, two weeks ago i once again walked upon a person lying in the middle of the street. yes, he was homeless and stinky and drunk and all covered in ugly rags but so what? i have never, not once saw a person stop and help someone like that until i do it. what is worst of all is that when the emergency finally arrives they do not always help. if the person is drunk and homeless they leave him in the street no matter the negative 40 in winter. i will never forget the day when we were supposed to have some important meeting at Ryan's and how i came late because i walked upon a dead body of a man who froze to death. last year i saw a man lying at the bazaar entrance where crowds of people keep walking in and out all the time. when i bent over to see what was going on a man at the ice cream stand told me , quotation opens: what are you doing? He's been dead for 4 hours now, they still haven't come to pick up the body. it all happened in the middle of a lively summer day when Masha and i were having a very happy shopping time in the center of the city. or the story of the three men who all had had their legs amputated. after the restricted one month period at the hospital had come to its end, the medical personnel put them in a car ,drove to some far away garages and left them with a 3 l. bottle of vodka to die under the 2 meters high piles of snow. good thing the owner of the garage made it in time to find them alive. what a surpise it would have been otherwise. by it i of course mean a bad one. a very bad one.

they say everywhere that human life is priceless.i see it is truly so...it has absolutely no price. a loaf of bread, for example, does. it costs 26 tenge. a bus ticket too. it is 27 tenge. the air fare from Petro to Almaty is 24 thousand. but a human life costs nothing at all. you may be one lucky owner of a long life if the life expectancy in your country is good but that does not mean anyone would give you even this 26 tenge loaf of bread if you are starving. it is much easier to cover the reality of things with many big words and nice philosophies instead of organizing a charity event and creating at least one shelter for the homeless, at least one seminar teaching the medical personnel to dysinfect the syringes together with their conscience.

i watched Petro news today. he did kill the taxi driver indeed. i could not fall asleep last night thinking of the man and his family. in this case, though, his life had a price. doesn't matter now how much he was going to sell the car for.

A couple days ago i came home from courses at 9 pm and saw two weird looking people at our place. The moment i entered the apt. they walked out, taking my dad and brother with them. It really freaked me out to see those people at my home so late in te evening. I asked my mom what was going on and she said that those two men were policemen and it was about a boy from Denis's class they had some questions about. When later that night they returned they said that the boy had been missing from home for 3 days and now they were seeing all the school kids and his friends asking about his possible whereabouts.



Oh my God...It has just now turned out that that boy had killed a man on the highway. A taxi driver who decided to give him a free ride to the city in the cold rainy night. The taxi driver who told him a story of how his son was studying in the city and how he had no money to pay for his education so that he had to drive in between his village and Petro at nights like that for his son's sake. Oh my God...He gave the boy some money when he learned that the boy had run away from home. And this jerk killed him with his grandfather's gun, hid the body in the car and drove around the city for two days more. 15 years old. what could possibly be a bigger tragedy? why would that even happen? what's wrong with the world? after things like that, like the 11th of september with people jumping out of the windows in desperation and Vietnam and Cambodia, and Iraq, and Afghanistan and the Nazi death camps and this 15 year old boy killing the kind soul how do you Lord even let us walk this planet? Oh my God...how?

in these past three months i got to say a whole lot of hello-s and a whole lot more of good bye-s. i yet again got to know wonderful people and yet again i know that most probably i will never see them again... so what? ...it's better to have lived and been through it than not. it's better to have only a memory of someone being great than nothing at all. it's better to know that you yourself have left a trace in these other people's lives than to not be remembered by anyone and anything just because you were too afraid to one day...

...lose it all.

i have noticed it started happening to me. i don't let myself grow attached to anyone or anything anymore. i have this very special feature: i always know when to stop. it's always just one second away from when things get serious. always just a few moments before falling for someone or something. always just in time to shut my mouth tight before admitting it out loud, just in time to not make it oficial even though deep down it might have already happened.

i have three very best girlfriends. Masha, Nastya and Saule. two weeks ago Masha left for OSCE academy in Bishkek, Kgz. today i saw Nastya off, she left back for Omsk. she found a job there and has already started working. and Saule left for the states two months ago. so at the moment it's only Saule's CD in my player i am listening to now, my memories and me.

i miss my friends. i guess i am so totally alone now i can't help wanting to get out of here. i pray God lets me get visa and then i will too, for once in my life, will be gone. i walk the same streets but i do not see the same faces any more. i have photo albums filled with pictures and tons of books and Cd-s from my friends. but it's like...like it's all different at the same time. at times i see myself like a very little girl walking the big globe. the funny thing is that the globe keeps turning all time with all the things turning also but i am always in teh very same place with only all teh rest being someplace else now.don't know how to explain it better.

Oh my gosh!!!!! Something is definitely wrong in the relationship Diana + The Internet! My computer refused working and all the internet cafes i tried to go to failed to open my pages.
I just want to say that i am doing really fine and as soon as this weird relationship gets better i will try emailing you, friends!
Oh, and all the pictures and many many many more resumes i wanted to post!Hopefully very very soon now.
Anyway, It's FALL here alreday!They are promising 7 degrees for next Wednesday! Somebody Help!!!