Apples are from Kazakhstan; vegetarians clearly are not.

I'm sitting in an internet cafe in London across from the Borough Market. It is a small victory that I actually got here...after delays, bag issues, somehow ending up in Prague, getting lost with all my luggage after coming out from the Waterloo station at midnight (hey, things have changed around here!) I am finally enjoying all that is London. Amanda Greenwood is coming tomorrow and we will spend a whole week here going crazy, having fun and being dorks together. I walked along Southbank today and couldn't stop smiling; life is good.

Kazakhstan. So much to tell!

Firstly, let's get this out of the way: "Very niiiice! I liike!" or "High fivee!" I got it out of my system on the plane ride over (while I was sitting next to and making friends with the Ukranian Olympic fencing team) so that I didn't offend anyone. They HATE Borat. It's tough because it is really the only reference most Americans have. Most Americans would never have encountered or thought of Kazakhstan in their entire lives if it weren't for Sascha Baron Cohen. They say that there is no such thing as bad PR...but it sure stinks to have 300 million people think that in Kazahstan women are just after cockroaches, respect-wise.

This trip was with the JDC (Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) and Tufts Hillel, so we worked with the Jewish community and spent the whole week exploring our Jewish identities. Under the Soviet Union, religion was clearly not allowed, so most Jews in Almaty were completely cut off from their Jewish roots. We worked and lived with "Kazakhstani peers," a bunch of kids our age, some of whom only found out they are Jewish literally years ago. One girl in my group, Ania, got a job working for the Jewish community website just by chance. Her parents decided it was a fitting time to tell her then that she is Jewish. They were too scared to tell her before that. This was six months ago. She's 20.

All of these discussions about Judaism really got me thinking about my roots and my own Jewish identity. More on this later.

Some quick facts before I go:
Apples really are from Kazakhstan. So are yurts and Kazakh nomads.
KZ is the 9th largest country in the world.
Being a vegetarian is a little bit like being a weirdo in KZ.

More soon.

Love,
Sarah