Happy 4th!

Friday July 2
Today is Dan’s 22nd birthday and so we all sang to him, numerous times as different people found out that it was his birthday, and had cake. Lots of cake. I don’t think I have ever had more cake in my life actually. Altho it was our own fault. Let me explain. For lunch we went to MorningStar Cafe. After we ate, Kyle and I decided we wanted dessert. So we got a piece of German chocolate cake and a piece of carrot cake and shared them. This started a chain reaction. The chocolate cake was so good that Gaby and Rob had to get one to share too. After eating we went back to school for our Friday afternoon film class. When we got there, there was another cake waiting for us. Jake had picked it up from the Turkish restaurant, Merve, in honor of Dan’s b-day. So we all had another piece of cake. THEN, after our Friday afternoon meeting with Jake at 5, we all walked over to Dan’s house for a birthday dinner that his host family had invited us all to. There was so much food and...you guessed it...another cake. Which looked and tasted fantastic. So, I had four pieces of delicious cake in one day. Its now going to take me two weeks of situps and pushups to work it off haha.
Dan’s birthday party at his house was a lot of fun altho it was very crowded with all of us trying to crowd around the food while sitting on the floor crosslegged. After we finished eating we decided to go to an outdoor bar/restaurant next to the opera ballet for drinks and to watch a World Cup game. It turned into quite the evening with lots of drinks and laughs. I think we were there in all for about 4 hours. I think I drank more than I ever had before, I had a beer and 4 shots of vodka over the course of maybe 2 hours. However, on the way home, I was the one holding my own.

Saturday July 3
I wanted to sleep in a little bit this morning since I got home somewhat late last night but we had a field trip to the Talco aluminum factory and were leaving at 7:15. The factory employs 11,000 people and makes up most of the country’s economy. The aluminum they produce is shipped all over the world, a lot of it gets put straight on a train to be shipped to the metal market in London. The factory was incredibly big- probably the biggest thing I have ever seen in my life. I wish I could have taken some pictures of the inside of it but its considered a state secret- the government doesn’t want anyone else copying their ideas so they don’t allow cameras inside. There was one room where they have large blocks of carbon that are burning in order to heat the aluminum and melt it down to liquid form. They burn at 1652 degrees F. Then all of the melted aluminum is collected in these huge vats. We saw one of the vats being filled and it was so amazing- it looked like lava- so incredibly hot I can’t even imagine. They said the highest temperature it reaches is 2912 degrees F before they pour in into moulds to shape it into the bars of aluminum. Then a bunch of the bars are stacked together after they cool and wrapped up, ready to be loaded into train cars. Each one of the stacks of aluminum bars weighs one ton. The entire process was just ridiculous- the building was so big and so hot inside with the open flames and giant stacks of hot aluminum bars sitting around.
After we left the aluminum factory we stopped at a rice factory and a flax seed oil factory on our way home. The contrast between the two was ridiculous- the aluminum factory was huge, international, modern and full of machinery while the rice and flax seed oil factories were small, run by families, patronized by locals and had very few machines.
After we got home from the factory I was totally exhausted so I stayed home for the rest of the day, took a nap, had dinner and hung out with the family a little bit.

Sunday July 4
Happy 4th of July! This is the first 4th I have ever spent out of the country. I hung out at home for most of the morning, did my laundry and waited for my host parents to get home from the bazaar. When they did, my host dad said that we were going to celebrate and drink in honor of the day. I told him that Kyle was going to come over at 2pm to borrow my computer adaptor, my host dad said that he needed to come over at 12 instead for all of us to have lunch together because he was making aush. Of course, since we were celebrating, there was lots of alcohol involved and poor Kyle had probably 6 shots of vodka, again. I had a few shots of mulberry wine and was definitely feeling the effects because we hadn’t had any food yet so my stomach was empty. After eating we felt much better because all of the food here is so greasy.
At 5 we met up with the other Flagship kids and all set out together, grabbed a couple of mashrutkas and went out to the US embassy for the 4th of July party. It was a really nice evening- I totally forgot that I was in Tajikistan for the night, everyone there was American and everyone was speaking English and just the environment in general is very Western and American looking. We had hamburgers and hot dogs and margaritas (legit ones this time) and just hung out, talked, played basketball, and the marines set off some bottle rockets in place of fireworks when it got dark enough. It was a very nice time. We pretty much shut the place down because we started a small dance party in front of the bar and were almost the last ones to leave.