Banyas, Sheep, a Jehova's witness, and "Big Family!"

I had an interesting evening last night... I guess the first night here was a trick in a way, because my house was quiet and calm. Yesterday, everything exploded when about 10 other family members came home. In Kazakhstan, it's very common for all the extended family members to live in the same home. First, the cousins came back...There are 3 teenage girls. I was wrong about Raoka, she is in grade 8 but is actually 15 years old. Which is funny to me, because she looks like she could be about 9...she's so tiny. The other girls are 21 and 18. We made yablaka jam out of the apple tree in our yard, and we canned tomatoes to store inside. Then, the parents came back from the funeral, bringing their brothers and sisters along. We drank chai and watched olympic boxing on tv. That's when one of the uncles came up and tried to thrust a Jehova's witness book he got on the street in Almaty in my hands. One page was in English and he insisted that I read it to him...at PC training we got an extensive lecture about not associating ourselves with any religious groups that try to convert people..so I was thinking umm no? I don't want to read this? But Damir (the brother) came to my rescue and yelled at the uncle for me about trying to take jesus into my heart. As it turns out, he just wanted to listen to me read something in english, so later I got another book from my room and everyone was happy. I went upstairs to see what the girls were doing behind the door and they were having a makeup party, it was really cute..they gave me a manicure. I got out my makeup and they liked reading all the brands and listening to me say "blush", "mascara", etc. over and over. I took them into my room so they could play with all my stuff..which they tought was halarious. We took pictures of them in my sunglasses and holding my stuffed animals...lots of giggles. There was a lot of translating from the dictionary about why I wasn't married, blah blah blah giggle giggle. "this is Ryan photo, you lovvee him, giggle giggle" haha. Anyway, it was around 9:30 by then so I tried to ask the cousins if their family was planning to eat dinner that night (anytime soon??) The girls took that to mean I must be the starving American, so they grab me by the hand and insist on feeding me soup, salad, sweets, cookies, bon bons, tea...I kept insisting that I could wait to eat with the rest of the family but I don't think they were planning on eating until 11:30 for some reason. Damir told me they are used to the men coming home from work late so it's normal if I eat with the girls early..I guess this was allright because after that I fell asleep in front of the TV. Also, the one year old cousin Amir came to sleep over. I'm still trying to figure out who lives in the house and who is just staying. He's adorable, but he's a little scared of me and my "skin" apparently. (This morning he also threw up all over himself..cute) Anyway, I was sneaking off to my bed but my host mother grabbed me and told me "banya banya banya now now" so the girls again grabbed my hand and although I was pretty skeptical, I figured I had to get the first banya out of the way at some point. So how it works, you walk into the first room and change. I went in my swim suit...not sure if you are supposed to do that because the girls were in their underware. I'll figure that out later. Then you go into the sauna room. This is not like your typical american sauna, it must have been over 120 degrees in there. But sweating makes you clean, so I guess it was allright until you want to pass out. Then you run into the other room and throw water on yourself. They kept laughing because I used the cold water, but that's some sort of cultural taboo in kazakstan. Ok, so that's the banya and I got to use it again this morning after my run because they were not going to let me have my chai until I was clean. Today, after I was running I found Jamie, a girl in my language group walking around the streets of Amalybak because her family left her home alone, tear tear. I invited her over for chai, since there are so many people in my house now I figured one more wouldn't hurt. So after my banya we were presented with "breakfast" aka a massive feast of different foods spread across the table. My host sister Asil got back from Turkey this morning at 6am and brought us figs, hazelnuts, and halava, yum. That was the highlight of the meal....the rest of it consisted of bowls of stew and I finally got to eat bersmebak, the national dish of kazakhstan. Sheeps head and noodles, anyone? It's funny because Nora and Eulena told my family yesterday that I don't like to eat a lot of meat, so my bermebak plate had to tiny pieces of sheep floating around, and Jamie's was all meat and a few noodles. We were about to go into a food coma at this point, so we sprawled on the couch to watch Russian cartoons. This afternoon, Damir will take us on a tour of Almaty in his car...yay, cross your fingers for a cell phone!
Hope all is well at home, heard about Obama and Biden via Nora's text messages yesterday...guess I'm not so out of touch. Missing everyone. Das vidanya!

PS: Addie, how do I change it so my titles don't come out in what I think is Arabic?