1-18

Well this entry has been procrastinated heavily, and now that so much has happened, even starting it seems daunting. The holidays came and went and to be honest I’m glad they are over. Spending Christmas and New Years sans family and friends was difficult to say the least. For New Years I celebrated with the host family which was interesting and we went to my host grandparents’ house. I was warned in advance that while the grandma was very nice, grandpa could be a little ornery. Armed with this knowledge I did what I do I most situations here, I hoped for the best and prepared for the borscht. After an awkward introduction and being the odd man out and surrounded by various family members that I had never met, I kept pretty quiet at first. Once we started eating however, grandpa took a real shine to me and after a couple of toasts we were regular buddies. He told me I look like Lenin (a statement that is usually accompanied with either extreme scorn or extreme amusement) and we ended up having a good time. Sometimes you assume a situation will be awful and it turns out great … sometimes vice versa as you will find out if you continue reading.

                After New Year my site mate Jamie and I went to Karaganda. We took the bus at 10PM and having been warned by everyone that this mode of transportation is horrible, I was slightly nervous. As I was standing in line to get on the bus, I held out my ticket and the unforgiving Steppenwind blew it right out of my fingers. I tried to locate my white ticket on the even whiter snow, asking the people around me to move their feet in panicked Russian, but it was lost. I went to the ticket counter and explained what had happened, conveniently forgetting the words for “wind” and “lost” and ended up saying something like “The night took my ticket.” I got my point across though, and the ticketess ushered me onto the bus and explained to the driver what had happened and everyone had a good laugh at my expense.

                The bus ride was 8 hours long and the seats were so small that they were painful. We drove through the steppe with snow swirling around and at times the road was not even visible. I did see some really cool snow rabbits running across the road though. The bus would stop every hour or two and let people off to pee on the side of a building or buy some vodka, but it was so cold that you couldn’t really stand it for more than 5 minutes. We got into Karaganda at about 6:30AM and went to the apartment that some volunteers had rented. We stayed there for 3 days and had a really great time. It was good to see all my friends I hadn’t seen since we went to our respective cities and we had a lot of catching up to do. Some of them are struggling in their sites and it made me feel better about the relatively easy life I have in Zhez. Karaganda is a pretty decently sized city and is the capital of my oblast (an oblast is kind of like a really big county) and my friend Sagar and I went looking for a Nintendo DS charger for these Kazakh outlets. After looking in about 4 electronics stores, we finally found what we wanted and brought it to the store clerk to find out the price. She took it out of our hands and went away for about 15 minutes and then came back to tell us she couldn’t sell it to us. We asked why, but couldn’t really understand the reason though it sounded like she was telling us someone else had reserved it. I didn’t really buy this because I have never heard of anyone reserving anything here and was pretty disappointed that she wouldn’t sell it to us. After waiting for her again for 15 minutes I offered to pay her more for the item, but she either didn’t understand or ignored me. To add insult to injury, as Sagar and I were leaving the security guards accused us of stealing something and took us to the office to wand us down with metal detectors. The wanded me down first and then went to Sagar and gave him a much more thorough search. The patted him down and wanded him twice after he had already emptied his pockets. I asked them if they wanted to check me more and they declined. We then realized what had really happened. Sagar is Indian and he got racially profiled. It really gets me in a country that is relatively diverse; foreigners are treated with so much suspicion and disrespect.

                It was a disheartening event, but it didn’t spoil the trip. There were about 10 of us and we hung out for a few days and got some of our problems off our chest. Jamie and I decided to take the train back home since we would be able to sleep on it, and we bought the plascart tickets. Plascart is pretty interesting and it was the first time I had deigned to ride anything other than coupe. It is hard to describe, but it’s kind of like a barracks where everyone has cots out in the open and the space above your bed is too small to sit up in. The problem with these trains is how insanely hot they are. They blast the heat nonstop and you can’t open up a window to make it cooler. Jamie and I didn’t buy any food or drink for the ride because it was only 14 hours and at night so we knew we would be sleeping most of the time. This proved to be a huge mistake because I woke up at 11PM and was sweating profusely and really dehydrated. I decided I had to take off the two pairs of thermals I was wearing underneath my pants, which was a harrowing feat considering there is no place to undress. Also there’s not exactly any room in the bed so I had wiggle out of them like a straightjacket underneath my covers. I got up and waited for a stop to see if anyone would be selling water like they sometimes do, but after two stops there were no salesladies outside the train. I went back to my aisle to assess my situation and after about a minute of despair one of the compartment mates must have seen how pathetic I looked and offered me some soda. I told her I wanted to buy some but couldn’t and she gave me another cup. I could have kissed her. I talked with her for a bit and she lives in Zhez and had heard about me teaching at school 1, so that was cool. I went back to bed feeling much better.

                In the morning we had to put our bedding away and I helped an old lady fold out the table and jammed the hell out of my finger. It’s been hurting off and on for the past couple of weeks and sometimes screams in the cold. I got back to Zhez safely and have been slowly readjusting to the new school schedule. All was relatively quiet until this last week.

                Last Tuesday I was walking to English club with Robert and Jamie at about 6PM and a guy that Robert knew passed us and said hello. His friend was looking a little soused, but I barely had time to make that inference when I suddenly felt a hand on my chest and a foot behind my legs and was pushed backwards. I fell into the snow and got up quickly to see the drunk guy standing a couple of feet away and reeling. I shouted a few expletives at him and was deciding whether or not to hit him when Jamie and Robert told me to leave him. The only thing that was hurt was my pride and it was good that the situation didn’t escalate, but it really shook me. Such complete random aggression. Turns out that was nothing.

                On Thursday Jamie and Robert and I were walking home from another English club when a guy coming toward us runs straight between Robert and I to hit our shoulder. Guys here love to test you for a fight by refusing to move out of your way and shouldering you as hard as they can. I dodged the shouldering because of my new heightened sense of awareness brought on by Tuesday’s incident, but Robert got knocked a little. We just walked on down the street, when the guy started talking to Robert telling him to “invite” me to a back alley. We obviously declined, but the guy was really trying to get my attention so we started walking quickly away. His friend caught up with him and the two of them started walking with us down the street (this is the main street of the city at 8PM mind you). Not happy that we were ignoring them they started grabbing our clothes and jackets and trying to get us to slow down. We knew that the situation was escalating so repeatedly broke their grips and started walking into the street to stop some traffic and get them to leave us alone. Unfortunately they flanked Jamie and got him away from us and before I knew it one of the guys had punched Jamie in the face. I grabbed Jamie and we walked away into the road, and the guys left presumably because we wouldn’t fight them. We did everything we should have done Peace Corps-wise, it just was so frustrating and a little scary. I never really thought I would have to worry about stuff here, and now I am paranoid when I’m walking the street. Having two altercations in a week really disheartened me. I mean we’re here trying to help out this city and this is how we are repaid. It really makes you want to wash your hands of the whole thing. After having a few days to stew in my misplaced anger though, I feel better and chalk it up to the cold or the full moon or stupidity or whatever. It’s a good reminder to be more cautious anyway. On Friday Jamie and I went to bowling with some locals and had a pretty good time. It let us blow off some steam. I got a 140 on my second game… not too bad.

                Now for the good news. I will tentatively be getting the internet in the house in a week or two so I should be able to talk to you all more frequently. Skype will be possible and I miss your voices so we will have to talk. Having some internet should help mitigate the boredom here sometimes, and it will be nice to be able to keep track to the news and stuff again. Anyway, I’m just getting into the groove of teaching now and trying to weather the weather. Hope this finds you well.

Drew