Yerke Merke Merke My

               So May’s been kind of a whirlwind what with a cultural camp, my birthday, and the end of school. I’ve had some unforgivably long entries without this much time to make up for so I will try to spare you the banal minutia of my days and skip to the exciting parts.

                In early May I went to a volunteer named Jamie’s cultural camp in Merke. Merke is right on the Kyrgyzstan border and as such the train ride there was fraught with skepticism and document checks as to our purpose in the town. It was a long expensive train ride with the Hubers (the married couple in Satpaev who are awesome and also have a great blog you should check out in my sidebar), but we made it there after a day-long layover in Karaganda complete with tacos (thanks to Corinne and Blake).

                Merke was surprisingly beautiful. I trash the steppe for being the most boring landscape in the world, but I should do a better job explaining that the steppe does not cover all of Kazakhstan (it only feels like it does). Merke was lush with green flora and is located at the foot of some amazing mountains. Tired, but reinvigorated by the scenery, the Hubers and I took an overexpensive taxi to Jamie’s new house and were greeted by a score of volunteers and beer.

                Jamie had been having trouble locating a place to stay in her town, but had finally succeeded in securing a house (albeit one up for sale that can be purchased any day). Her house was a lot more like what I imagined Peace Corps would be when I first joined. It came complete with a water pump, an outhouse, a banya, a garden, and a friendly dog named Norbert. For the next week volunteers came and went and we lived and tended to the homestead in a commune-type way. It was awesome. It was so much fun sharing the responsibilities with other volunteers and doing chores around the “farm.” We even termed our group “the farm friends” and have semi-matching bracelets that we made (though I am the only one who actually wears mine).

                We went to Merke for a cultural camp which basically consisted of volunteers picking a country or region of the world and teaching about it and then having students present dances/skits from their areas. My country was Ireland and I taught my students an Irish jig to “Flogging Molly” which was pretty hilarious. We also had Olympic games in which we pitted all the groups against one another and Ireland won the Olympics. Our motto was “Orange, Green, and White, the Irish will fight”. The colors refer to the colors of the Irish flag and I’m pretty sure we won because our motto struck fear into the hearts of the other teams.

                I happened to be in Merke during Cinco de Mayo and my birthday and it was great being able to celebrate with other volunteers. Michael Hotard even got a bottle of tequila for Cinco and we had a blast. Plus some volunteers made AMAZING food like Indian food and enchiladas and tacos and pizza that provided the best food I have eaten since I have been here. No hyperbole here… it was delicious.

                I hurt my knee playing freeze tag with the kids at Jamie’s school.  There’s not really any way to make that statement less embarrassing. I guess a bum knee comes with turning 23.Because of this I couldn’t go hiking into the mountains with the other volunteers. It wasn’t too bad because the vol’s had some problems with the overzealous Merke police (you can read about it in Nick’s blog). The knee’s been giving me problems off and on, but I think it’s getting better. All in all it was really a perfect trip and I’ll be having a culture camp like it in June so hopefully it will be as much fun.

                Let’s see, after I got back we had a teacher’s seminar that went really well which was good because our regional manager was in town and got to see some of the work we are doing. I taught about games in the classroom and taught teacher’s some fun English activities that can be done to get their students excited about learning. We also went bowling with our RM and I got my best Kazakh bowling score of 135. Good times.

                After this I had about a week left of school and now I’m finished. Yesterday I went t o a small mountain range called Ulatao (about 3 hours from Zhezkazgan) with Robert, Jamie, some teachers, and about 15 college students. It was a lot of fun. We climbed some mountains, ate some really good food, and saw a part of Kaz I had never been to. It was kind of an end of year celebration for the college students. Somehow I managed to get a sunburn on my head in rainy, overcast weather… my pale skin never ceases to amaze me.

 Tomorrow is the final bell ceremony at my school and then summer officially begins. I feel good because I have been making friends with some locals and will have an interesting summer full of travelling, camps, and hanging out with friends. I also now have tickets to America, so I will be in Georgia from Aug 5 to Aug 21. I am really excited of course. I can’t wait to see everyone and eat some delicious food.