Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Have a laugh at my expense
Wow, I just realized that my sitemate Jamie posted the video of us dancing at the Christmas party. If you want to see what may easily be the most embarassing thing I have done in the past year, please watch. Here is the link http://stepbysteppe.blogspot.com/2009/01/very-kazakh-christmas.html . Enjoy.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Strange Company
Well, just when you think Spring is about to come, you get a heavy dump of snow that undoes all the work that Mother Nature has been doing in melting the ice. I really thought we were done with this whole foot of melting ice business.
Anyway, In Kazakhstan seasons start on the first of the month so Spring began on the first of March. I’ll believe it when I see it. Tues brought about the first day above freezing since November and I was almost moved to tears. It’s been a long, hard battle but I now have reason to suspect that this winter won’t last forever.
It has been an interesting week. On Monday I helped a volunteer from Karaganda with a seminar directed at English teachers, students, and librarians. I was a little concerned as I was to lecture to the librarians who spoke no English, but I had my friend/Russian tutor Gulzhan on standby for translation and talked about Literature in the modern age and techniques for getting kids to read for about 2 hours. It was actually pretty rewarding, as I was able to give my first real class in the field I love, but on the whole I’m not exactly sure why we had the seminar in the first place. I just don’t know what we were supposed to accomplish. Still it got Robert and I a spot on the evening news so I’m pretty much famous now. After the seminar the library presented a small lunch for us that consisted of butter and sausage sandwiches (like Grandma used to make) and some finger foods. It was pretty tasty but after about an hour I was starting to wonder why I was still there. Turns out the reason for that was that the director made us put our coats in her room and then promptly left the library with the only key and locked her door. So we waited for about 2 hours for our coats to be liberated. If this was GA I would have said “Who cares?” and gotten my coat at a later date, but in these climes there is really no way to step outside without several layers on. Hell, I just got to the point where I don’t have to wear 2 layers of thermals to walk to school.
So after the seminar, Robert and I went to pay our phone/internet bills and happened upon an interesting situation. Let me preface this by saying that the phone company has automatic teller machines that most people pay their bills on, but there are several disadvantages to these machines especially if you happen to have lived in a society where you want… let’s say proof that you paid your bills. Basically if you pay on an ATM an amount pops up when you type in your phone number and you put a bill in the machine to pay. However you don’t get change for the amount you put in, you only get a “credit” on next month’s bill and you never get a receipt. Sound sketchy enough yet? So naturally we prefer to talk to a person and get a receipt printed out of the bill, but this process is heavily discouraged as the person who works there actually has to do (God forbid) work. So long story short I give the teller my phone number to get a receipt and she puts it in one number off. Unfortunately, the phone number she enters in happens to belong to a family that has almost the exact same name as my host family and lives in the EXACT same building number and apartment number on a different street. Since she is rushing to get us out of there I agree to the name and apt/building number she reads me to confirm it is my residence and end up paying the bill of another family. Luckily, this bill is only about 6 dollars and fifty cents, as opposed to the nearly 100 dollars I needed to pay for my family, but the phone clerk informs me that there is absolutely no way to rectify to the misbilling and payment of the other bill. How a country can operate when there is no way for an employee to fix a mistake is beyond me.
The clerk attempted to fix the situation by calling the family and explaining the situation (or rather we complained so much that they had to do something to get us to leave), and while the family agreed to pay the bill on the phone if we came over to get the money, they proceeded to dodge us for a few days before answering our phone call and explaining that they wouldn’t pay based on the principle of the matter. You would think they would be happy to pay since basically we saved them a trip to the phone company, but instead they decided to remain 6 dollars richer. I’m glad it was only six dollars and not say, sixty, but I’m still a little angry about the whole system of incompetence that got me to this point. Anyway I learned a valuable lesson about the difference between the names Sargenbaev and Sargentaev.
Sunday is Women’s Day so apparently I have to buy a present for every Kazakh woman in my life, when I’m trying to save money for my travelling at the end of the month, but I digress. We are having a party at the school tomorrow and have Monday off so that’s pretty cool. I can’t wait for the end of the month when I get to see all the other volunteers for the first time since Nov. 9. Hope you are well.
Drew
Anyway, In Kazakhstan seasons start on the first of the month so Spring began on the first of March. I’ll believe it when I see it. Tues brought about the first day above freezing since November and I was almost moved to tears. It’s been a long, hard battle but I now have reason to suspect that this winter won’t last forever.
It has been an interesting week. On Monday I helped a volunteer from Karaganda with a seminar directed at English teachers, students, and librarians. I was a little concerned as I was to lecture to the librarians who spoke no English, but I had my friend/Russian tutor Gulzhan on standby for translation and talked about Literature in the modern age and techniques for getting kids to read for about 2 hours. It was actually pretty rewarding, as I was able to give my first real class in the field I love, but on the whole I’m not exactly sure why we had the seminar in the first place. I just don’t know what we were supposed to accomplish. Still it got Robert and I a spot on the evening news so I’m pretty much famous now. After the seminar the library presented a small lunch for us that consisted of butter and sausage sandwiches (like Grandma used to make) and some finger foods. It was pretty tasty but after about an hour I was starting to wonder why I was still there. Turns out the reason for that was that the director made us put our coats in her room and then promptly left the library with the only key and locked her door. So we waited for about 2 hours for our coats to be liberated. If this was GA I would have said “Who cares?” and gotten my coat at a later date, but in these climes there is really no way to step outside without several layers on. Hell, I just got to the point where I don’t have to wear 2 layers of thermals to walk to school.
So after the seminar, Robert and I went to pay our phone/internet bills and happened upon an interesting situation. Let me preface this by saying that the phone company has automatic teller machines that most people pay their bills on, but there are several disadvantages to these machines especially if you happen to have lived in a society where you want… let’s say proof that you paid your bills. Basically if you pay on an ATM an amount pops up when you type in your phone number and you put a bill in the machine to pay. However you don’t get change for the amount you put in, you only get a “credit” on next month’s bill and you never get a receipt. Sound sketchy enough yet? So naturally we prefer to talk to a person and get a receipt printed out of the bill, but this process is heavily discouraged as the person who works there actually has to do (God forbid) work. So long story short I give the teller my phone number to get a receipt and she puts it in one number off. Unfortunately, the phone number she enters in happens to belong to a family that has almost the exact same name as my host family and lives in the EXACT same building number and apartment number on a different street. Since she is rushing to get us out of there I agree to the name and apt/building number she reads me to confirm it is my residence and end up paying the bill of another family. Luckily, this bill is only about 6 dollars and fifty cents, as opposed to the nearly 100 dollars I needed to pay for my family, but the phone clerk informs me that there is absolutely no way to rectify to the misbilling and payment of the other bill. How a country can operate when there is no way for an employee to fix a mistake is beyond me.
The clerk attempted to fix the situation by calling the family and explaining the situation (or rather we complained so much that they had to do something to get us to leave), and while the family agreed to pay the bill on the phone if we came over to get the money, they proceeded to dodge us for a few days before answering our phone call and explaining that they wouldn’t pay based on the principle of the matter. You would think they would be happy to pay since basically we saved them a trip to the phone company, but instead they decided to remain 6 dollars richer. I’m glad it was only six dollars and not say, sixty, but I’m still a little angry about the whole system of incompetence that got me to this point. Anyway I learned a valuable lesson about the difference between the names Sargenbaev and Sargentaev.
Sunday is Women’s Day so apparently I have to buy a present for every Kazakh woman in my life, when I’m trying to save money for my travelling at the end of the month, but I digress. We are having a party at the school tomorrow and have Monday off so that’s pretty cool. I can’t wait for the end of the month when I get to see all the other volunteers for the first time since Nov. 9. Hope you are well.
Drew
Monday, February 23, 2009
I want a cheeseburger
Well, I finally have the internet. I would have blogged sooner, but really life has kind of run stagnant around these parts. This is the first time I have been able to post directly after writing and not had a three day layover between writing and posting. The best thing about having the internet is finally being able to skype. It was amazing seeing my parents and some of my friends for the first time in 6 months. Technology never ceases to amaze me.
I have basically been awaiting the end of winter and the beginning of some PC festivities in late March. It's been a long wait. I thought the worst of winter had passed after some cool days in early Feb, but it came back full force a couple of weeks ago. My definition of "the coldest I have ever been" has been constantly redefined since I've been here, but I think last Tuesday will hold that honor forever now. I was walking home from movie club and was in pain for the entire mile and a half walk. It's not even the normal temperature that is so cold, it's this steppenwind that pierces everything. I am ready to see some green plants and look forward to venturing out into the steppe and measuring its true vastness.
I have been a little sick for the past two days and am convinced that here the sickness isn't the worst part, its people guessing what you did that made you sick. You are held personally accountable for your illness and the reasons for malady including but are not at all limited to:
forgetting to wear a hat, forgetting to wear a scarf, drinking cold beer (beer is fine but cold beer is an affront to god), leaving a window open for too long, sitting next to an open window in a vehicle, failing to eat raw onions or garlic on a biweekly basis, or (my favorite) not drinking vodka because it is a "prophyllactic."
Of course real reasons for illness like say, the germ theory are completely thrown out the window (though they must be thrown quickly as keeping the window open will cause a draft that may make you sick). I will not get sick from having 20 kids that i teach cough in my face, living in a house with sick people or eating from the same plate as 10 people as we chow down on some horse n' dumplings. Why is this you may ask... well I have been told numerous times that the frost kills all viruses and there is really no reason why you should be sick in the dead cold of winter. I try to refute with science... but my family apparently didn't get the memo.
Clubs and everything have been going well, and I am probably going to be starting a Literature/poetry club for some advanced students soon. I am really excited about this because it will be my first chance being able to teach in my favorite field and this is presumably what I want to do with my life. We will see how it goes.
Also I have been asked to co-facillitate a seminar for the rest of the education volunteers when we have our In Service Training, so I guess that means I am not too terrible at teaching. I am also supposed to be doing some seminar for librarians and teachers this Saturday, but I haven't really been filled in on any of the details... at all. Should be interesting.
The other day at a Russian lesson I unfortunately stared into the abyss at the true horror of Russian verbs... now I can never go back and the task of learning more is daunting. I think I'll just stay in my current state of broken grammar where as the linguist Mr. McWhorter states "makes 6 year old Russian speakers sound like Churchill" for a couple more weeks. If anybody wants to check out a great book on the English language check out his "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue." It's pretty entertaining and attempts to explain why our language is the way it is and why it is comparatively easy.
Let's see any exciting news? I shaved my head and am waiting to see how that goes over at school. I miss pizza, hamburgers, Italian food, and steak most of all, and I have decided you are not a real man or woman until you have eaten horse meat off its own femur or shoudler blade... and what a femur it is (horses have such long legs)! I have become much more conscious of the anatomy of meat since being here and can spot liver a mile away (stop trying to sneak it in my food please!). I generally see what I will be eating on the floor or on the balcony a few days before I eat it and have a pretty good eye for the cuts of meat on goats, horses, and cows. Still I'd kill for some bacon.
It's looking pretty certain that I'll be back in the States in early August and should be spending a few weeks there. I guess I'd like to spend my travel days on going someplace exotic, but I miss my motherland too much. Plus after so much travelling around this country, I just want to relax. I'll have enough time to make another vacation next year.... This is me justifying my decision to come home for a few weeks. Umm that's about it. I am little more updated on news, though movies completely escaped my knowledge for 6 months and can't believe a Friday the 13th remake made number 1 in the box office. You leave America for 6 months and things go to pot. I hope to have these posts out with more frequency now that oo mynah Internet yest (Internet exists for me), but I also need things to post about. I'll leave you with the best Valentine I've ever gotten that was given to me by one of my students. I guess I'm not such a good teacher.
"You be valentine
you be sweetie chocolait
you be cat?!
Be my valentine"
Yours Drewly
I have basically been awaiting the end of winter and the beginning of some PC festivities in late March. It's been a long wait. I thought the worst of winter had passed after some cool days in early Feb, but it came back full force a couple of weeks ago. My definition of "the coldest I have ever been" has been constantly redefined since I've been here, but I think last Tuesday will hold that honor forever now. I was walking home from movie club and was in pain for the entire mile and a half walk. It's not even the normal temperature that is so cold, it's this steppenwind that pierces everything. I am ready to see some green plants and look forward to venturing out into the steppe and measuring its true vastness.
I have been a little sick for the past two days and am convinced that here the sickness isn't the worst part, its people guessing what you did that made you sick. You are held personally accountable for your illness and the reasons for malady including but are not at all limited to:
forgetting to wear a hat, forgetting to wear a scarf, drinking cold beer (beer is fine but cold beer is an affront to god), leaving a window open for too long, sitting next to an open window in a vehicle, failing to eat raw onions or garlic on a biweekly basis, or (my favorite) not drinking vodka because it is a "prophyllactic."
Of course real reasons for illness like say, the germ theory are completely thrown out the window (though they must be thrown quickly as keeping the window open will cause a draft that may make you sick). I will not get sick from having 20 kids that i teach cough in my face, living in a house with sick people or eating from the same plate as 10 people as we chow down on some horse n' dumplings. Why is this you may ask... well I have been told numerous times that the frost kills all viruses and there is really no reason why you should be sick in the dead cold of winter. I try to refute with science... but my family apparently didn't get the memo.
Clubs and everything have been going well, and I am probably going to be starting a Literature/poetry club for some advanced students soon. I am really excited about this because it will be my first chance being able to teach in my favorite field and this is presumably what I want to do with my life. We will see how it goes.
Also I have been asked to co-facillitate a seminar for the rest of the education volunteers when we have our In Service Training, so I guess that means I am not too terrible at teaching. I am also supposed to be doing some seminar for librarians and teachers this Saturday, but I haven't really been filled in on any of the details... at all. Should be interesting.
The other day at a Russian lesson I unfortunately stared into the abyss at the true horror of Russian verbs... now I can never go back and the task of learning more is daunting. I think I'll just stay in my current state of broken grammar where as the linguist Mr. McWhorter states "makes 6 year old Russian speakers sound like Churchill" for a couple more weeks. If anybody wants to check out a great book on the English language check out his "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue." It's pretty entertaining and attempts to explain why our language is the way it is and why it is comparatively easy.
Let's see any exciting news? I shaved my head and am waiting to see how that goes over at school. I miss pizza, hamburgers, Italian food, and steak most of all, and I have decided you are not a real man or woman until you have eaten horse meat off its own femur or shoudler blade... and what a femur it is (horses have such long legs)! I have become much more conscious of the anatomy of meat since being here and can spot liver a mile away (stop trying to sneak it in my food please!). I generally see what I will be eating on the floor or on the balcony a few days before I eat it and have a pretty good eye for the cuts of meat on goats, horses, and cows. Still I'd kill for some bacon.
It's looking pretty certain that I'll be back in the States in early August and should be spending a few weeks there. I guess I'd like to spend my travel days on going someplace exotic, but I miss my motherland too much. Plus after so much travelling around this country, I just want to relax. I'll have enough time to make another vacation next year.... This is me justifying my decision to come home for a few weeks. Umm that's about it. I am little more updated on news, though movies completely escaped my knowledge for 6 months and can't believe a Friday the 13th remake made number 1 in the box office. You leave America for 6 months and things go to pot. I hope to have these posts out with more frequency now that oo mynah Internet yest (Internet exists for me), but I also need things to post about. I'll leave you with the best Valentine I've ever gotten that was given to me by one of my students. I guess I'm not such a good teacher.
"You be valentine
you be sweetie chocolait
you be cat?!
Be my valentine"
Yours Drewly
Saturday, January 24, 2009
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
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
More Pictahs
Pictures of me with at the director's house in my ceremonial garb. Pic of me on the top of my apartment's roof. And picture of an awesome post-Soviet apartments building.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
from 12/8
Well I’ve been here for about a quarter of a year now, and the time has both gone quickly and run stagnant. Some days (mostly during training) seemed like they would never end, but now that my life has fallen into a loose routine it is more of a game of reconciling the fact that I will be here for years. One has to set up goal dates in order not to focus on the elusive endpoint. For instance, On January 1st I will go to Karaganda to meet up with a bunch of volunteers that I haven’t seen in awhile. Then I have March to look forward to because it is IST (assuming it doesn’t get cut due to financial issues) which is a conference discussing changes and goals of PC now that we know what we are doing. March gives way to May which is my birthday, which begets the Spring/Summer where I will be able to explore the steppe, which precedes August when I will hopefully be able to make a trip back to America to see all you lovelies. It’s this kind of forward-thinking that keeps me from going crazy on these holiday afternoons.
Not to say I’m not enjoying myself, my sitemate and friend Robert (Bobby Light) just explained it thusly: “There is a fine line between having no free time and having too much free time.” Currently we are nearing the end of this school term and just like in America, we have a lot of free days. I had a day off for Kurban Ait (still not sure exactly what it is) about a week ago and am currently basking in the last day of a two day holiday for Independence Day. It’s great having a day off, especially since I had very few during training, but there is only so much you can do. Usually I end up going gosting with the family, which is just visiting a friend’s house for a huge meal. The food is usually pretty good, but it’s always awkward not being able to fully communicate and just listening to a conversation going on around you and being unable to participate. When this happens I usually start daydreaming, and most families really don’t like it when you start staring into their wallpaper and your eyes get that glassy, faraway look. I usually get reprimanded in Kazakh and try to pretend like I was paying attention, but talk about a rude awakening. It’s weird though, most people have no idea how to talk to non-native speaker. I chalk it up to the lack of foreigners in Kaz, but you would think if someone says “Ya gavaroo parusski choot choot, vi gavaritye medleneye pajalsta” (I speak a little Russian, please speak slowly) you wouldn’t rattle off as if you were talking to a native speaker. At the very least you would think they would dumb down the vocabulary. It’s like they try to speak so fast you can’t even distinguish a question from a statement. You have to give me at least 10 seconds for my brain to change languages before you start talking to me.
Evidently some news source or tabloid has been poisoning the well here by purporting that Nostradamus predicted that the last president of America would be black. So people keep telling me that Obama is going to destroy America. First off, I have seen enough Discovery Channel programs on Nostradamus to know that this is probably a fabrication, secondly who cares anyway… it’s has no actual relevance on anything.
The other day I went gosting with the other two volunteers and my counterpart to my director’s house. It was a pretty sweet apartment and he had a couple of son’s or nephews (your cousins are called your brothers and sisters here) that spoke English pretty well. The event was pretty fun and at the end my director gave me a ceremonial Khan suit. It is dark green and gold and is pretty awesome. Evidently the suit costs about a hundred bucks so I must be in my director’s good graces. Though I have no idea when I will wear the thing here, I can think of a couple of instances in America when I will be able to don it (can you say Halloween costume for the rest of my life?). Since I am also learning the dombra, I think eventually I will be embraced as a Kazak rather than be leered at everywhere I go. I just need to make a shirt that says “I play the dombra and have the Ablaikhan garb… stop staring at me!” in Kazak and Russian. It is so weird being a minority here. I know part of the attention is probably because of my red beard, but I just can’t give the thing up. Plus Robert and Jamie have no facial hair and they still get about as much unwanted attention.
Probably should have talked about this initially, but it finally snowed here! It has been snowing off and on all week and we have about six inches. It’s pretty awesome actually seeing snow, especially because I will have a white Christmas. I have been really enjoying it, but man it’s cold. I think it has gotten to about -15 degrees Celsius and people are still saying it is warm. I’ve gotten remarkably acclimated to the cold for a Georgia boy, but I still can’t imagine it getting colder. It is also completely dark by about 6 and in the summer it will stay light until 9 or 10. The short days are kind of hard to get used to, but I am not as nervous about being out at dark as in Kaskelen.
I can’t believe Christmas is this week. I think I have built it up enough for my students to get them excited and we are having a big Christmas festival on Christmas eve where we will be singing traditional Christmas carols like “Jingle Bells,” “Silent Night,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” and of course the “The Hokey-Pokey.” I really didn’t want to put the Hokey Pokey in there, but the kids and teachers went crazy for it. Another interesting item on the agenda will be Jamie and I doing a traditional Kazak dance. I thought this would be easy, but I frankly suck at it. I will have a whip though and be pretending to ride around on a horse… basically making an ass of myself. I also wrote a short play that some of the younger kids will be performing and I am going to dress up as close to Santa as I possibly can. It should be an interesting night. I have also convinced my host family to wake up early before work and class to open presents (provided my Christmas package gets here on time). On Christmas night we are having a party with the English Club (after work… sigh) and we will listen to Christmas carols. The day after Christmas my host mom is making roast chicken and the volunteers will get together at my house for a party.
After the 29th of December I will have a 2 week long vacation, but this unfortunately does not count as free days. I would love to travel and visit some friends, but I can only spare a 4 or 5 day vacation to Karaganda to meet up with everyone. I have no idea what I will do for a week or so here. So that’s my life. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas, you are sincerely missed by your Kazakstan correspondent. Oh and I haven’t heard from some of you in awhile so feel free to send an email or something to let me know you are alive. You know who you are. Merry Christmas.
Drew
Not to say I’m not enjoying myself, my sitemate and friend Robert (Bobby Light) just explained it thusly: “There is a fine line between having no free time and having too much free time.” Currently we are nearing the end of this school term and just like in America, we have a lot of free days. I had a day off for Kurban Ait (still not sure exactly what it is) about a week ago and am currently basking in the last day of a two day holiday for Independence Day. It’s great having a day off, especially since I had very few during training, but there is only so much you can do. Usually I end up going gosting with the family, which is just visiting a friend’s house for a huge meal. The food is usually pretty good, but it’s always awkward not being able to fully communicate and just listening to a conversation going on around you and being unable to participate. When this happens I usually start daydreaming, and most families really don’t like it when you start staring into their wallpaper and your eyes get that glassy, faraway look. I usually get reprimanded in Kazakh and try to pretend like I was paying attention, but talk about a rude awakening. It’s weird though, most people have no idea how to talk to non-native speaker. I chalk it up to the lack of foreigners in Kaz, but you would think if someone says “Ya gavaroo parusski choot choot, vi gavaritye medleneye pajalsta” (I speak a little Russian, please speak slowly) you wouldn’t rattle off as if you were talking to a native speaker. At the very least you would think they would dumb down the vocabulary. It’s like they try to speak so fast you can’t even distinguish a question from a statement. You have to give me at least 10 seconds for my brain to change languages before you start talking to me.
Evidently some news source or tabloid has been poisoning the well here by purporting that Nostradamus predicted that the last president of America would be black. So people keep telling me that Obama is going to destroy America. First off, I have seen enough Discovery Channel programs on Nostradamus to know that this is probably a fabrication, secondly who cares anyway… it’s has no actual relevance on anything.
The other day I went gosting with the other two volunteers and my counterpart to my director’s house. It was a pretty sweet apartment and he had a couple of son’s or nephews (your cousins are called your brothers and sisters here) that spoke English pretty well. The event was pretty fun and at the end my director gave me a ceremonial Khan suit. It is dark green and gold and is pretty awesome. Evidently the suit costs about a hundred bucks so I must be in my director’s good graces. Though I have no idea when I will wear the thing here, I can think of a couple of instances in America when I will be able to don it (can you say Halloween costume for the rest of my life?). Since I am also learning the dombra, I think eventually I will be embraced as a Kazak rather than be leered at everywhere I go. I just need to make a shirt that says “I play the dombra and have the Ablaikhan garb… stop staring at me!” in Kazak and Russian. It is so weird being a minority here. I know part of the attention is probably because of my red beard, but I just can’t give the thing up. Plus Robert and Jamie have no facial hair and they still get about as much unwanted attention.
Probably should have talked about this initially, but it finally snowed here! It has been snowing off and on all week and we have about six inches. It’s pretty awesome actually seeing snow, especially because I will have a white Christmas. I have been really enjoying it, but man it’s cold. I think it has gotten to about -15 degrees Celsius and people are still saying it is warm. I’ve gotten remarkably acclimated to the cold for a Georgia boy, but I still can’t imagine it getting colder. It is also completely dark by about 6 and in the summer it will stay light until 9 or 10. The short days are kind of hard to get used to, but I am not as nervous about being out at dark as in Kaskelen.
I can’t believe Christmas is this week. I think I have built it up enough for my students to get them excited and we are having a big Christmas festival on Christmas eve where we will be singing traditional Christmas carols like “Jingle Bells,” “Silent Night,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” and of course the “The Hokey-Pokey.” I really didn’t want to put the Hokey Pokey in there, but the kids and teachers went crazy for it. Another interesting item on the agenda will be Jamie and I doing a traditional Kazak dance. I thought this would be easy, but I frankly suck at it. I will have a whip though and be pretending to ride around on a horse… basically making an ass of myself. I also wrote a short play that some of the younger kids will be performing and I am going to dress up as close to Santa as I possibly can. It should be an interesting night. I have also convinced my host family to wake up early before work and class to open presents (provided my Christmas package gets here on time). On Christmas night we are having a party with the English Club (after work… sigh) and we will listen to Christmas carols. The day after Christmas my host mom is making roast chicken and the volunteers will get together at my house for a party.
After the 29th of December I will have a 2 week long vacation, but this unfortunately does not count as free days. I would love to travel and visit some friends, but I can only spare a 4 or 5 day vacation to Karaganda to meet up with everyone. I have no idea what I will do for a week or so here. So that’s my life. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas, you are sincerely missed by your Kazakstan correspondent. Oh and I haven’t heard from some of you in awhile so feel free to send an email or something to let me know you are alive. You know who you are. Merry Christmas.
Drew
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
11/26
Another day, another tenge. The subzero temperatures seem to be freezing time as well as everything else. Employment has given me a schedule, but the schedule changes weekly if not daily. As the holidays descend, I find myself missing You more than ever. Three months is apparently how long it takes for homesickness to set in. Every day is definitely an adventure, and I meet many people that are interested in me and my time. I got my first sickness last weekend, but it was mercifully short. I ended up getting a wicked sore throat, but found it affirming that I could buy lozenges at the pharmacy with my language level, and by Monday morning I was better. My inability to speak Kazakh is really starting to wear on me. Though my Russian is halfway decent at this point, I feel like I am looked upon with thinly veiled disdain because I cannot speak the national language. My host family would rather not speak Russian at home, but they must to communicate with me, and the teachers sometimes get upset when I ask the students to translate into Russian in the classroom (even though at least half of the class is already taught in Russian and all the students are fluent in both languages). I understand nationalism and all that, obviously many Americans get very upset when they encounter someone who cannot speak English; I just wish they would cut me some slack. Learning two languages at once is hard as hell and everyone understands Russian anyway, whereas most Russian Kazakhs don’t speak Kazakh.
This is not to give you the impression that I feel sad or depressed, just directionless. I feel like a trinket or a bright piece of tinsel that is paraded around… a show pony I guess. I learned that there was a woman who had been trying to find me and talk to me about something apparently extremely important. She tracked me down yesterday after I went to the geological museum (which was amazing) and awkwardly engaged me in a 15 minute conversation that culminated in her asking me for an exorbitant amount of money. Because I’m the rich American who is here to solve everyone’s monetary problems amidst the world financial crisis, right? Update: In the two hours it took me to get this to a computer, said girl was waiting for me at school. I had to tell my superiors and they confronted her and then called the police. I now possess my first ever restraining order. The police and school administrators were really helpful though. They are afraid of losing me and really let the girl have it. Mad Kazakh sounds much cooler than calm Kazakh.
On a different note, girls act very strange around me here, and I am terrified of every activity I agree to lest I lead someone to the conclusion that I am interested in them. The relationship paradigm here is much different and since I don’t want to get married I feel as though I can’t even pursue anyone I might be interested in because relationships that don’t lead to marriage are not as common.
To switch to some positive reflection, my students are pretty great and it is fun to teach them. My 5th grade class is especially enjoyable. I have started my English Clubs and have also been helping out Robert with his clubs. So I go to/teach about 4 clubs a week and it usually keeps me pretty busy during the middle of the week. I also have my weekends back, so it gives me time to relax and not feel as over-burdened as I did during PST. Today I have a dombra lesson. The dombra is the national instrument of Kaz and it is like a two stringed banjo. I am also teaching my English club Christmas songs. We learned “Jingle Bells” last week and are moving up to “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” today. It is pretty surreal conducting a Kazakh class on Christmas carols, but it will make me feel better come Christmas time. Also, my parents sent me a package that had mustard, Tabasco, and barbeque sauce in it. I put some BBQ sauce on some horse and it was delicious (as I knew it would be) and burnt my host sisters face off by getting her to try Tabasco. Amanda also gave me the new Of Montreal cd and it is amazing. Can someone tell me what the name of the cd is for labeling purposes? I may be getting the internet beginning early December, so hopefully that would lend itself to skyping or at least AIM. Well, I should head back to school and upload this bad boy. Oh, I learned a great Russian adage the other day, really sums up a lot of things I end up doing at school. Here it is:
If you don’t know how, we will teach you. If you don’t want to, we will make you.
Keep that in your pocket.
Drew “I’ll turn your tears into diamonds, your diamonds into stars” Boggs
This is not to give you the impression that I feel sad or depressed, just directionless. I feel like a trinket or a bright piece of tinsel that is paraded around… a show pony I guess. I learned that there was a woman who had been trying to find me and talk to me about something apparently extremely important. She tracked me down yesterday after I went to the geological museum (which was amazing) and awkwardly engaged me in a 15 minute conversation that culminated in her asking me for an exorbitant amount of money. Because I’m the rich American who is here to solve everyone’s monetary problems amidst the world financial crisis, right? Update: In the two hours it took me to get this to a computer, said girl was waiting for me at school. I had to tell my superiors and they confronted her and then called the police. I now possess my first ever restraining order. The police and school administrators were really helpful though. They are afraid of losing me and really let the girl have it. Mad Kazakh sounds much cooler than calm Kazakh.
On a different note, girls act very strange around me here, and I am terrified of every activity I agree to lest I lead someone to the conclusion that I am interested in them. The relationship paradigm here is much different and since I don’t want to get married I feel as though I can’t even pursue anyone I might be interested in because relationships that don’t lead to marriage are not as common.
To switch to some positive reflection, my students are pretty great and it is fun to teach them. My 5th grade class is especially enjoyable. I have started my English Clubs and have also been helping out Robert with his clubs. So I go to/teach about 4 clubs a week and it usually keeps me pretty busy during the middle of the week. I also have my weekends back, so it gives me time to relax and not feel as over-burdened as I did during PST. Today I have a dombra lesson. The dombra is the national instrument of Kaz and it is like a two stringed banjo. I am also teaching my English club Christmas songs. We learned “Jingle Bells” last week and are moving up to “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” today. It is pretty surreal conducting a Kazakh class on Christmas carols, but it will make me feel better come Christmas time. Also, my parents sent me a package that had mustard, Tabasco, and barbeque sauce in it. I put some BBQ sauce on some horse and it was delicious (as I knew it would be) and burnt my host sisters face off by getting her to try Tabasco. Amanda also gave me the new Of Montreal cd and it is amazing. Can someone tell me what the name of the cd is for labeling purposes? I may be getting the internet beginning early December, so hopefully that would lend itself to skyping or at least AIM. Well, I should head back to school and upload this bad boy. Oh, I learned a great Russian adage the other day, really sums up a lot of things I end up doing at school. Here it is:
If you don’t know how, we will teach you. If you don’t want to, we will make you.
Keep that in your pocket.
Drew “I’ll turn your tears into diamonds, your diamonds into stars” Boggs
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
