On the Road...Pt. 2

3/24/2010  More Shymkent!

After traveling to Turkestan yesterday, we had today free with no specific plans. It was great to have a free day to enjoy the company of friends and walk outside without the risk of frostbite. We decided  to explore the city. For lunch, we walked to this plov place that had been recommended. Plov in the north of Kazakhstan usually consists of rice, meat (horse?) and carrots. In the south, there's a little more variation to it's ingredients and they take it more seriously. They have light plov and dark plov. The dark plov is the carrots, meat and rice kind (no worries- I'm still a veg. I just pick the meat out). They also have light plov which is amazing. It had yellow raisins and maybe some type of seed or nut? It also came served with some roasted garlic, yum! It was worth the long walk. They also had pumpkin samsas which were amazing. We have cheese samsas up north which are basically cheese wrapped in phyllo dough. Those are delicious, but pumpkin wrapped in phyllo dough was absolutely incredible!  My tastebuds are in heaven with the multitude of potato-less dishes in the south.  Some photos of our meal at the plov place:

Photo of my group mates meeting
(Johnny, Ford, Sipra, Tes, and Hannah)


At night, I had a meeting with my group mates from training. All of us couldn't attend, but about 6 of us met and it was good to be together again. Tomorrow we will go to Sipra's (one of our group mates) organization to train some of her youth volunteers. The following day we'll go with the youth volunteers to a local orphanage where they'll teach the orphans about making healthy choices.

 

Later that night, a few of us decided to go sing some karaoke.  The song selection was limited (no Bust a Move or Werewolves of London!--sorry to my fans) but we did manage to belt out some Billie Jean, YMCA, and other classics.  It helped that we were the only people in the place, so there weren't any other patrons to scare away...

3/25/2010

Great day. Went to my friend Sipra's organization and helped train her youth volunteers. It was good to be with my group mates again, working together. Her kids are really great, super motivated and all had excellent English language skills. We were able to conduct the whole training in English and they really seemed to get a lot out of it. We helped them prepare their presentations for tomorrow. I think they will all do a great job and I am excited to see what they will do tomorrow.

3/26/2010

Great day at the orphanage outside of Shymkent. Had to get up early to board the bus at Sipra's organization. Rode out to the orphanage with the kids and other people from Sipra's org. We then divided into three groups by age level. Johnny and I went with the middle age group. Kids from about 11-14. They introduced themselves, played some games and listened to the youth volunteers talk about the dangers of smoking, drinking and taking drugs.

Afterwards, we had a mini Olympics that was really fun for all involved. There was a push-up contest, three-legged race and other games. Medals were awarded, of course! After that they invited us to play soccer and other games in their back field. One boy lead me out there, and we were speaking in Russian, so I was concentrating pretty hard on what he was saying and not paying attention to what was around me. We get to the back field and I couldn't believe my eyes. It was just about the most beautiful view I've ever seen up close. The mountains were amazing! I wanted to channel my inner Julie Andrews and start singing about “the hills being alive with the sound of music”, but better judgement prevailed...

3/27/2010

Why Kazakhstan fascinates me: was in Shymkent yesterday and walked around without a coat on. Took train to Almaty last night. Arrived this morning where it was cold and rainy. Then tonight it goes and snows! What is that all about? I left the north and the snow behind (or so I thought).

On the road...Part 1

3/18/2010

Today we had a Naryuz celebration at school. It was also the second to last day of the third term. The kids got all dressed up and put on a performance at school.The festival celebrates the coming of spring and is associated with the Kazakh culture. The students' performance was mostly in Kazakh, so I understood very little, but it's such a cool sounding language I didn't mind listening.
After the performances we headed outside to our yurt (yeah, that's right – the orphanage has a yurt). We sang and danced outside and then I was ushered in the yurt where some VIPs were seated, including some other teachers, our director and friends of his. There was more food than you can imagine squished into this little space and a soup was served. Apparently, it's the soup associated with this holiday, it was clear and had some corn, meat and who knows what else in it. I had some (ignoring the meat of course) and it was pretty good. It reminded me of clam chowder, but the thin, really brothy kind.

3/22/2010
Thanks to Naryuz, we had about a week off from school. Because of this, a lot of volunteers were heading down to Shymkent where Naryuz is a really big deal. I decided to see what the buzz was about and join my friends for a week in the warm south. When I left to go down south on Saturday (3/20) we had one last blast of -20 degree weather. Southern Siberia is great!

No trains run directly from Petro to Shymkent, so I had to originate my journey in Kokshetau. Getting there was more difficult than I thought. I went home from work, grabbed my things and left my long johns behind! My host mom packed me some yummy train food, and I got on the bus to the station. All buses and trains to Kokshetau were full. It's only about a 4 hour bus ride and I needed to get there quickly in order to catch my train. My only option was an expensive taxi to ge there. So I took the taxi which cost about 4x what the bus would have cost, but it got me there in two hours! Don't ask about his driving.

I got to Kokshetau with plenty of time to spare and waited about 3 hours in the train station for my train and friends to arrive. I made friends with the stray cats and some drunk man who wanted to steal my lunch. He had his own food plus 2 bottles of vodka, but he really wanted to see what I had in my bag. My host mom packed that lunch with a lot of good food. The only place that bag was going was with me! Since I'm an American he wanted to know if I had any dollars on me and could he "see" them. I said no, I have only tenge. So then he asks, “Do you have new tenge, and can I see it?” Sir, I wasn't born yesterday and no, you can't "see" my money...Luckily my friends arrived shortly after, so I had to say good bye to the drunk man.
Got on the train finally in Kokshetau for the 30 hr. ride to Shymkent. Arrived in Shymkent late Sunday night. Monday morning, we were supposed to go to this sports field to watch kokpar. It's an ancient Kazakh game sort of like polo, but played with a headless goat carcass. I wasn't psyched to see that, but I was excited to see the men on horseback. Kazakhstan has a reach history of horsemanship and it would have been cool to see that. However, for some reason that no one knows, the horse events were cancelled. We took these pictures from the field, but there were no horse games.
So instead we went to a park where they were handing out food and people were walking around.

It was good to spend time with my group mates, as we hadn't seen each other for 5 months. It was great to catch up and walk around in the warm south of Kazakhstan. Got to eat outside (forgot what that was all about!) and had an excellent time.

3/23/2003
Today we went on a trip to Turkestan, roughly 2 hours from Shymkent. We boarded the bus and arrived at the mausoleum.

We had a few hours to walk around and explore this ancient monument. My camera seemed to develop a parasite that day as evidenced by the black streak in my pictures. It went away later, but unfortunately, I couldn't make it go away that day, go figure... The mausoleum was built in the 14th Century as a monument to a Muslim holy man who died at this site in the 12th Century. The architect died before it was finished, and thus it remains unfinished. It is a pretty amazing site considering when it was built. It must have been quite the site at that time, when you were on your horse in the middle of the steppe then happened upon this huge building, but that's just me projecting...

The view of the town of Turkestan:

Some delicious laghman without meat. Ahhh, spicy food how I missed you! After eating my weight in potatoes this winter, the variety of food down south was awesome.

Some fellow volunteers:

Me: