ALMATY!!!

3/28/2010

Arrived in Almaty a few days in advance of our training. A few of of rented an apartment and decided to spend some time in the city. The view out our apartment looked like this:

Kind of sad for spring down south, oh well. 

The TV in our apartment looked like this and yet it still worked! Perhaps someone left the electric teapot on the TV?   

Having Sunday free I decided to visit my first host family in Enbek. My friend Hannah, who also trained in Enbek, and I decided to take the bus out there and spend the day. It had snowed there too, which gave me the opportunity to take this picture of the gorgeous mountains from the side of the road.

    I had called the day before to see if they were available to visit and they told me to come today. I had brought some candy and a photo album filled with pictures of my time there. They liked the photos, but I didn't have enough to fill the album. They said I must come back again and again so we can fill the album with more memories. Awww...they're unbelievably nice. It was great to see them again although the two little girls weren't there because they were visiting their dad.

   It seemed like nothing had changed, but it was a but like visiting an old neighborhood and knowing that no one you know lives there anymore. To know that none of my group mates were at their houses, made me want to go back in time a little. I walked by the house where my friend Cindy stayed and got sad, because shortly after training she decided to leave Peace Corps and go back to the US. We still keep in touch, but it's not the same as her being here. Walking past there brought up a lot of positive memories about walking with her to class everyday (we had the farthest walk) and getting to know each other.

    I got a little nostalgic couldn't help but have some dorky moments thinking about how far we've come since our time in the village. I can actually speak to my host family in Russian now, where as during training it was very difficult. Just the fact that Hannah and I traveled there and back independently was another feat. We are able to do so many more things now than we were in training, and it was neat to recognize that. I think that's called personal growth?

     My host mom brought me to her cousin's house where we visited with some of her family members. We snapped a photo, that's my host mom in front of me, with her granddaughter on her lap. Kazakhstani's don't usually smile in photos, can you spot the American with the goofy smile?

  It was really great to see them, but the visit was short, because Hannah and I wanted to get back to Almaty before it got dark. My host mom insisted on walking me to meet Hannah. We also stopped at the store where she bought us ½ a kilo of cookies and 4 apples. It's a 45 minute drive back to the city, but I guess she thought we'd get hungry? We said goodbyes, and she insisted that I bring my family to visit when they come in August. She really wants to meet my family. I hope we can visit Enbek, I think it would be a neat experience for my family. I just hope we're not taking advantage of her hospitality. She's already given me so much.

3/29/2010

The next day involved walking around Almaty. Our apartment was really centrally located, we were very close to the Green Bazaar.

 A lot of shopping occurred, I even successfully bought a new pair of jeans, which I desperately needed. They like flashy clothes here, and I'm happy to report I found a pair of jeans without rhinestones, sequins or any other sparkly decoration. That was not an easy task, let me assure you!

Went out to dinner at night with my friend Tes, who was also in my training group. She is placed about as far south in Kazakhstan as one could possibly be. She can see Tashkent, Uzbekistan from her town. Crazy! It was funny to talk about winter with her. I guess there was this one week where she had to wear long underwear for the whole week! Yeah, I gave her a hard time about that. Although this summer, she'll be dealing with triple digit temperatures, I'm so not envious about that.

4/3/2010

So our conference is over (I really went down south for business, I swear!) and we head back to site today. It was great to see everyone and hear what people are doing at their sites. It certainly gave me a needed kick in the rear and motivated me to go back to site and get some projects done. We managed to get most of our group back together for one dinner. One of our language teachers, who is also my current tutor, Lena came out with us. One of our technical trainers, Irina, was also at the conference and it was really exciting to see her again. We tried to get a photo of all of us together which proved impossible. We were able to get a photo of some of us...

4/8/2010

So I'm back in Petropavlovsk now. My site mates Katie and Niall went to India the day after I came back. Lucky them! My other site mate Sidd went to Uralsk to do a teacher training. So I'm holding down the fort myself this week...One nice thing about coming back to site was that most of the snow had melted in the two weeks since my departure. Be careful what you wish for, because in it's place is more mud than I can possibly describe to you. Maybe these pictures of the road (yes, it's a road not a river) outside my apartment building will give you a hint.

    I walked to Lena's house for my tutoring and my sneakers felt an extra 10 pounds heavier with all the mud stuck to the bottom. Her mother kindly cleaned them for me, and sent me home with two grocery bags tied around my feet. I looked like a complete geek, but I didn't care because they did the trick! Spring has to better than winter...right?

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:

No news is good news...

3/17/2010 My procrastination continues...

So how to follow up my entry about Kreshenya? Not exactly sure! Haven't done anything quite as exciting as that, which is why it's taken me so long to follow up. Don't want to disappoint my fans ! Well, that and the fact that not much has been going on. Winter continues to be interesting, although now we have entered the “spring” months. While it is warmer now, at or above freezing most days, it has been snowing a lot more lately. But at least it's not uncomfortably cold anymore!

So I'll give you a summary of my last few weeks. The first week in February I was fortunate enough to meet an American couple that were adopting two children from our orphanage. The kids kept telling me that their adoptive parents were visiting and that I should meet them, but unfortunately we were not able to meet until their last day here, before they left with the girls. Despite that, it was nice to speak with some Americans and hear tales of home. They were from Colorado and had adopted 3 other children from Kazakhstan. Now they have the 2 girls, they said their family was complete.

It's funny in a situation like that what kinship you feel with strangers, when the only connection you have is that you are from the U.S. We sat together for about an hour, spoke English and talked about life here in Kazakhstan and life at home in the U.S. They were really warm people and we felt a certain comraderie right away. We hugged good bye, and they took my email address, so I hope to hear from them soon about how the girls are adjusting to life in the U.S. Just nice to meet some fellow Americans and share a cool moment together.

The second week in February was the “week of the English Language” at the orphanage. Every subject has a week in which they are supposed to plan special events and get the kids involved in learning more about their subjects. A lot of preparation and extra hours went into our week. My counterpart and I worked very hard and we were both exhausted by the end of the week. We organized competitions in English for our students of different levels, we made valentines, we held an extra English club, and on Valentine's Day, we had a big celebration.

We had prepared some students to recite English poems. I also prepared a power point presentation on Valentine's Day, that one of the students translated. They also had a competition, read some poems in Russian, and my site mate Sidd came and sang some songs. It was a lot of fun and the kids seemed to enjoy themselves.

Following the celebration I got on the bus to go home. I was the only one on the bus and since I am obviously foreign, the bus driver asked the familiar “Otkooda vee?” or “Where are you from?”. I told him I was American and answered all of the usual questions that get asked when people want to know why you are here. He also asked if I was married or had children (also very common questions). Of course I answered no, and that was followed with a “me neither” and a followed it up by saying, "We should get married!" What?! He was joking, I think....

This weekend I head down to Shymkent (via 32 hour train ride) to gather with my fellow volunteers for some rest and relaxation. Next week is also a big Kazakh national holiday called Naryuz. In Shymkent there is a big celebration of this holiday. I will be able to tell you all about it in the coming weeks. The week after Naryuz we go to Almaty for training. I can't wait to see my group mates again as it has been almost 5 months since we've all been together. Also it will be nice to be in the warm south! I hear it is between 60 and 70 degrees most days. No long underwear needed, I can't tell you how exciting that is for me.

So that's all for now. Will report in soon about my trip down south. Can't wait to have some pictures with green grass and flowers in them to show you.

The 3 C's - Camp, Cold, and Craziness

1/3/2010 Winter Camp

After New Year's, I ran my first solo project at the orphanage. I organized a camp that took place during winter vacation at the orphanage. This being my first project, I did a lot of planning and worrying about how it would turn out. I had dreams of grandeur and wrote out some elaborate plans for the three days of my camp. My plans even included an outdoor scavenger hunt that was dependent on the weather being tolerable.

Well, the weather didn't cooperate, and some of my games were too complex or just didn't hold their interest. However, there were several Peace Corps Volunteers who helped me with my camp and came to my rescue. We had fun for three days playing "duck, duck, goose", dragon tag and other games. Three local friends also provided much needed translation help further contributing to the camp's success. In the end, the kids had a lot of fun and so did we.

It was good that the kids enjoyed themselves, even if things didn't go exactly as planned. It gave me the confidence needed to try other projects in the future. Of course, it didn't go perfectly and I learned a lot about what I would change for the next time. Still, the kids seemed to enjoy it and the director and my counterpart gave me positive feedback, so that was nice to hear.

Enjoy some photos of camp.

My language tutor, Anya, explaining one game to the kids:

A crazy game called "dragon tag". Super chaotic, but lots of fun!

A group of us doing "group juggle".

Some of the volunteers played basketball with the older boys and one girl one day after camp.

1/19/2010 Kreshenya

Every January 19^th is a holiday called kreshenya for the people of the Russian Orthodox faith. During this holiday in Petropavlovsk, priests say blessings over the Ishim River, and the water is considered holy on this day. Some people take the water from the river and use it throughout the year to sprinkle on sick children, sprinkle in their houses, or use in their tea to keep them healthy. Still, other people jump into the river on this day, and it is said to be a sort of “re- baptism”. The word kreshenya means baptism in Russian (aren't you glad I looked it up?)People who do the jump swear that it keeps them healthy for the whole year.

As Peace Corps Volunteers, we are encouraged to observe cultural traditions that are important to the people we live with. Some volunteers take it a step further and actually participate in such traditions. My counterpart gave me the day off so that I could go to the river and see what this was all about. Some volunteers came to visit our region so they could also see and/or take part in this annual observance. Here we are trudging down to the river. That's me in the back of the line with my giant blue coat.Here are some photos of the frozen river. You can see the giant ice cross that was erected specially for this day.

Thought you might enjoy photo of tent erected on forzen river, and bridge suspended over frozen river. The tents were were people could change after jumping. They also had holes where you could dip in the river in the privacy of the tent. There was one for men and one for women.

Some volunteers jumped in the river last year, although it was an unseasonably warm winter. They say this is the coldest winter they've had in a few years. This year it was about -31 Celsius, which is approximately -24 Fahrenheit. To give you an idea of how cold this is, I took one glove off for about 1 minute to take some pictures. After that minute I had to put my glove on because my hand hurt so bad, I thought it would fall off. Having said that, imagine being out in that cold in your bathing suit! So here are some pictures of that fateful day and some very brave and possibly crazy volunteers.

Sagar's in the water, with Michael lined up right behind him.

Katie and Jennie looking like they're in pain.

So that's Kreshenya. No, I didn't jump I just couldn't fathom it. It was cool to watch and I hope they do stay healthy for one year because of it!

Happy New Year!

1/10/2010

So, I've let this blog go a little bit. It's not that I haven't wanted to keep you all posted, it's just that I guess I've been procrastinating. Those of you who know me well, know that I have a bad habit of bad procrastination. In the spirit of the new year, I have recommitted myself to telling the stories of my crazy life with the Peace Corps here in Kazakhstan.

What have I been up to, you ask? Well, Christmas was just another day here. The Christians here mostly celebrate Russian Orthodox Christmas which is on January 7th. So on Dec. 25th, a few of us gathered at one volunteer's house with some local friends and toasted the fact that it was Christmas. Not very exciting, but it just wasn't the same as being home. They also don't have all of the crazy commercialization here that gets you all fired up for the coming of Christmas. I think that also may have contributed to the calm celebration of the holiday.

The Sunday after Christmas, I was invited to a "winter picnic" by the professor of English at our local university. We attend his English club at the university and a few times per winter he puts on a winter picnic for the club attendees. I took the bus out to the outskirts of town and the professor and some of his English students picked me up in a car. We drove out near the lake to the site of the picnic.

A photo of the winter picnic site:

Making the soup and tending to the fire:

Professor Petrovich and the almost setting sun:

I dressed in many layers and still seemed to spend the entire time in front of the camp fire. They made soup and we drank many, many cups of tea. It was really nice to look out onto the lake even though it was covered in snow. Our group were the only ones out there that day and the scene was serene and peaceful. It was a nice way to spend a frigid winter's day, although I wouldn't want to do that every weekend!

Some students with the snow tower they were trying to build. You can see our snowtracks

on the frozen, snow-covered lake behind them:

New Year's was an entirely different story. Since Orthodox Christmas is much more religious, New Year's here is like Christmas for us. They have their own Santa, whose name translates to "Father Frost". The children get presents and people often visit friends and family at this time. They put up a "yolka" which is essentially a Christmas tree as we know it.

On New Year's again I gathered with some volunteers who were visiting the city from their respective villages. However, I went home early to ring in the new year with my host family. There are usually fireworks, but it was -30 that night, so we wisely decided to stay in. It was a really fun night all around, with good food and good people and lots of celebration.

Baby, It's Cold Outside...

12/17/2009

So it is almost officially winter here and boy is it cold! Yesterday and today we were off from school due to the observance of Independence Day here. Thank goodness we had today off because it was -26 degrees Celsius (-14.8F) outside. My cell phone has a temperature converter on it and I like to convert between Fahrenheit and Celsius to see what I'm actually dealing with. Here they don't get school off when it snows, but they do get days off when it is -30C (-22F) or more. Apparently it's not good for kids to be out in such cold weather. Since the kids at the orphanage live there, and don't have to go outside to get to school, we still work on those extra cold days! In honor of the cold and the few really cold days we've had I've decided to put together a weather-themed list of things I like and things I could do without here. Enjoy!

Things I can do without:

1. going outside

2. days I forget to put on long underwear

3. the 40 minute walk to my Russian tutor's apartment

4. the frost on my glasses, which makes seeing difficult

5. the bus skidding to a stop everyday , because they don't sand the streets

6. the wind (because 30 below isn't bad enough?)

7. wondering which part of my face will fall off first (Will it be my nose? Will it be one cheek or both?)

Things I am grateful for:

1. hot tea and soup

2. long underwear

3. my bulky LL Bean boots, even though the locals stare (Almost everone here wears black leather boots. Many women even wear high heeled boots in these very icy conditions!)

4. Gore-Tex, fleece and any other material whose sole purpose is to keep you warm

5. July and August won't be that hot (I would rather deal with subzero temperatures than extreme heat any day!)

6. indoor plumbing (using an outhouse in this weather?!)
7. that I don't live in Antarctica and it will stop snowing and warm up eventually...

So that is my life here in Petro. I talk about the weather each morning with my host family. I now think that anything above -20C (-4F) is “normal” and “not that cold”. Oh, how perceptions change!