Alright, I am back in Almaty, where I don't have to wear a fur coat outside, and I've got the full skinny of what happened on my site visit.
Train ride: Long, first time fun, second time boring. Lots of cards, some reading, and some sleeping. On the way back, 3 Americans and a couple confused Kazakhstani's. That's about all you need to know about that.
Zhelezinka: It snowed, but not deep enough to completely cover the ground. Apparently this was one of the worst times to visit. No grass because it's too cold, but not tons of snow to beautify all the dirt and empty fields. Ah well, I will see it in a bit. I stayed with my Counterpart (the guy I will teach with) and his wife adn 15 month old daughter. It hink this was all mentioned before. Anyway, it was a good time, but I didn't get out much to see the town and meet people which I wanted. I did meet some of the other teachers in the school, and will be living with on eof them. Later. Now, Zhelezinka hass only a couple paved roads, one that goes to Pavlodar and the rest are in the center. My home and school are on the edge of town, the southern edge I think. The school is big, with labeled classrooms, a good computer center, an air rifle range in teh basement, and a pretty good sports program. There is also some sort of sports club in town I can go to play volleyball or anything like that. I may take up hockey, we'll see. There are a couple good shops and some cafes, though they don't see much action. There is another PC volunteer in town who teaches at the Kazakh school, Nora Williams. She was cool, she can speak fluent Russian and pretty good Kazakh, so I've got some catching up to do.
I have a Russian language tutor who is like a grandma too me, feeding me large meals, drinking wine with her husband and speaking very slowly so I can understand. They're sweet people and lessons should be fun, since she doesn't speak any English and there will likely be a lot of confusion.
My host family is going to be a Tatar Muslim family. There is a mother (either widowed or divorced, I'm not sure) who is cheerful an dhas a good laugh an dis very patient with my Russian. My host sister is a 23 year old chemisty teacher at my school. There is a younger brother who is studying in Pavlodar I think, and that's it. My toilet is outide, no running water and heating is through a wood and coal stove. It's closer to what I expected from the PC, and should be pretty interesting. Though, being Muslim, it's not likely they'll feed me a lot of bacon.
I managed to stay warm enough in my fur/leather coat and a big furry hat on my head. My school has a group of male teachers that all hang out in the metal shop and talk between classes, so I'm thinking I can get in on this mens club. The military teacher in school greeted me in a store by yelling "Hey, shtata Washington!" so I think he and I are tight. I am having all the unmarried women pointed out to me by my CP ( I may have said this already) and one student already offered to have me over and she would make me tea and cook for me. Interesting.
Other things to tell...nothing really. I'm looking forward to really getting into my community, Nora seems to be really well connected, but I'm not looking forward to leaving my current host family. I have gotten close with them and definitely missed them during my site visit. They have made me feel very at home. Anybody that comes to visit me, I will take you to meet them and you'll understand my attachment. That's all though, Alex I hope Hockey is good for you (I'm thinking of trying to start my own team up here, we'll see how that goes, I may have identified a potential player but haven't asked him if he knows the game yet). Write some letters or emails, I love hearing from you all, and I promise there will be pictures in two weeks or less. Fso(that's all), Baka.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Is it cold in here, or is it just me?
Okay, here is a quick update about my recent activities:
I took a 33ish horu train ride north with my counterpart and three other volunteers to see my permanent site where I will be teachign for 2 years. My counterpart is a big man, said by many to look like Dolf Lundgren from Rocky IV. He's friendly and has a good sense of humor though, not too scary when you get to know him. I am staying with him and his wife and 15 month old daughter, so I get to see how little Addison will be in a year. Randy and Ellie, you'll have your hands full, but you already knew that.
I did some team teaching today, helping my coutnerpart with his two classes. There are less than 10 kids in both classes adn I didn't do much besides give examples and correct some mistakes. It was fun though and the kids that paid attention were fairly decent in English and seemed very eager to learn. I think I'm running out of time, I"m going to meet a potential host family next.
Briefly, my town is 5000 people, spread out on the steppe. It's cold already, below freezing when the wind blows (which is always, it's the steppe) and by February I may be a popsicle wrapped up in a fur coat. My walk to school is only about 5 minutes now, but I don't know where I'll be living in three weeks. The school is big, has fast internet, sports and nice classrooms. I'm excited to really get going with my kids and get settled in here. That's all for now, hope to hear from you all soon. Write me emails and letters whenever you get the chance. Which reminds me, I will be gettign a new address for letters and packages when I move up here, but if you want it you will have to message me, because I'm not supposed to post it on the internet. Or, if you write letters to my old address, they will be forwarded to me and I will reply in them with my new address. Talk to you all later, adios. I mean Baka.
I took a 33ish horu train ride north with my counterpart and three other volunteers to see my permanent site where I will be teachign for 2 years. My counterpart is a big man, said by many to look like Dolf Lundgren from Rocky IV. He's friendly and has a good sense of humor though, not too scary when you get to know him. I am staying with him and his wife and 15 month old daughter, so I get to see how little Addison will be in a year. Randy and Ellie, you'll have your hands full, but you already knew that.
I did some team teaching today, helping my coutnerpart with his two classes. There are less than 10 kids in both classes adn I didn't do much besides give examples and correct some mistakes. It was fun though and the kids that paid attention were fairly decent in English and seemed very eager to learn. I think I'm running out of time, I"m going to meet a potential host family next.
Briefly, my town is 5000 people, spread out on the steppe. It's cold already, below freezing when the wind blows (which is always, it's the steppe) and by February I may be a popsicle wrapped up in a fur coat. My walk to school is only about 5 minutes now, but I don't know where I'll be living in three weeks. The school is big, has fast internet, sports and nice classrooms. I'm excited to really get going with my kids and get settled in here. That's all for now, hope to hear from you all soon. Write me emails and letters whenever you get the chance. Which reminds me, I will be gettign a new address for letters and packages when I move up here, but if you want it you will have to message me, because I'm not supposed to post it on the internet. Or, if you write letters to my old address, they will be forwarded to me and I will reply in them with my new address. Talk to you all later, adios. I mean Baka.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Got Chased by a Big Guy
Okay, here’s another sweet blog. It’s been about a month I guess since I’ve gotten on the internet and sent any real, meaningful messages, so I’m going to pack them all into this one mega message. It’s gonna take some work figuring out what all happened in the last few weeks, but I’ll piece it together.
Kazebration
Every group in Kazakhstan has to organize a community project. The goal is to involve the people of your community and do something meaningful and maybe even helpful for them. Our group of 11 volunteers in Kaskelen decided to put on a cultural celebration at our school. With much help from the directors and other staff of the school we had a big festival one Sunday morning. There was only a turnout of maybe 100 or so spectators, but we had dancing, singing, some sweet juggling (that was me), and an amazing skit about the Peace Corps. Everybody seemed very entertained and we were told by our supervisors that it was one of the better they’ve seen.
The highlight of the festival, at least for me, was our rendition of Kazakhstan living. The song was written and performed by us volunteers. Set to the tune of Honky Tonk Woman by the Rolling Stones with a guitar accompaniment by Casey Meyering (also a UW graduate, 07 by the way) and some harmonica solo by Drew Stinson. I’ll put out the words here, you can try and sing along if you’d like. We will be performing it probably twice more, so hopefully I can get some video and set it up for you guys. I will be the guy standing as far away from the microphone as possible.
Kazakhstan Livin’
Walkin down the street, road beneath my feet in Kaskelen
Lookin for shashlik (really tasty kabob) and tryin hard to speak pa-ruskie (in Russian)
Ya ochetil b shkoloo Kierembekov E Belinski (I teach in Kierembekov and Belinksy school)
If you see me in the halls, just say "Hello!"
Cause it’s Kaaaaaaazakhstan Livin!
Gimme, gimme, gimme the Kazakhstan life
Sitting at the table smia simya (my family)
Kooshit kooshit I can’t eat no more
Eatin lots of meat I’m getting tons of gristle
And this bisbarmak is starin up at me
Chorus
Solo
Chorus
Goin to the banya cmia papa
Sweat is drippin out of every pore
Takin quite a beating from this oak branch
Zharka Zharka (hot) get me out of here!
Chorus
The End
It’s much better set to music and with actual singing, not reading. Trust me. You’ll see.
Anyway, after the song and dance business, the director of our school invited us to a feast of traditional Kazakh foods. Guess what that included. Sheeps head. My first experience with it, I was given some meat from around the lip. Honestly, it didn’t taste so bad, but the head was sitting on the table and looking right at me, and I was having a little trouble, but I got it all down without a problem. Not something I want to repeat, but I think I can manage. The rest of the food was pretty good, but we also tried Camels Milk (drinkable but not too good) and Mares Milk (I had two sips and it was so sour I thought my head was going to turn inside out). It was all pretty interesting though, we made rounds of toasts and drank some vodka and cognac.
At this point the director left, and we were getting ready to leave as well, when a group of teachers from the school came in with a bottle of vodka. They told us there is a tradition that if you get up from the table and you aren’t wobbling, then you need to stay and drink some more. So they filled a bowl with the fifth of vodka and told us we had to pass it around the table and say one wish for ourselves and one wish for everybody else. This woman also decided that I would be the last one in line, and the last person is supposed to drain whatever is left in the bowl. Well anyway, it went around the table, it got to me and there was still a sizeable amount left, so I drank my fair share, but decided to include these teachers. When I handed the bowl off though, the produced another bottle and filled it up again and went at it, but threw Casey and I in there again. I had to take two more huge mouthfuls, as did two other of my volunteers. All in all, not my favorite game, but you guys should give it a shot at home. It really brings you together.
Okay, and the last note from the Kazebration. At the end of the singing and dancing, we held a soccer game between us 12 volunteers and 12 students from the two schools. Two 15 minutes halves. It was pretty pathetic, we were losing 3-0 in about five minutes, but I’m pretty sure the referee who is also the JROTC type guy at the school told them not to beat us, because we miraculously scored 3 goals and tied it. It helped that about 20 small children joined our team and all the older kids were mobbed by a swarm of them every time they got the ball. Myself, I scored two goals and was given the game ball. The game ended in a 5-5 tie. I only fell once when I tried to start running after the ball and my feet stayed put and my body went forward. It was a lot of fun, and I’m excited for more chances to play.
Okay, new subject
Pavlodar
Pavlodar is very far north. It is actually part of Siberia. I won’t be in Pavlodar. I will be 2.5 hours north of Pavlodar, about 60 miles from the Russian border in a small village of 5000 called Zhelezinka. There are three schools, two Russian and a Kazakh. Two of the schools have already had a volunteer teacher (there is actually one currently there). I will be the first volunteer in my school, which I’m excited about. The word from this other volunteer is that I will be teaching the 5th, 10th and 11th grades, but that is subject to change. My counterpart is the assistant director at the school, and he was recently promoted.
Other things of note about the village: it is on a large river, it is surrounded by steppe mostly, with some forest, it gets to -40 degrees in the winter, there is a fitness center where I can do wrestling, judo, weightlifting, soccer, volleyball, tennis etc. My school has an air rifle range in the basement. There is internet in town. That’s about it. I’m going to visit it in a week and a half, so I’ll have more news after that.
Last Night
Funny story. Last night I was walking some friends home from my house (other volunteers) after playing cards. I went one way to drop off one girl and another guy went another way to drop off the other girl so we could save some time. Anyway, after I dropped off this girl, I was walking to meet the guy when I heard some yelling and whistling behind me. I looked over my shoulder and there was a huge Kazakhstani guy running after me, about 20 feet back. I took off running, bolted around the corner and looked back after another 50 feet but he was gone. A little freaked out I called my buddy and told him to hurry the f--- up and we headed home.
Other news, I was sick with a fever up to 102 for a couple days, some sort of bacteria infection., I'm better now. I have little time as I'm supposed to be meeting people at our bazaar to buy some things pretty soon. I will not be staying in a giant hotel I was just told, so no special intenet contact like I was hoping. I have my mailing address up on facebook for thеры ща нyouthat can check that,and want to send me letters or packages. In about a month it will be changing since I will be living up North for 2 years, and if you want that address you can email me about it, but Peace Corps will continue to forward letters that are sent to the old address. That's all for now, adios.
Kazebration
Every group in Kazakhstan has to organize a community project. The goal is to involve the people of your community and do something meaningful and maybe even helpful for them. Our group of 11 volunteers in Kaskelen decided to put on a cultural celebration at our school. With much help from the directors and other staff of the school we had a big festival one Sunday morning. There was only a turnout of maybe 100 or so spectators, but we had dancing, singing, some sweet juggling (that was me), and an amazing skit about the Peace Corps. Everybody seemed very entertained and we were told by our supervisors that it was one of the better they’ve seen.
The highlight of the festival, at least for me, was our rendition of Kazakhstan living. The song was written and performed by us volunteers. Set to the tune of Honky Tonk Woman by the Rolling Stones with a guitar accompaniment by Casey Meyering (also a UW graduate, 07 by the way) and some harmonica solo by Drew Stinson. I’ll put out the words here, you can try and sing along if you’d like. We will be performing it probably twice more, so hopefully I can get some video and set it up for you guys. I will be the guy standing as far away from the microphone as possible.
Kazakhstan Livin’
Walkin down the street, road beneath my feet in Kaskelen
Lookin for shashlik (really tasty kabob) and tryin hard to speak pa-ruskie (in Russian)
Ya ochetil b shkoloo Kierembekov E Belinski (I teach in Kierembekov and Belinksy school)
If you see me in the halls, just say "Hello!"
Cause it’s Kaaaaaaazakhstan Livin!
Gimme, gimme, gimme the Kazakhstan life
Sitting at the table smia simya (my family)
Kooshit kooshit I can’t eat no more
Eatin lots of meat I’m getting tons of gristle
And this bisbarmak is starin up at me
Chorus
Solo
Chorus
Goin to the banya cmia papa
Sweat is drippin out of every pore
Takin quite a beating from this oak branch
Zharka Zharka (hot) get me out of here!
Chorus
The End
It’s much better set to music and with actual singing, not reading. Trust me. You’ll see.
Anyway, after the song and dance business, the director of our school invited us to a feast of traditional Kazakh foods. Guess what that included. Sheeps head. My first experience with it, I was given some meat from around the lip. Honestly, it didn’t taste so bad, but the head was sitting on the table and looking right at me, and I was having a little trouble, but I got it all down without a problem. Not something I want to repeat, but I think I can manage. The rest of the food was pretty good, but we also tried Camels Milk (drinkable but not too good) and Mares Milk (I had two sips and it was so sour I thought my head was going to turn inside out). It was all pretty interesting though, we made rounds of toasts and drank some vodka and cognac.
At this point the director left, and we were getting ready to leave as well, when a group of teachers from the school came in with a bottle of vodka. They told us there is a tradition that if you get up from the table and you aren’t wobbling, then you need to stay and drink some more. So they filled a bowl with the fifth of vodka and told us we had to pass it around the table and say one wish for ourselves and one wish for everybody else. This woman also decided that I would be the last one in line, and the last person is supposed to drain whatever is left in the bowl. Well anyway, it went around the table, it got to me and there was still a sizeable amount left, so I drank my fair share, but decided to include these teachers. When I handed the bowl off though, the produced another bottle and filled it up again and went at it, but threw Casey and I in there again. I had to take two more huge mouthfuls, as did two other of my volunteers. All in all, not my favorite game, but you guys should give it a shot at home. It really brings you together.
Okay, and the last note from the Kazebration. At the end of the singing and dancing, we held a soccer game between us 12 volunteers and 12 students from the two schools. Two 15 minutes halves. It was pretty pathetic, we were losing 3-0 in about five minutes, but I’m pretty sure the referee who is also the JROTC type guy at the school told them not to beat us, because we miraculously scored 3 goals and tied it. It helped that about 20 small children joined our team and all the older kids were mobbed by a swarm of them every time they got the ball. Myself, I scored two goals and was given the game ball. The game ended in a 5-5 tie. I only fell once when I tried to start running after the ball and my feet stayed put and my body went forward. It was a lot of fun, and I’m excited for more chances to play.
Okay, new subject
Pavlodar
Pavlodar is very far north. It is actually part of Siberia. I won’t be in Pavlodar. I will be 2.5 hours north of Pavlodar, about 60 miles from the Russian border in a small village of 5000 called Zhelezinka. There are three schools, two Russian and a Kazakh. Two of the schools have already had a volunteer teacher (there is actually one currently there). I will be the first volunteer in my school, which I’m excited about. The word from this other volunteer is that I will be teaching the 5th, 10th and 11th grades, but that is subject to change. My counterpart is the assistant director at the school, and he was recently promoted.
Other things of note about the village: it is on a large river, it is surrounded by steppe mostly, with some forest, it gets to -40 degrees in the winter, there is a fitness center where I can do wrestling, judo, weightlifting, soccer, volleyball, tennis etc. My school has an air rifle range in the basement. There is internet in town. That’s about it. I’m going to visit it in a week and a half, so I’ll have more news after that.
Last Night
Funny story. Last night I was walking some friends home from my house (other volunteers) after playing cards. I went one way to drop off one girl and another guy went another way to drop off the other girl so we could save some time. Anyway, after I dropped off this girl, I was walking to meet the guy when I heard some yelling and whistling behind me. I looked over my shoulder and there was a huge Kazakhstani guy running after me, about 20 feet back. I took off running, bolted around the corner and looked back after another 50 feet but he was gone. A little freaked out I called my buddy and told him to hurry the f--- up and we headed home.
Other news, I was sick with a fever up to 102 for a couple days, some sort of bacteria infection., I'm better now. I have little time as I'm supposed to be meeting people at our bazaar to buy some things pretty soon. I will not be staying in a giant hotel I was just told, so no special intenet contact like I was hoping. I have my mailing address up on facebook for thеры ща нyouthat can check that,and want to send me letters or packages. In about a month it will be changing since I will be living up North for 2 years, and if you want that address you can email me about it, but Peace Corps will continue to forward letters that are sent to the old address. That's all for now, adios.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Quick Post
Okay, I only have a few more minutes before I have to jet. My family has been wihtout internet and I've been too lazy to come to the one internet cafe in town. I finally broke down, so here's the quick skinny.
I finished teaching today. I found out I'm going to a village of 5000 people north of Pavlodar, called Zhelizinky (I don't have the paper, so the spelling may be off). If you want to send me letters, email me at jrwhitehill@gmail.com and I will send my address, though it is going to change in about a month when I move to this tiny permanent site. It's way in teh north and gets to -40 degrees, so it should be awesome.
What else...I don't know right now, I'll work on it later. But next week I will be staying in Hotel Kazakhstan for a conference. Three days with free wireless internet. After that a 40 hour train ride out to visit my permanent site and teach for a few days, then back to Almaty for two more weeks. That's all for now, take care all.
-Jeff
I finished teaching today. I found out I'm going to a village of 5000 people north of Pavlodar, called Zhelizinky (I don't have the paper, so the spelling may be off). If you want to send me letters, email me at jrwhitehill@gmail.com and I will send my address, though it is going to change in about a month when I move to this tiny permanent site. It's way in teh north and gets to -40 degrees, so it should be awesome.
What else...I don't know right now, I'll work on it later. But next week I will be staying in Hotel Kazakhstan for a conference. Three days with free wireless internet. After that a 40 hour train ride out to visit my permanent site and teach for a few days, then back to Almaty for two more weeks. That's all for now, take care all.
-Jeff
Monday, September 17, 2007
There's hope yet...for bacon.
Okay, considering most of thes blogs will be written over the course of at least a week, I figured maybe some subtitles are in order so that there is at least a semblance of coherency. Also, if I go to teh North, they eat lots of bacon, so let's keep our fingers crossed.
Language
Russian makes very little sense. Apparently English has somethign like 26 verb tenses (so I'm told), but Russian only has three. They have casses. Sentences can be in any order the speaker/writer wants, you just change the ending of the word based on it's role in the sentence. So I could say "Jeff loves to eat bacon" or "Bacon loves to eat Jeff" (also probably true). Numbered things have different endings for some reason, if they are 1, 2-4, or 5+. Why, nobody seems to know. Therefore my secondary project (other than teaching English) is going to be fixing Russian so it makes sense. First we'll get rid of teh silly cyrillic alphabet and use the good old Latin one, then words will be in a set order. I'd understand so much better if they could do that. For now though, my conversations are limited to fruits and vegetables, my hobbies (what they are, not anything about them), where I am from, and what I am doing here.
Teaching
is awesome. I love the kids, and many of them seem to love learning English. Typically, the younger teh more energetic and eager, but all students participate in class when they can. Every time I walk through the halls I hear a chorus of "hello's" and "good morning teacher" (no matter the time of day). I've taught an entire 45 minute lesson now myself on the Past Continuous (I had to figure out what it was myself first) and I think the kids understood. My class is 10th grade. We are doing English club where the kids can practice their English some more, and jsut hang out with the Americans. They told us they are very eager to learn about American culture, so we're going to work on that for the next one.
The Weather
is getting better. It's starting to cool down a bit, and I don't drip sweat everywhere I walk now. It will be exciting to actually wear a sweater to school some day. I'm very much hoping to get sent up North in two months, where snow is on the ground 4 months out of the year (I think). It has rained twice, once in the middle of the night and once in the evening, but it was still hot and I think the rain evaporated as soon as it touched the ground.
Family
is great. My sister Karolina helps me with homework and seems to love correcting my horribly pronounced Russian. My host father took me and another volunteer to a football game (more later) and my mother is always making sure I'm comfortable and have had enough to eat. My birthday was incredibly exciting because tons of family came over and there was a big bbq with awesome food, and lots of beer all through out. The man sitting next to me (some sort of cousin) kept trying to get me very drunk, and when he had to leave, somebody else took over his job. Cards is a weekly occurence, usually before and after banya, and soemtimes other nights. They definitely make life much easier and fun here, and I don't think I would have survived without them.
The Football Game
Sergei (host father) took Matthew (another PCT) to a football match in Almaty on the 12th. It was the Kazakhstan national team vs Belgium. The crowd was very much into the game and blue and yellow was everywhere. Apparently Belgium is a pretty good team, and at half time they were up 2-0. Kazakhstan was disheartened adn the fans still cheered mightily, and even more so when their team scored a goal, making it 2-1. With only 10 minutes left, Belgium fouled Kazakhstan in the box adn they got a PK. The shot was perfect and it was tied 2-2. The crowd was insane, and I have some video that I will try to get up. Well anyway, apparently a tie was qutie a victory for the Kazakhstanis adn everybody was excited when the game ended soon after.
Wrapping up, it's great to hear from you all and I love your messages. I'm still having fun, no regrets. I will learn where my permanent site is in a few weeks, so that's exciting, but until then I have tons of classes to teach and English clubs to run. Take care all and keep writing
-Jeff
Language
Russian makes very little sense. Apparently English has somethign like 26 verb tenses (so I'm told), but Russian only has three. They have casses. Sentences can be in any order the speaker/writer wants, you just change the ending of the word based on it's role in the sentence. So I could say "Jeff loves to eat bacon" or "Bacon loves to eat Jeff" (also probably true). Numbered things have different endings for some reason, if they are 1, 2-4, or 5+. Why, nobody seems to know. Therefore my secondary project (other than teaching English) is going to be fixing Russian so it makes sense. First we'll get rid of teh silly cyrillic alphabet and use the good old Latin one, then words will be in a set order. I'd understand so much better if they could do that. For now though, my conversations are limited to fruits and vegetables, my hobbies (what they are, not anything about them), where I am from, and what I am doing here.
Teaching
is awesome. I love the kids, and many of them seem to love learning English. Typically, the younger teh more energetic and eager, but all students participate in class when they can. Every time I walk through the halls I hear a chorus of "hello's" and "good morning teacher" (no matter the time of day). I've taught an entire 45 minute lesson now myself on the Past Continuous (I had to figure out what it was myself first) and I think the kids understood. My class is 10th grade. We are doing English club where the kids can practice their English some more, and jsut hang out with the Americans. They told us they are very eager to learn about American culture, so we're going to work on that for the next one.
The Weather
is getting better. It's starting to cool down a bit, and I don't drip sweat everywhere I walk now. It will be exciting to actually wear a sweater to school some day. I'm very much hoping to get sent up North in two months, where snow is on the ground 4 months out of the year (I think). It has rained twice, once in the middle of the night and once in the evening, but it was still hot and I think the rain evaporated as soon as it touched the ground.
Family
is great. My sister Karolina helps me with homework and seems to love correcting my horribly pronounced Russian. My host father took me and another volunteer to a football game (more later) and my mother is always making sure I'm comfortable and have had enough to eat. My birthday was incredibly exciting because tons of family came over and there was a big bbq with awesome food, and lots of beer all through out. The man sitting next to me (some sort of cousin) kept trying to get me very drunk, and when he had to leave, somebody else took over his job. Cards is a weekly occurence, usually before and after banya, and soemtimes other nights. They definitely make life much easier and fun here, and I don't think I would have survived without them.
The Football Game
Sergei (host father) took Matthew (another PCT) to a football match in Almaty on the 12th. It was the Kazakhstan national team vs Belgium. The crowd was very much into the game and blue and yellow was everywhere. Apparently Belgium is a pretty good team, and at half time they were up 2-0. Kazakhstan was disheartened adn the fans still cheered mightily, and even more so when their team scored a goal, making it 2-1. With only 10 minutes left, Belgium fouled Kazakhstan in the box adn they got a PK. The shot was perfect and it was tied 2-2. The crowd was insane, and I have some video that I will try to get up. Well anyway, apparently a tie was qutie a victory for the Kazakhstanis adn everybody was excited when the game ended soon after.
Wrapping up, it's great to hear from you all and I love your messages. I'm still having fun, no regrets. I will learn where my permanent site is in a few weeks, so that's exciting, but until then I have tons of classes to teach and English clubs to run. Take care all and keep writing
-Jeff
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
The long awaited update
Bacon. I lose sleep over it. Where’s the Bacon? Will I remember what it tastes like two years from now? Is Aaron eating bacon right now? Can you make bacon from an animal other than a pig? These are my questions. I want some bacon, but this is (technically) a Muslim country and there aren’t too many pork products. Hell, do they even have a word for Bacon? Anyway, I really want some bacon right now, and it’s making me question coming to a non-pork country. Moving on.
This is my first real entry in this blog, and a surprising amount has happened in the two weeks that I’ve been gone. For those that don’t know all the details yet, I am in Almaty, living with a host family. I’ve been with the family for a week now. I have a mother, Vala, and a father, Sergei, a 22 year old brother Vasa, and a 15 year old sister, Karolina who is currently vacuuming outside my door. She calls herself a Cinderella. Anyway, my adventure began before that however, in a place called Tabagan, which is a ski resort in the mountains above Almaty.
It was here that we had safety and policy lectures, medical lectures, and our first cross cultural and language classes. My Russian is still very bad, but we have 4-6 hours of Russian class five days a week, so I am learning quickly (hopefully). In Tabagan we also got an inordinate amount of shots, including Rabies (three volunteers had already been bitten by dogs less than two days with our host families). Anyway, I’ve had my arm stuck 9 times already by our beloved medical officer, Victor.
After two and a half days at Tabagan, we were ushered off to our families with extremely limited Russian. The first group of volunteers was dropped off in Almalybak and I saw one volunteer, Rambo (yes that’s his real name), get herded to a car by a half dozen small children. It was pretty entertaining. My group was taken to the village of Kackilian (Kackeлen) where I met my mother. Another volunteer, Mathew, is living about a block away with my host aunt. It turns out my mother is a teacher and speaks pretty good English, and so does my brother, Vasa. My father and sister both speak German. It’s an interesting time, and when my mother isn’t around it takes a lot of time with the dictionary and hand gestures to figure out what we are talking about. Conversation is usually limited to: Are you hungry? What? Hungry? What? Eat? Oh, yeah, Da. Anyway, it’s quite the experience and I’m enjoying myself.
The food has all been good so far. I haven’t had any sheep face (it doesn’t seem all that common, at least around here), and I had horse meat for the first time on Saturday. It was the first day of school and there was a large assembly in the soccer field (stadium) and a presentation that lasted an hour. We met the director then took a tour of the school and met a few classes, some of which couldn’t believe or didn’t understand we would be their teachers. We then had lunch and the director joined us and served us the horse meat, a delicacy apparently.
The director is a very imposing man that commands a lot of respect from his teachers and students. He has a large office, and when he enters a room everybody is quiet. We talked with him some, through a translator, and he was telling jokes and laughing and having a good time, so I liked him.
My training group is me and four other volunteers – Matthew, Drew, Jackie (Jessica) and Kim. It’s a good group and we have fun during our language classes. Our teacher is nice and tries hard to make sure we understand what is going on, but the language is very difficult. I’ve figured out the alphabet fairly well, now it’s just a matter of putting sentence together. Russian nouns and adjectives and what not are put into cases depending on the sentence. They can be in any order and it is the case that tells you their role in the sentence, so it’s hard to understand how to make sentences. Seeing as this is my first week really, I don’t think I should worry yet.
Kackilian isn’t a village in a sense that you’d think a third world country would be. Most streets are paved, houses have power and there are tons of cars. My family lives in the middle class range, including dial up internet, two TVs and a microwave. I eat well and enjoy the food, including the chai that comes 3-4 times a day. The people are typically friendly when you meet them and the kids are excited to meet an American. For many we are the first Americans in the flesh. American culture is everywhere. My host sister loves Fall Out Boy, Lincoln Park and Johnny Depp.
It’s pretty hot here, probably a little hotter than Seattle was when I left, but as long as I’m in the shade I’m doing alright. I have to wear long pants to work which doesn’t help, but I’m feeling pretty professional so I don’t mind it.
I’ve only drank one night I’ve been here, and not that much. Some out of town family came and I had a few shots of vodka with them. It was pretty rough the first full shot, but I got through it, then had mini half shots after that. To be honest, vodka is vodka to me and I don’t think this was any special kind.
I also have a flush toilet and a shower, just so you all know. The first night with my host family though (Saturday, August 25th) I banya’d. The banya is basically a sauna, so I stripped down to my birthday suit along with another volunteer and our host uncle or cousin, I wasn’t sure. You sit in the heat for some time, and then somebody whacks you with some soft branches. The entire time it’s so hot it hurts to breath and you keep splashing cold water on your face. After about four or five minutes we stepped out into the other room, put on our underwear and went outside to dump buckets of cold water over ourselves. Then we went back in and washed our hair etc. It was quite the cultural experience and since we had no idea what we were doing Alex, the Kazakhstani cousin/uncle sort of guided us with points and Russian words like Sadiz (sit).
Okay, since this blog is being written on my laptop over time while I look for internet where I can load this up, I’m now continuing. I got to go into Almaty, and I bought a cell phone there. Don’t expect any phone calls from me though, it costs a few dollars a minute, and I don’t really have that kind of money right now. But I can talk to other volunteers, and whatnot, so that’s a bonus. My group of volunteers spent a long time walking around class cases sort of like at a jewelry store with hundreds of cell phones, looking for the cheapest one, but our language teacher kept disapproving, and we could never quite figure out why. Finally we went to an official looking counter and got a Nokia phone. It seems like pretty much every volunteer ends up getting the same phone. It was around $45 dollars, which was a large junk of our monthly allowance.
Anyway, that’s not the exciting part of Almaty. We went to the top of a mountain by cable car (not that big of a mountain). The mountain was called Kok-Toobye (that’s how you pronounce it at least). Up there, we got our pictures taken with some random Beatles statues, which was probably one of the highlights of this adventure so far. They had Beatles music playing over a speaker near the statues, and we kept hoping to hear “Back in the USSR,” but no luck. Anyway, after that we just enjoyed the view of Almaty at night. It was interesting, because Almaty’s tallest buidings are only about 15 stories tall. It is an earthquake prone area and so they don’t want anything too tall. After that, it was the ride home and sleep at 11 pm, pretty late for me sadly.
I begin teaching tomorrow (Monday) which will probably be after this blog actually gets posted. I’m going to teach about fruits and the difference between likes and favorites. Should be filled with excitement and keep the students on the edge of their seats. Anyway, I’m looking forward to it.
So far I don’t have any really funny anecdotes to share or anything, life is pretty normal. We went to the bazaar and gave all the women a good laugh trying to pronounce the names of foods and whatnot. That’s pretty much it.
Other notes of consequence:
-Kazakhstani chocolate is the best I’ve had so far
-It’s quite fun sitting around drinking tea and asking shto eta (what’s this?)
-Kazakhi’s are some of the most hospitable people
-Most Kazakh teenagers look like models
-Pamagat (help me) and pamidor (tomato) are two different things
-Reading is never so enjoyable as when it breaks up long awkward silences between people who can’t speak each others languages
Anyway, that’s all for now. I miss folks back home and all the excitement you guys are having. Keep in touch with me, it means a lot when I get emails, and even more so if I get a letter. Leave me your email address and I will send you the address for my letters since I’m not supposed to post it online if you want to send me a letter (or a packageJ) Take care etc.
-Jeff
This is my first real entry in this blog, and a surprising amount has happened in the two weeks that I’ve been gone. For those that don’t know all the details yet, I am in Almaty, living with a host family. I’ve been with the family for a week now. I have a mother, Vala, and a father, Sergei, a 22 year old brother Vasa, and a 15 year old sister, Karolina who is currently vacuuming outside my door. She calls herself a Cinderella. Anyway, my adventure began before that however, in a place called Tabagan, which is a ski resort in the mountains above Almaty.
It was here that we had safety and policy lectures, medical lectures, and our first cross cultural and language classes. My Russian is still very bad, but we have 4-6 hours of Russian class five days a week, so I am learning quickly (hopefully). In Tabagan we also got an inordinate amount of shots, including Rabies (three volunteers had already been bitten by dogs less than two days with our host families). Anyway, I’ve had my arm stuck 9 times already by our beloved medical officer, Victor.
After two and a half days at Tabagan, we were ushered off to our families with extremely limited Russian. The first group of volunteers was dropped off in Almalybak and I saw one volunteer, Rambo (yes that’s his real name), get herded to a car by a half dozen small children. It was pretty entertaining. My group was taken to the village of Kackilian (Kackeлen) where I met my mother. Another volunteer, Mathew, is living about a block away with my host aunt. It turns out my mother is a teacher and speaks pretty good English, and so does my brother, Vasa. My father and sister both speak German. It’s an interesting time, and when my mother isn’t around it takes a lot of time with the dictionary and hand gestures to figure out what we are talking about. Conversation is usually limited to: Are you hungry? What? Hungry? What? Eat? Oh, yeah, Da. Anyway, it’s quite the experience and I’m enjoying myself.
The food has all been good so far. I haven’t had any sheep face (it doesn’t seem all that common, at least around here), and I had horse meat for the first time on Saturday. It was the first day of school and there was a large assembly in the soccer field (stadium) and a presentation that lasted an hour. We met the director then took a tour of the school and met a few classes, some of which couldn’t believe or didn’t understand we would be their teachers. We then had lunch and the director joined us and served us the horse meat, a delicacy apparently.
The director is a very imposing man that commands a lot of respect from his teachers and students. He has a large office, and when he enters a room everybody is quiet. We talked with him some, through a translator, and he was telling jokes and laughing and having a good time, so I liked him.
My training group is me and four other volunteers – Matthew, Drew, Jackie (Jessica) and Kim. It’s a good group and we have fun during our language classes. Our teacher is nice and tries hard to make sure we understand what is going on, but the language is very difficult. I’ve figured out the alphabet fairly well, now it’s just a matter of putting sentence together. Russian nouns and adjectives and what not are put into cases depending on the sentence. They can be in any order and it is the case that tells you their role in the sentence, so it’s hard to understand how to make sentences. Seeing as this is my first week really, I don’t think I should worry yet.
Kackilian isn’t a village in a sense that you’d think a third world country would be. Most streets are paved, houses have power and there are tons of cars. My family lives in the middle class range, including dial up internet, two TVs and a microwave. I eat well and enjoy the food, including the chai that comes 3-4 times a day. The people are typically friendly when you meet them and the kids are excited to meet an American. For many we are the first Americans in the flesh. American culture is everywhere. My host sister loves Fall Out Boy, Lincoln Park and Johnny Depp.
It’s pretty hot here, probably a little hotter than Seattle was when I left, but as long as I’m in the shade I’m doing alright. I have to wear long pants to work which doesn’t help, but I’m feeling pretty professional so I don’t mind it.
I’ve only drank one night I’ve been here, and not that much. Some out of town family came and I had a few shots of vodka with them. It was pretty rough the first full shot, but I got through it, then had mini half shots after that. To be honest, vodka is vodka to me and I don’t think this was any special kind.
I also have a flush toilet and a shower, just so you all know. The first night with my host family though (Saturday, August 25th) I banya’d. The banya is basically a sauna, so I stripped down to my birthday suit along with another volunteer and our host uncle or cousin, I wasn’t sure. You sit in the heat for some time, and then somebody whacks you with some soft branches. The entire time it’s so hot it hurts to breath and you keep splashing cold water on your face. After about four or five minutes we stepped out into the other room, put on our underwear and went outside to dump buckets of cold water over ourselves. Then we went back in and washed our hair etc. It was quite the cultural experience and since we had no idea what we were doing Alex, the Kazakhstani cousin/uncle sort of guided us with points and Russian words like Sadiz (sit).
Okay, since this blog is being written on my laptop over time while I look for internet where I can load this up, I’m now continuing. I got to go into Almaty, and I bought a cell phone there. Don’t expect any phone calls from me though, it costs a few dollars a minute, and I don’t really have that kind of money right now. But I can talk to other volunteers, and whatnot, so that’s a bonus. My group of volunteers spent a long time walking around class cases sort of like at a jewelry store with hundreds of cell phones, looking for the cheapest one, but our language teacher kept disapproving, and we could never quite figure out why. Finally we went to an official looking counter and got a Nokia phone. It seems like pretty much every volunteer ends up getting the same phone. It was around $45 dollars, which was a large junk of our monthly allowance.
Anyway, that’s not the exciting part of Almaty. We went to the top of a mountain by cable car (not that big of a mountain). The mountain was called Kok-Toobye (that’s how you pronounce it at least). Up there, we got our pictures taken with some random Beatles statues, which was probably one of the highlights of this adventure so far. They had Beatles music playing over a speaker near the statues, and we kept hoping to hear “Back in the USSR,” but no luck. Anyway, after that we just enjoyed the view of Almaty at night. It was interesting, because Almaty’s tallest buidings are only about 15 stories tall. It is an earthquake prone area and so they don’t want anything too tall. After that, it was the ride home and sleep at 11 pm, pretty late for me sadly.
I begin teaching tomorrow (Monday) which will probably be after this blog actually gets posted. I’m going to teach about fruits and the difference between likes and favorites. Should be filled with excitement and keep the students on the edge of their seats. Anyway, I’m looking forward to it.
So far I don’t have any really funny anecdotes to share or anything, life is pretty normal. We went to the bazaar and gave all the women a good laugh trying to pronounce the names of foods and whatnot. That’s pretty much it.
Other notes of consequence:
-Kazakhstani chocolate is the best I’ve had so far
-It’s quite fun sitting around drinking tea and asking shto eta (what’s this?)
-Kazakhi’s are some of the most hospitable people
-Most Kazakh teenagers look like models
-Pamagat (help me) and pamidor (tomato) are two different things
-Reading is never so enjoyable as when it breaks up long awkward silences between people who can’t speak each others languages
Anyway, that’s all for now. I miss folks back home and all the excitement you guys are having. Keep in touch with me, it means a lot when I get emails, and even more so if I get a letter. Leave me your email address and I will send you the address for my letters since I’m not supposed to post it online if you want to send me a letter (or a packageJ) Take care etc.
-Jeff
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Leaving on a Jet Plane
Okay folks, I'm getting close to board a plane and begin my 2893243 hour flight to Frankfurt and from there to Almaty, Kazakhstan. I've been briefed and rebriefed on safety and policy issues so that I don't die or get sent home once I've gotten there. I met about 73 other volunteers in DC, and I remember maybe half their names at this point. They all seem pretty cool, but I'm keeping an eye on them in case they slip.
Anyway, I won't be able to talk for about a week once I get to the Kaz, so don't expect anything exciting coming from me for a little while. Wednesday night/Thursday morning I will be moving into a hotel in the mountains above Almaty, then on Sunday after lunch I move in with my family. Language lessons will be in small groups of about five, and they will take up the majority of my six day a week classes. Other than that, it's hands on training in classrooms for a total of three months before they send me off to some small, lonely post in the middle of nowhere. Most likely I'll be far away from internet and will only have time to get online once a week at the most.
Anyway, I'll be missing you kids, not now, but in a while. Take care, keep me up to date with what's happening in the world, and if you want to send me a hand written letter, you can get my address from my parents or email me and I'll send it to you. That's it.
-Jeff
Anyway, I won't be able to talk for about a week once I get to the Kaz, so don't expect anything exciting coming from me for a little while. Wednesday night/Thursday morning I will be moving into a hotel in the mountains above Almaty, then on Sunday after lunch I move in with my family. Language lessons will be in small groups of about five, and they will take up the majority of my six day a week classes. Other than that, it's hands on training in classrooms for a total of three months before they send me off to some small, lonely post in the middle of nowhere. Most likely I'll be far away from internet and will only have time to get online once a week at the most.
Anyway, I'll be missing you kids, not now, but in a while. Take care, keep me up to date with what's happening in the world, and if you want to send me a hand written letter, you can get my address from my parents or email me and I'll send it to you. That's it.
-Jeff
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