Peace Corps Kazakhstan is officially suspending the program. This week all of the volunteers left their sites to gather in Almaty. I think they will be leaving the country before the end of next week.

The reasons for this have not been stated officially. Generally, it seems to be a combination of security concerns and growing government resistance. My friend Becca does an excellent job writing about the closing of the program here which goes into a better explanation of the situation.

For me, hearing the news of the closing was particularly tough. I just left the country two months ago, and I had to leave suddenly. I had intended to stay until December; I guess even had I stayed there, I would not have met that original goal. I know what the volunteers there are going through in some way. Imagine you are living your life. You have friends. You have a job. You have plans for next month, for next spring, even for next year. Then someone tells you that you have to leave. You have a week to say goodbye, and it is likely that you will never come back. All of your plans, all of your life, you just have to leave it behind. That feeling of loss and sadness is what most of the volunteers in Kazakhstan are facing. It's something most of us probably never thought of when we entered the Peace Corps. I knew there would be challenges, but I think a sudden departure was probably the least expected and most difficult of those challenges.

I don't know the exact reasons that the program is shutting down. The ministry of education is spinning it. The embassy is spinning it. One goal of PC is obviously diplomatic, so neither side wants to make the other look bad. The Ministry of Education has said that Kaz income has increased greatly over the past two decades, and PC leaving is a natural progression. However, this is really not true. The urban/rural divide is still a huge issue in Kazakhstan, and rural schools are bad. This problem isn't unique to Kazakhstan. Schools in poor neighborhoods in America are also generally bad. America is one of the richest countries in the world, and we still have a gigantic problem with the quality of education.

This past year, the Kazakhstan government began hiring more foreign teachers to work in the best schools in Kazakhstan. The salaries for these teachers is reportedly as high as $60000 a year. That is crazy money in Kazakhstan. Despite the hiring of these teachers, some Peace Corps volunteers were working in these same schools. Is Peace Corps needed if the government is willing to pay that much money for teachers? Probably not. BUT, those are the elite schools. The best of the best. Once Kazakhstan is willing to invest the same money in the village schools that the majority of volunteers are at, then the ministry's statement becomes credible. Until then, why turn down FREE native speaking English teachers?

Either way, Peace Corps is leaving. Is it a good decision? Maybe. Honestly, it was always a hostile environment. I never realized this until I was talking to an RPCV friend from Ecuador. Apparently, it is not necessarily a global volunteer phenomenon for everyone in your community think that you are all spies, to have your phones wiretapped, and to have the state police regularly calling your boss to inquire about you. In some countries, they just accept Peace Corps without a Soviet-influenced mentality. Of course, every country has its challenges. In Kazakhstan, dealing with state police was one of those challenges. However, if a volunteer got to go to a country where that was not an issue, that'd probably be better.

I was rather surprised that they are pulling out all the volunteers. Once government resistance increased, I thought they would just phase out the program. If someone were to ask me if KZ was a good place for a new volunteer, I would have to consider the other possible countries the volunteer could go to. If in those other countries, the volunteer was less likely to be forced to move from their home community, have the police break into their apartments, or be accused in the media of being spies, then I'd have to go with the other countries. If someone were to ask me if the volunteers should all leave immediately, then I'd have to weigh the cost of those risks with the pain caused by sudden departure. I assume that PC considered that, and it still chose for the volunteers to leave early.

Right now is a tough time for a lot of people in Kazakhstan associated with Peace Corps. Host families and workplaces are left confused. PC staff must now find a new job. Volunteers must say goodbye to the country they had probably fallen in love with. My heart goes out to all those people.

Knowing that in the almost two decades PC was there, it made a real difference in the lives of some of the citizens of Kazakhstan makes the feeling of sadness a little easier to stomach.

Trains are the way to travel in Kazakhstan. Planes are too expensive. Buses are uncomfortable. If you want to get across the vast lands that are Kazakhstan, you are probably taking a train.

Trains are not the way to travel in America. Most people go by cars. If you travel long distance, you are probably going to take a plane. There are certain places that use trains to travel (New England, East Coast, around Chicago maybe, West Coast?), but for the majority of the country, trains are something from the past.

But how do trains here and there compare?

Price

Trains are cheap in Kazakhstan. The cheap class of a ticket for a ten-hour train ride from Taraz to Almaty costs about $10. So a 24-hour train ride is probably about $20. Trains in America are not cheap. The 24-hour train from Savannah to Boston cost $125. This was equivalent to the cost of a plane ticket. I took the train because it was easiest to ship my bike. Cost is a big problem with trains in America. If trains and planes cost the same in Kazakhstan, people there would also not take trains.

Winner: Kazakhstan

Bathrooms

Amtrak has much cleaner bathrooms. Amtrak has bathrooms you can use all

the time, even when you are passing through a city. Amtrak bathrooms

have a light to show you someone is occupying it. Kazakhstan's bathrooms

are dirty, sometimes closed (since you don't want to open the hole to

the tracks in a city), and have no occupancy indicators. It seems like

Amtrak would be the clear winner, right? Wrong. Kazakhstan bathrooms

have a much better set up for long-distance train rides. They have a

drain in the middle of the floor. They have lots of hooks you can hang

things with. They are practically made so you can shower yourself in

there. And yeah, you don't really want to hang out in them, but why

would you ever want to hang out in a train bathroom. I value

practicality over comfort, and Kazakhstan trains win hands down. Winner:

Kazakhstan.

Lightning Round

1. Air-conditioning: Amtrak has it. Kazakhstan does not. Sometimes the windows do not even open. Winner: Amtrak.

2. Lights. Amtrak never turns the lights off. Kazakhstan does. Winner: Kazakhstan.

3. Food available. Amtrak has food available on the train. Kazakhstan has food available at every stop along the way. Amtrak's food is boring and standard. Kazakhstan has melons, smoked fish, shashlik, fresh fruit, etc. Plus, babushkas will usually give you food for free. Winner: Tie

4. Buying tickets: Amtrak let's you do it online. Kazakhstan lets you do it online. Winner: Tie.

5. Seats: Amtrak has comfortable seats. Kazakhstan has beds! Beds! But sometimes people sit on you when you are lying in your bed. Hmmm.... Winner: Kazakhstan by a hair

6. Customer Service: Amtrak was awesome when I was shipping my bike to Boston. They were not good when my bike didn't show up. Kazakhstan train customer service usually ranges from bad to average. Winner: Kazakhstan.

Total count: 5 for K, 1 for A, and 2 ties

In short, if you can't tell, I love trains in Kazakhstan.

I left Kazakshtan on September 10, 2012. I've been home now for about three weeks. I don't know when I'll be back. I enjoyed my time there. I met great . I saw a lot of interesting things. I came back with amazing stories and friendships.

I'll post more about Kazakhstan eventually. There are always more stories to be told. But for now, I'm moving on. I am living in Savannah with my parents and I have begun the process of "looking for a job."

However, while I was in Kazakhstan, I happened to meet a lot of people who were touring the world on bicycles. It started with Michael from the Czech Republic, followed with Stellen, Stephen, Koen, and countless others. I'm not adventurous enough to tackle the globe, but I've decided to go a bike trip before entering the world of work. I 'm going to be going from Boston to Savannah (approximately 2000 KM). To record this adventure, I've started a new blog. I'm going to try out wordpress and see how I like their platform. You can find my new blog at www.hotardonabike.wordpress.com.

They decided on the rock and roll faces while I was setting up the self timer

I haven’t been everywhere in Kazakshtan. I never made it west past Kyzlorda, so I never saw the Caspian, the Aral Sea, or any cities out that way. I also never made it to Pavlador or Kokshetau. But this past week, I was finally able to cross off Ust-Kamenogorsk from my list. It will most likely be the last new city that I visit in Kazakshtan, since we have travel restrictions placed on us the last three months of our service. (Understandably, they want us to “finish strong” at our sites.) Back in June, a volunteer in Ust sent out an email saying she was doing a camp on leadership, careers, and international education. When boiled down, that’s really been the focus for the bulk of my service. I couldn’t imagine a better camp, and it would mean work travel to visit East Kazakhstan Oblast. I’d like to imagine the competition was stiff to claim a spot at her camp, but really I have no idea. She said I could help out, and I had to rearrange my summer schedule to make it fit. Ust is a long way away from Taraz. I left last Thursday on a midnight bus to Almaty. I was looking to go cheap, so I grabbed a seat in the back row. It had been a couple years since I’d done that, and I had forgotten how uncomfortable that row makes the ten-hour ride. I was a zombie all day in Almaty before boarding my 23 hour train to Ust that set off at 10PM. The train ride was much more comfortable though. I was able to catch up on my sleep and finish “The Big Short” which was excellent, and anyone interested in the financial crisis and wanting an interesting story should find and read it. Saturday night I was able to hang out with my old friend AC and Sunday Meriah showed me around the city. Ust is the capital of East Kazakshtan, but it is not the oblast’s only city. A few hundered kilometers away is Semei, which was home to Abai and also housed Dostoyevsky for a while. I would have liked to visit it as well, but I’m out of vacation days now. Ust is famous for its “strelka” which means arrow. This is the city’s riverwalk. It is call an arrow, because two rivers meet at a certain point of it. Overall, Ust was a lot prettier than I imagined. I had heard that the city was very polluted because of its large industry sector (there’s a lot of mineral processing done there), but that didn’t stop them from having a very nice riverwalk and some nice parks. The smoke stacks from the factories were very noticeable on the city skyline though, and they seemed to be located in the center of town rather than on the outskirts. Also, much like people in Taraz will quickly mention their city is the most criminal in all of Kazakhstan, the people of Ust were quick to say our ecology is horrible. However, they didn’t have any pride in this fact. Aside from the parks, the rivers, and the smokestacks, the next most noticeable thing in the city was a chain of cafes called Pizza Blues. They seemed to be everywhere. In Taraz, we have a lot of cafes, but we don’t have any major chains. In Shymkent, they have about five Madlens, so maybe that is comparable, but there seemed to be way more Pizza Blues than that. We eventually got to try it out, and the pizza was horrible. I would rate it below a Totinos pizza in terms of taste. It was somewhat cheap though, so it had that going for it at least. The camp itself ran from Monday to Friday. It was located about 80km outside the city at a camp that the university owned on a small lake. The setting was gorgeous. Small rock mountains surrounded the lake which were great for doing some short treks up and down. Melissa had picked 18 of her best students, all of them being girls because no boys applied for the camp. During the four days, we had them write resumes, statements of purpose, and prepare for a mock interview. I was surprised by how much work they put into it outside of the sessions. In their free time, they may have been sitting down by the lake, but they did so with their resumes and statements of purpose. We also did some teambuilders and leadership activities with them, which they had lots of fun with. In the evenings, we did evening activities, which included me finally using the karaoke program that Ken gave me years ago. For me, the camp was just awesome. The students were so enthusiastic and engaged. My favorite memories include our talent show at the end (I juggled volleyballs, or at least tried to, while the other volunteers sang Lean on Me), karaoke (the most popular song was “My Heart Will Go On”), team builders, mountain climbing (Jenny, Elena and I actually made it to the top!), and yoga (yeah, I even did yoga for a whole week.) The other volunteers were also great, and amazingly there was someone from Kaz 20, 21, 22, and 23. Now I’m back at. I have thirteen weeks left in Kazakhstan, That’s like a college semester or so. I know it’s going to fly by. I just have to try and hunker down now and finish strong.

Camp's location

Sunset over the steppe

First take

My favorite teambuilder

Our beautiful lodgingTrust fall with the students

In 1991, Georgia announced independence from the Soviet Union. And soon afterwards, they went to war. Two of its regions wanted to secede from Georgia: Abkhazia and South Osseida. They had been part of Georgia during the Soviet Union, and they were historically parts of the kingdom of Georgia on and off again for the past two thousand years. However, there were some reasons for them to want to be separate. I don’t know much about South Ossedia, so I’ll focus mostly on Abkhazia. (This is what we may call interpreted history rather than objective history. I am repeating what I was told, so in some ways this is the history that exists in the minds of at least some people in Georgia. I must admit that this is a one-sided story, but unfortunately that’s the only side I got to hear. I hope that reading this will encourage some people to look up information themselves and find out more.) Abkhazians have their own language. They are also mostly Islamic, while Georgians are Christians with a capital C. However, in 1991, only say 20% of the population in Abkhazia was actually Abkhaz. Georgian (or Mengrellian, but they consider themselves Georgian). So 20% of the population said, we want to secede. And 80% said, what? And then the minority said, get out. And the majority said, what? And then war started and 200,000 people fled Abkhazia for Georgia. The Abkhaz with the Russians helped kick out 80% of the population and then declared independence from Georgia. A new country and a new economy are hard things to manage. Countries all over the Soviet Union went into chaos in the early 1990s. Imagine everything depending on the government. Your job, your healthcare, all your utilities. And then one day, the government stops existing. It’s hard to imagine. People don’t get paid. Things don’t get made. Utilities don’t work. People have no heating in the winter. It was tough times. In Georgia, these were exacerbated by a civil war. Not only was there a sudden lack of government, there was a war and hundreds of thousands of refugees. I was fortunate enough to meet some amazing people during my trip, and it turned out about a dozen or so of them were refugees. Through a friend of a friend, I met up with Irakli and his family in Zugdidi, which is the city closest to the border with Abkhazia. Of course, the fighting has been over for 15 years now, and they are living a normal enough life. The government gave them an apartment to live in. Irakli and his brother both graduated from university. His father has a small business making bags for food products. But they long for their old life. Irakli grew up in a town on the coast of the Black Sea. Their house was only 30 meters away from the water. His parents grew up in that town. That was their life. And now, they are forbidden to go back. And with a mere percentage of the original residents, their house has probably been looted and now sites abandoned. Sitting there, 30 meters from the water, empty. Irakli and his family live in a normal, although modest, apartment. Some of his relatives still haven’t received normal apartments. They live in a converted preschool. It’s not bad, but for them, it still didn’t feel like home. Soon though, seventeen years after the war, they are going to finally get apartment in a new city and somehow try and start a new life there. August 2008. For me, that’s when I came to Kazakhstan. It’s also the Beijing Olympics. I remember because they started on my birthday. Maybe you remember another event that happened around that time. Russia invaded Georgia. The way I remember it being presented, Russia was the bad guy picking on little, innocent Georgia. They wanted to disrupt some pipeline or get land or something. In reality, this was a complicated situation. I don’t really understand what happened, but it wasn’t just a flashfire event. It had been building up for years and fighting had been escalating for months leading up to the incident. The wikipedia page on it presents an interesting story, although it is flagged for questionable neutrality (although I’m not sure from which side; it presents both in a negative light). It seems simple to conclude though, that both sides were at least partly responsible. My new friends briefly recounted some events from the first war and the 2008 war. When I was riding around in Irakli’s uncle’s Zhugili (an old Soviet station wagon type car) he joked that it was his tank. It’s what they used when they were fleeing Abkhazia with eleven people and everything they could bring with them crammed inside. A small shell actually hit the top of it, but it was stopped by the luggage they had on top. Their tank, indeed. In 2008, everything happened quickly. Russian jets were flying everywhere. They apparently bombed the Borjomi region which started some serious fires. There were civilian casualties, including at least one foreign journalist. Peace Corps volunteers were also affected. I heard they called their Safety and Security Office saying, “Uh… there are Russian troops in my yard. What do I do?” (Since then Peace Corps rules in Georgia have been extra strict. They are issued cell phones. They get free minutes on all calls between Peace Corps phones. And you MUST have your phone with you at all times.) But the war was a short one, and a tentative peace was made. However, a war only increased incentive and justification for Russia’s presence in the disputed territories. The refugees know that the process won’t end soon. They certainly don’t expect to go home tomorrow. But I think they have hope. How can they not? In their minds, that is their land. Their houses, their belongings, they are just 100 kilometers away, but across a distance that cannot yet be crossed. They talk about Abkhazia fondly. The beaches butt up right against the mountains. Not like Batumi, which is flat. They long to go home; they hope one day they might be able to, but until then, they are living their lives in other parts of Georgia. Two incidents were interesting to me. One, when we were going to a cave city about 70 km away from Borjomi, we brought along a young boy of about eleven years old. He was Abkhaz, but he was visiting Georgia. The other travelers were me, and four refugees from Abkhazia. They spoke about him as if he was a novelty. Look at us, four refugees, an American, and an Abkhaz. What a crazy bunch! It seemed like they were slightly jealous of the boy, and why wouldn’t they be. He still gets to live there; and they can only dream. At one point, he was saying how beautiful Georgia was, but how Abkhazia was even prettier. The four other people with us jokingly said, we know, we lived there our whole lives! Another time, someone was telling a friend news of Abkhazia they had heard from the boy’s mother. Apparently, Russian tourists were trying to go into the region, but they had trouble because police enforcement is rather lax there. My friend became slightly incensed, why were Russians going there? What were they doing there? There’s no reason for them to be there? And I could only think that I’ve heard constantly about how it’s amazingly beautiful, why wouldn’t they go there if they could? But that logic wasn’t in the mind of my friend. That’s his home, what right do people have to go there when he himself can’t. I assume that’s what he was thinking. For me, it was fascinating talking to the people of Georgia about what had happened. Never in my life had I talked to refugees before. In development, you hear a lot about them. Refugees. Refugee camps. But then to meet someone who had to leave their home and couldn’t go back. To change their whole life due to war. And I longed to hear the other side. I know what I heard had to be at least somewhat biased, but honestly no one spoke badly about anyone else. If there were any bitter feelings, they did not share them with me, their guest. They only spoke about their land which is now unreachable for them. The beauty of it, and how much they miss it. Either way, it was quite an impressive display of forgiveness or restraint. And a reminder that things are never as simple as they seem.

One of the joys of visiting Georgia is the wine. Georgians love wine. They love to drink it. They love to make it. They love to toast with it. But people there don’t just sit and sip on their wine. They toast and then they guzzle. That’s one reason why they drink more white wine then red wine. Sure, they make red wine, and they love it, but they admit guzzling glass after glass of red wine in a night is a lot harder than white wine.

So let’s say you sit down at a Georgia dinner, and you are poured wine. What’s the proper etiquette? You must wait for a toast. Who gives the toast? A special chosen person called the tomador. This is the table commander. He is the man in charge. He also has a second in command, but I don’t remember what that guy is called. So the tomador will say a toast about something, and then the second guy will elaborate on the toast. Then everyone drinks their glass of wine all the way or almost all the way. Don’t sip it. Down that thing. If the toast was to something normal, you can leave a bit left in your glass (friends, meeting, country), but if it something very important (to the dead, God, etc), you should drink the whole thing. Then they fill your glass back up and you wait for the next toast. There’s no drinking it in between toasts. (However, in my experience, albeit limited, we were allowed a glass of juice or water as well that we could drink from freely.) How much time is there between toasts? Sometimes just a few minutes, sometimes five minutes, sometimes longer. It depends on the tomador. Are you allowed to say your own toast? Eventually, but you better wait for a bit, and then you have to ask permission from the commander. The toasts are usually from a set list. There’s the normal toast for meeting, for friends, for the dead, for God, for women, for peace, for etc… For me as a visitor for only two weeks, this was pretty fun. I don’t know how I’d feel there as a volunteer there for two years though. Maybe I’d get sick of the repetitiveness, but I think a lot of it depends on the table commander. Generally, they should be gregarious and interesting. Where do they get all of this wine from? Often, they make it themselves. The eastern part of Georgia are where most of the vineyards are, but many people also have some grape vines growing in their own yards. The harvest season is in September, and apparently September and October are the times visit because Georgians celebrate this time of year (it’s also not 40 degrees in Tbilisi like it is in August). Even the people who don’t grow their own grapes may buy kilos of it to make wine out of. One family I talked to bought about 500 kilograms a year of grapes. From this, he’s make about 300 liters of good pure wine, and 300 liters of good, watered-down wine. (I am not really sure how accurately I remember the numbers, but it was a lot of grapes and a lot of wine.) Wine is not all that they drink in Georgia though. They don’t just throw away the grape stuff after they extract the wine. They distill it to make a drink called chacha. Homemade liquor. Usually above 60 proof, possibly much much higher. Not being content with just this, they also make homemade vodka from other fruits like plums. My friend Irakli and I actually ran into his uncle distilling some vodka in the apartment lawn on my birthday. He invited us to sit down and try it. Later he measured it with this floating gauge to find out it was about 65 proof. The homemade pickles helped get that stuff down. Oh, you toast chacha and vodka the same way as with the wine.

How to make vodka

They also drink beer, but they don’t toast it. You can casually drink it like you want to.

Georgians are proud of their water, and they probably should be. They have some of the most famous mineral water in the world. The main brand being Borjomi, whose bottles may be in a nearby supermarket. It’s the one with the funny squiggle writing (aka Georgian). This company started bottling the salty, fizzy, mineral filled water from the town of Borjomi 120 years ago (as billboards there now commemorate). However, Borjomi is not unique in Georgia. Many other places also bottle the water that springs up from the ground, and in Georgia it seemed like some other ones were more popular. Of course, there are tons and tons of natural springs through out the country, and a trip to Georgia is not complete without stopping numerous times during any trip to drink from natural springs that now have pipes and spickets coming from them. Going to Kazbegi, my marshrutka stopped twice so the driver and passengers could enjoy the spring water. This water did not taste good. Other trips were the same. You just stop the car, get out, and have some fresh mineral water. Sometimes this water tastes great and sometimes the water tastes like its full of metal. Either way, the people here love to drink it. This water tasted great. It was near the town Rustavi This water at the Green Monastary near Borjomi tasted pretty goodThe line was too long, so I didn't try this water.

Borjomi is the most famous though, and the park in the center of town contains a fountain where you can fill up cups and drink the mineral water for free. Me filling up a cup with FREE Borjomi water Another spring nearby has cold water that is better. And this creates the interesting phenomenon of vendors selling empty plastic bottles. Never have I seen person after person selling empty plastic bottles. The water’s free, but you have to buy the bottle When we filled up at the Borjomi spring, some people were filling up to ten liters of the spring water. In a somewhat ironic twist though, two of the places I stayed at in Georgia only had running water a couple times a day. There is water everywhere, but they don’t have the infrastructure to keep it pumping into their houses all day.

So I went on vacation and finally have something to write about. For the next few entries, my blog is going to feature stuff about Kyrgyzstan and Georgia. Georgia being the country and not the state. I should probably write about Kyrgyzstan first, but I’m in Georgia now, so it’s fresh. First a short introduction to Georgia. Georgia is a small country located in the Caucuses. Is it Europe? Is it Asia? No one seems to know. (Even when I was given my Peace Corps assignment, I remember wondering this. Okay, Central Asia. So Bulguria and Ukraine are out. What about Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan? When asked, people don’t really know. They see themselves more European, but overall they are the Caucuses.) They are technically in Europe, but they are Caucus people. That’s important to know. Also, here I should note that everything I know about Georgia I learned from being here, talking to people, reading Lonely Planet, and skimming wikipedia. So this is definitely not well researched.Anyway, Georgia is a small country. There’s about 5 million people here. 3.5 million are Georgians, and 1.5 million are others. That includes Armenians, Turks, Russians, Azeris, etc. However, even all Georgians are not all the same. Some are different nationalities like Svans and Megrellians. Georgia shares borders with Russia, Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. It also has a big coast on the Black Sea. However, the country is only a few hundred kilometers wide, and in the past two weeks, I’ve been able to make it to within miles of Turkey (really like 100 yards away), Russia, and Armenia. Georgia is Christian. Wait, they are a democratic with freedom of religion. But they are a Christian nation. Those 3.5 million Georgians, pretty much all of them are Georgian Orthodox. And everywhere you go, it shows. If there is a hill overlooking a town here, there is a cross or a church or both prominently sitting on top. The mosques and other religious places are hidden away. When you pass by a church, people cross themselves. Wearing crosses is very popular. How this actually translates into practice, I’m not sure. But the display of religious here is important. Georgians like to drink. The main things they drink are wine, beer, vodka, and chacha. Chacha is a homemade liquor made from grapes, after they are finished making their homemade wine. They seem to drink all three major categories of alcohol: beer, liquor, and wine. And a lot of it is homemade. They also have an interesting way of going about it that I’ll cover later on. Georgians speak Georgian. Georgian not like any other language in the world. That’s not entirely true. People here speak different versions of Georgian like Megrellian, Georgian, or Svani. However, Georgia has its own alphabet and it has its own language branch. Yeah, like Germanic covers English, Germany, etc. Latin has Spanish, French, Italian. Slavic has tons of languages. Georgian is a whole language branch for like six million people. Crazy. The older generation (up to about 30 maybe?) all knows Russian from when they were in the Soviet Union. The younger generation is learning English instead, trying to bring it closer to the West, but possibly excluding its regional neighbors. In addition to these facts, I will soon elaborate on mineral water, mountain landscapes, the Black Sea, and a civil war. And once again, none of this is well researched. Any wrong information is an honest mistake. I’ve just had an amazing time learning and exploring this wonderful country, and I hope more people are able to learn about it.

And just for fun, a picture or two:Church on a hill

Georgian alphabet.

With all the volunteers having finally left after my summer camp, I faced a quiet evening alone in the city. Instead of just relaxing, I decided to head over to Asa to help Jessica with "evening baseball," a new take on baseball camp since the temperature has been in the 40s for quite a few days now. Things that happened on this trip:

- I brought a giant bag full of plastic bottles onto the Asa bus with no problem, since I just put it on other giant bags full of things other people had brought.

- When the bus made a sudden stop, a woman near Mark almost fell out of the window. Half her body fell out including her arm holding her purse. Okay, she wasn't really in danger since the window ledge was too high, but I don't know how she held onto the purse.

- We helped hand a guy a 25 kilo bag of sugar when he got off the bus (not that crazy, but really when was the last time you did that in America)

- We arrived without calling Jessica (very local of us) to find out that baseball would be at 7 and not 6, and that they were running late (very local of them) and wouldn't be there until about 7:20

- Tried playing baseball with the kids only to realize that yeah, after two years, I still don't speak Kazakh. Luckily one of the kids helped translate

- When a local dad showed up wondering what was going on (parent interest! awesome?!), I had to ask him to put the bat down because even though he wasn't really swinging it, he did seem to not notice the kids walking around him. Maybe I'm too overly cautious, but I don't want anyone getting hit with the bat. He then said, eh, they're my kids. This put us at an awkward situation, as he did not want to let go of said bat and I was trying to politely take it from him. I then realized that I may soon have an angry man holding a bat to deal with. Luckily the situation was defused when Mark walked over and said Hello, culturally forcing the man to shake Mark's hand and relinquish the bat. (Would walking up to a man in a hostage situation saying Salom maleiikom accomplish the same thing?)

- On the way back, the tire of a van blew out while we were walking down the road. Not that unusual, but it was loud and scared me.

-We take a taxi back to town. Usually they let you off not that far into town, but sometimes they take you further. The guys asks where we are going, I say the center, and he doesn't say anything. Once we get into the city we go a little further than normal before he stops to drop off the two women passengers who were with us. One has a 2000 tenge bill for the 150 tenge ride. He pulls into a gas station to get change. He can't find any. He asks us where we are going. I again say center. He again says nothing. He runs across the street to get change and then comes back. He gives her the change. He then tells us that we have to get out because he isn't going to the center. I am confused as to why he didn't tell us this when we were sitting in his car for five minutes while he attempted to find change. Perhaps, he was as equally confused about why we thought he would take us to the center.

-While walking back, we decide to peak in a new cafe that has opened up. It is called Mr. Kumpir and it has an interesting logo. http://www.mrkumpir.com/eng/menulerimiz.html We go inside to find a surprisingly nice looking restaurant. The waiter seats us and brings us menus. It turns out there are menus on every table! Some restaurants here only have one or two menus for the whole place. Further, what we find on the menu is ridiculous. It is full of kumpirs. What is a kumpir? A baked potato! I have never seen these at a cafe in Kazakhstan. Even when they are homemade here, they are typically just baked and not decorated with any toppings. But these were gourmet ones that included toppings like red cabbage, broccoli, and beans. Further exploration revealed a value menu where you could order a hamburger, fries, and a drink for one price. Yeah, or course these exist in Almaty, but for Taraz, this is mindblowing (and was a stark contrast to Asa which we had been in only 30 minutes before). Wait, what's that on the menu? A waffle? Like a real, thick waffle? No way. Yes! They had a real waffle iron. However, waffles are only gourmet waffles, so they come with fruit, chocolate, and other toppings. In addition to these items, they also had grilled cheese sandwiches, regular sandwiches, and chicken shnitzel (which turned out to be like fried chicken breasts). All of this is made more ridiculous by the fact that in the past 36 hours, in an attempt to be super American, I had made waffles, baked potatoes, and chicken fingers and had relished in the fact that I was culinaryily unique. Nope. Just had to go down the street. We tried to order kumpirs (the speciality at Mr. Kumpir), but they were out. That's the pinch to say yes, we still are in Kazakhstan. To add to ridiculousness, at one point, the waiter even came back to see how we were doing. And when we got the check, there was no service charge and the bread we had gotten (but not asked for) was truly complimentary. The place was overpriced, but I hope it manages to stick around.

I haven't written on this thing in forever. Surprisingly, it is working without proxy servers and I am actually on blogger. Awesome.

This week I have a ten day summer camp with kids from our Access program. I was basically in charge of putting most of it together, so I had to run all around town and find things to do. The hardest thing in Kazakhstan is getting documents from places that sell you things. So we had to nix t-shirts because they were too expensive with the right documents. So far we have had a picnic, a scavenger hunt, tours of the city, visit to the museum, icebreakers, and day at the park. Today is bowling, then American sports day, then a trip to the movie theater. We have a great group of volunteers from the South helping at the camp.

Next week, there is a break. Then Astana, then Kyrgyzstan?, then camp, then break, then Ust, then Georgia, then three more months as I hunker down and finish strong. I'll try to update soon with some pictures from camp, since I can now post them with blogger.

Oh and Happy Astana Day!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAZaUIzrH7U&feature=player_embedded

Last week, we had our COS conference in Almaty. (My second and I'm still not leaving until December!) I took part in the talent show as an honorary member of SKO (South Kazakhstan Oblast). We mashed-up Barbara Streisand and Kara Zhorga. I'm the guy in the hat who is having lots of trouble staying in time.

Lately I've been focusing on finishing up a career test for students

here in K-stan. It's been frustrating because I rely so much on my

co-workers. If this was in America, I could write it all myself, but

here my Russian is just awful. At least my Russian writing. So

EVERYTHING I do has to be proofread by my co-workers who are busy with

other projects. I think once we get it done though, it will be very

cool though. We almost have the Russian translation down. Next comes a

Kazakh translation and a web site.Outside of that, I've been having a great few weeks. The holidays here

were awesome. On Sunday, we played frisbee in pouring rain then

banyaed. Then on Victory Day we watched the parade like last year, but

this year I was a little less cramped. I also had a couple trips to

Shymkent that were tons of fun.In other news, you should check out this blog post by a fellow PCV

http://katharinedoeskazakhstan.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/miss-post-teen-momushylu/.

She not only entered a local beauty pageant with a salad making

contest, she WON it. I'm jealous, since in all my contest entries so

far here I've placed third, tied for first, and second. But she

outright won. Molodets, Katharine!

A couple years ago, I posted about an opportunity to help fund my friend's project that wanted to teach Kazakh lanaguage to people in his town. That project was funded, implemented, and the town government saw the response and continued to fund it. I don't know if any of my readers contributed, but it's awesome if you did.

Now another one of my friends' projects needs just a little bit more funding. Camp GLOW is an awesome experience for young women in Kazakhstan. They learn leadership, empowerment, and life skills that will help them lead healthier, happier lives. If you could give just $5 or $10, then that would make a difference in funding this camp, and the lives of these girls.

 Girls Leading Our World

My friend started a challenge among her friends and family to get this funded in 48 hours. I said I'd post the link to try and help with the effort.

Please donate by 12:30 AM Thursday May 05, 2011

The other day I had on some brown pants that my parents sent me for

Christmas. Asela saw them and commented that they'd look really good

with her new brown top that I got her from America. Brown on brown,

that matches right? I said that it matched in a Kazakhstan kind of

way. Is it fashionable to wear a whole outfit of just one color in

America? Here, it's not uncommon to see full-color outfits. Like

purple. Girls will have on purple boots, a purple dress, purple

earrings, and purple eye shadow. I've seen the same for yellow, blue,

and green. It certainly stands out, but it leaves me feeling there may

be a little too much of one color going on. However it definitely

draws attention in the crowd of black that people often wear in

Kazakhstan.

So I just found out that my city is hosting a tennis tournament at the

end of April. At first, I thought this was almost as shocking as

December's dolphin show, but considering Kstan's recent success in the

Davis Cup (http://www.astanatimes.kz/index.php?uin=1290953792&pg=1301719563)

and the new tennis courts in my city (which do not rent

equipment.....ahh!!! so aggravating), maybe it's not that big of a

surprise. Still, pro tennis in Taraz seems almost as strange as pro

boxing in Shymkent (http://www.boxingletstalk.com/?p=7434).More on the Taraz tennis tournament at

http://www.itftennis.com/mens/tournaments/tournamentfactsheet.asp?tournament=1100023971.Unrelated to Kazakhstan, but highly related to tennis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK42LZqO0wA (click link to hear really

catchy song and entertaining music video)

Looking back at my six week vacation in America, I definitely did not

enjoy it enough. I mean, I enjoyed it. I loved seeing everyone that I

got to see. I loved talking to everyone on the phone instead of over

skype, and when the time difference was at most three hours. I loved

all of it. But I took it for granted. Sure, the first week there, I

was amazed by America, but then it all felt normal. Now I'm back in

Kazakhstan, and I realize I should have eaten way more deli meat.

Drank way more root beer. Eaten more steak and more bacon and more of

everything. I also should have brought back more candy to give away

when I got back. And I should have taken more pictures.So my advice for anyone who goes home to America, make a list of

things you want in America and get it when you first get there. Write

yourself a letter reminding yourself of all the things you can't have

in Kazakhstan. Then when you get saturated in America, read that

letter and try to remind yourself.When I first came to Kazakshtan, I was all pumped about the Peace

Corps. I was ready for not having the finer things in life. I didn't

know if I'd have to pump my own water or eat strange food. I think

fresh PCVs get excited about having an inconvenient life. I know I

was. But now, the novelty of inconvenience has definitely worn off.

America life is so much easier and more comfortable than life here.

Maybe to excess. No, definitely to the excess. The level of

consumption in America was ridiculous. Just the sheer number of

"things" one could buy was crazy. But at the same time, I like having

a big choice of deli meats. I like paying my bills online or even with

checks. I like having a shower head that hangs on the wall. I like

having bitter beers and dark beers (do any of these exist anywhere in

Kazakhstan?) I wish people in America would choose to lead a simpler

life than they do, but I wish people here had more of a chance to make

that choice.

Kazakhstan is full of surprises. That's one reason why I love it so

much here. The first surprise when I came back was a small one. My

luggage actually made it with me! Despite only having an hour in the

Frankfurt airport (called ), Lufthansa managed to get it onto my plane

to Almaty.The next was a huge surprise. After picking up my luggage, my thoughts

turned to finding a taxi. It was 12:30 at night and I was at the

airport. Now normally, taxis are dirt cheap in Almaty. You can get

them for like three or four bucks. However, taxi drivers are notorious

sharks at Almaty airport. They love to prey on unknowing tourists both

foreign and local. I think a normal, yet still overly priced based on

the distance, may be ten dollars. However, taxi drivers will start

quoting prices as high as sixty or seventy dollars. People may cut

that in half and they are still getting ripped off. And even when you

agree on a price at the airport, they might start negotiating again

while driving. And when it's dark, you're alone with the driver, and

all your stuff is in the back of his trunk, he has a lot of leverage

on you. In short, I was not excited to have to deal with taxi drivers.I walked through customs and out into the airport. My plan was to make

it outside and find a cab when I heard my name being called. Michael,

Michael. I looked up and saw Andrey, one of the Peace Corps drivers

waiting for me. There he was his bushy mustache and large smile. I

don't know if I was ever happier to see anyone in my whole life. "What

are you doing here? I didn't know Peace Corps picked us up from the

airport," I said comfortably in Russian, surprised at how smoothly it

came out. "Of course. Now give me one of your bags." Andrey took my

wheeling bag and I walked out of the airport with a huge grin on my

face. (Since then, I've asked a few volunteers and no one knew that

Peace Corps does this. Is this a new service? It's a great idea for

comfort and for safety.)I stayed over night at the Peace Corps office, and woke up early to

get to the bus station Sayaran. I was surprised to see a bus listed

for 830. I thought the earliest ones left at nine. I was getting

settled in my seat (8 dollars for a 600km trip) when I heard English

behind me. I looked around and didn't see any obvious foreigners.

Strange to hear English on a bus to Taraz. I then heard it again and

decided to ask what was up. It seemed to be coming from four girls and

a guy a few rows behind me. "Excuse me, I said. But can I ask why you

guys are speaking English." "Are you an American?" one of them asked

excitedly. "Yes. I am a Peace Corps volunteer." "Wow. We are going to

Shymkent to meet all of the Peace Corps volunteers in Kazakhstan. This

is our friend, Michael," one of them said pointing to a guy in the

second-to-last row. He was Asian-American volunteer living in

Taldykorgan, so he did a lot better job blending in on the bus. "Why

are you guys on the Taraz bus if you are going to Shymkent?" I asked

(since Taraz is about 150 km before Shymkent). "We just figured we'd

head that way." Maybe I should have said that they could find a

Shymkent bus, but by that time our bus was beginning to get on its

way. They'd find a way somehow.The bus ride was a real welcome back to Kazakhstan. I have taken that

bus ride probably about thirty times either going to Almaty or coming

back from Almaty. It was the third worse one ever. I think it was the

combination of being used to American roads, the construction being

done on the road, and the fact that all the potholes from winter icing

hadn't been filled in yet. We also took an hour detour through Shy

which meant we had to spend even longer on the stuffy, hot bus.Finally, after ten hours I arrived in Taraz. The PCV from Taldy and

his friends had to find a taxi to Shymkent because all the marshrutkas

had left for the day. Asela met me at the bus stop to tell me yet

another surprise. My landlady who usually lives in Almaty was in Taraz

because it was Nauryz. She was staying at my apartment with her two

sons for the whole week. I just wanted to relax a couple days without

all the fuss of a semi-host family, and Mark was gracious enough to

let me crash at his place while he was in Shymkent.Less than 24 hours back in country and I'd had a great surprise at the

airport, an interesting surprise on the bus, a really uncomfortable 10

hour bus ride, and another surprise upon arriving in my city. I felt

like I was definitely back in Kazakhstan.

Did anyone else see this today? This is the first I'm hearing about it. In Kazakhstan, they'll probably have to issue the men suits and crazy boots for the women.   Peace Corps to Issue Uniforms to New Volunteers   A representative from Peace Corps announced that beginning this summer new volunteers would be issued official Peace Corps clothing to wear during their 27-month service. Volunteers will be expected to wear the special clothing with the Peace Corps insignia during their first two to three months of training and also while they were working at their primary site. This change comes as Peace Corps staff around the world faced troubles getting volunteers to dress professionally in their work environment. Because the climate and culture can vary drastically in the 77 countries currently hosting Peace Corps Volunteers, each country's director will be able to set the specific uniform standard. However, all uniforms will have a patch with the Peace Corps emblem sewn onto it.    "In addition to ensuring a more professional appearance from our volunteers, this will also be a great opportunity to support the Peace Corps brand. Our volunteers are out there doing great work, all over the world, everyday, and we want people to realize this," a Peace Corps representative said.   Based on blogs of Peace Corps volunteers, most of them seemed shocked by this news and have reacted negatively. One volunteer blogger responded with, "If it wasn't Peace Corps, I probably wouldn't believe this. But if there's anything I've learned is that never know what to expect as a PCV. I think we're responsible enough to dress ourselves though." Another posted, "I always wished Peace Corps had given me a free shirt or something, but this seems a little ridiculous."   It was not clear if these changes would affect current volunteers or only be implemented for volunteers who begin their service starting this summer.

My holidays are almost over (that's right, in British English vacations are called holidays), and I'm just about ready to go back to Kazakhstan. My time at home has been awesome. I got to see so many people and places and spend a lot of time with my family. I caught up on some new American trends (e.g. fro-yo, gourmet cupcakes, craft beers in cans, Millennium trilogy). I got to eat a lot of good food. And I will get to participate in St. Patrick's Day! Also related to holidays, Kazakhstan will have three days off this year for Naryz (Central Asian New Years). That's the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd.

Maybe this is just from the people I know, but in general, most of my colleagues and friends never know when the holidays are in Kazakhstan. I remember working in Zhualy and I told my boss in two days we had some holiday. He had no idea. This year my co-workers and friends seemed to have no idea that Wednesday (the day after Naryz) was also going to be a holiday. It's been on the calendar for months as a "red day." (Holidays and Sundays are marked in red on Kazakhstan calendars. Although, I think for the calendar I made for my work, I didn't make the 23rd red. This could have led to the confusion.) This just seems so different compared to America. We plan ahead for months. One of the first things we did as students was to map out when our holidays would be so we could plan to go on trips or things. In Kazakhstan, based on my anecdotal experiences, this does not seem to be the case.

Also, I missed International Women's Day. I didn't celebrate it this year, but I thought about all my wonderful women friends in Kazakhstan. I should be back to celebrate the New Year, but hopefully I won't be too tired to try some scrumptious Naryz Kozhe.

These were all going to be expanded, but I got lazy. Maybe I'll revisit to explain what they mean, but I think most people who have lived abroad will understand.

College logos

Understanding everything

SO MANY THINGS

Drivers are not crazy

Shoes in the house

Clean outside

Everything is paved over

street lights

no idea how to use smart phones

not washing dishes by hand

Newspapers delivered

my family does not own a tea pot and had to borrow a kettle

no tea time

ceiling fans

our table is a mess and stays that way

soda, lots of soda

beer. tasty beer.

dilemma over where the toilet paper goes

light switches look funny but are well-placed

people are friendly. airport stewardesses, waffle house people, everyone

american barbershops

no gates around houses

round the clock news

rocking chairs

remembering what it's like, and not really wanting it. but maybe that will change

exercise equipment in our house

So I'm home. Finally. It was a long trip made even longer by a delay in DC. I was supposed to go Almaty-Frankfurt-DC-Savannah. But instead we went Almaty - Astana (but we didn't get off the plane) - Frankfurt (6 hours) - Washington... So in Washington we got in 15 minutes late which made my hour and half scheduled flight very unlikely. Compounded by the fact that the woman in Almaty only checked my baggage through to DC instead of to Jacksonville (meaning I had to go recheck my bags and go back through security) and it was likely that I would not be making my flight.

Despite this, I was giddy when I landed. I saw the flag as I was landing and tears almost came to my eyes. Two years and five months. I swear the ground just felt sturdier walking on Ameican soil. I was home.

I cleared immigration really quickly, but I was flagged for customs because I was bringing in horse meat. At customs, they just asked me what I was bringing in. I said horse meat in cans. They check the computer. Nope, no current regulations due to equine flu. Horse meat allowed! I only have two cans though, so I don't know whom to share it with.

Now I have to recheck my bag, and my flight boards in about five minutes. The woman at that desk is honest with me. It looks like they've rebooked me and I have to get tickets for tomorrow morning. I go up to the ticketing booth considering how I'll contact Brian to see if I can crash at his place for the night, when I meet an angel at the ticket counter. She looks at my trip and says maybe, maybe she can get me home tonight if I'm ready to travel. DC - Cincinnati - Charlotte - Savannah. I'll be home at 11:30. If there's one thing I'm bad at doing, it's not doing anything. If given the chance of just sitting and waiting or doing something, I'm always doing something. Plus, I wanted to get home. She booked me tickets and I was off on my way.

Once I got to the gate, I borrowed someone's phone to call my family. I had asked a couple earlier just when we got off the Frankfurt flight, but they also didn't have a local phone. They recommended I just dial the country code or something on my phone. Right, that'd be great if I get Beeline signal here. So I called the house. Or tried to. The phone the guy handed me was an Android touch phone thing. I had no idea how to turn it on. Wouldn't just touching the screen make sense? Nooo, you had to press some switch on top. So he turned it on for me and I called home. No answer. Did they already leave? Call the cell phone. No answer. I leave a voice mail. And then continue on my journey.

Cincinnati (where I eat a sandwich, first meal in America Roast Beef vegetable sandwich (DELICIOUS. Sandwiches are amazing.)), then Charlotte (with rocking chairs. As I was racing through the airport, I had to sit down in one for just a few seconds. WHY are these not in Kazakhstan. People there would love them, I'm pretty sure.) In Charlotte, I call home and talk to my mom. I find out she didn't get my voice mail until after my first flight landed. So they were waiting there and really sad when I didn't get off the plane. She still didn't call the voice mail, but she did notice a missed call from a random number. So she called the guy whose phone I used and he told her that her son was flying around the country trying to get home tonight.

Then finally, the final flight. 32 hours later I was home. Home! My mom was holding a sign and I almost cried. Home! Home! Home! And even one of my bags made it on time (but not the one with the horse meat). The steak dinner I requested was not fulfilled (yet), so I was given to choices: Waffle House or Krystal. Since my family admitted to eating Krystal on the way back from the airport the first time (without me?! what?), we went to Waffle House. Sweet tea, waffle, and hash browns (smothered, covered, diced, and peppered).

Tomorrow I'll blog about reverse culture shock. It's so happening to me.

So I'm going back to America in a day. For a six week vacation. I haven't been home in two years, five months, and maybe 2 weeks. It's been a long time. For the past two weeks (maybe longer), this is pretty much all I could think about. Well this, and a ton of projects at work that I just finished. Or mostly finished.   I'm excited. I'm nervous. I can't wait to be home and see family and friends. I've also picked the Packers for the Super Bowl. I hope to see everyone back home if I can. I'll probably catch up on my blog while I'm at home, but who knows?

So I'll post much awaited New Year's posts later, including ones about the French Couchsurfers who are walking around the world and the Asian Games Torch passing through Taraz. But today, I have an important message. We need to save the Saiga.

I was inspired to post this by a new story I saw that said the ban on Saiga hunting is being extended until 2020 (apparently this doesn't need 200,000 signatures). This is necessary because the Saiga is critcally endangered, but extremely cute. There are only about 90,000 of them left in the wild. They are often hunted by poachers who want to sell their horns to people who make folk medicine from them.

I support the saiga, and I hope you do too.

So after two years and five months, I am finally going back to

America! For six whole weeks! This is super exciting for me because I

haven't even left Kazakhstan in over a year now. I was supposed to go

home in November, but then I signed on for another year, and I decided

to take my home leave later. I'll be home for the Super Bowl, Brad and

Karen's wedding, and St. Patrick's Day. That's a pretty good slate of

events.This is my tentative schedule:

4 - 18 Savannah

19 - 28 Atlanta/Athens

1-6 Nashville

7-19 ???/SavannahI'd love to see family, old friends, and maybe even meet new friends

during these six weeks at home. And I'm looking to play in some

ultimate frisbee pickup/games/anything resembling a structured game

(bonus points if cleats are worn). Unfortunately, I've lost touch with

a lot of people while I've been in Kazakhstan, so I really don't know

where anyone is anymore. Let me know where you are so we can meet up.Oh, and Happy Old New Years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_New_Year).

(This is the full story from Kurban Ait this year. The first part was already posted a few days ago. If you already read that part, then you can skip down to that section. Ait occurred in mid-November.)

I killed a sheep. Well, sort of. Actually, I paid to have a sheep sacrificed at the local mosque in order to give the meat away to the poor. Here's the story.   Kurbain Ait is a big holiday for Muslims. It celebrates the day that Abraham was going to sacrifice his son, but at the last minute, God told him to stop. Abraham had shown his faith in God, and he was rewarded for it. In his son's place, he sacrificed a sheep instead. Muslims all around the world still continue this tradition by sacrificing sheep on this day. From my understanding, any Muslim who can financially afford it should sacrifice a sheep on this day. This meat should then be used for a feast and given away to poor families. While we don't make a lot in Peace Corps, I figured that if we all pooled our money together we could afford to buy a sheep, have it butchered, and then donate the meat to the poor.   Two years ago, Kurban Ait was pretty traditional. At the time, I was living in the village of Dihan that had about 1000 people. I didn't actually see my host family kill a sheep, but we did go gosti a lot to other people's houses. Last year, I did nothing at all related to Ait, and it felt pretty sad. I did see some people slaughtering sheep around my apartment complex (a practice which was outlawed this year in Astana), but I didn't do anything. No gosting, no sheep. Nothing. Living in the city is a lot different than living in the village. Culture and tradition are around you, but they aren't always as apparent and easily accessible.   This year, I have decided to throw myself into all celebrations with gung ho enthusiasm. This is my last year (finally) in Kazakhstan; I have to live it as well as I can. So my first idea for Kurban Ait was to kill a sheep and donate the meat to the poor. The obvious question is, how? First, how do we find a sheep and have it butchered, and second, how do we find the poor to give the meat to. I asked a lot of people, and no one seemed to have a solid answer. It didn't help that the weekend before Ait (it was on a Tuesday), I was traveling and couldn't visit the bazaar to ask around for sheep. Monday the bazaar is closed (like a barbershop), so we (by then Mark was in on this idea as well) had no real places to seek advice.   The second question, assuming we were able to slaugher a sheep, was to whom do we give the meat. We had heard you should give the meat away, but we didn't know where to find suitable families. I've read that many Muslims in America donate some of the meat to food pantries, but there are no food pantries here. In Taraz at least, there is no one that is dedicated to working with poor families. Everyone I asked didn't really give the meat away to the poor. They just cooked a lot of it for a celebration and invited all of their friends and neighbors. Some of these people were likely to be less well-off financially, and therefore they are giving away the meat as charity. That didn't seem to be in the spirit of what I read on wikipedia (a great source, right?) that 1/3 of the meat should be for your family, 1/3 for your relatives and friends, and 1/3 for the poor. We wanted to give our meat away to people who could really benefit from it.  Our best solution was to give the meat to the mosque, thinking they would know whom to give it to.   Well, it was the day before Ait, and we still had no clear idea of what we should do. Then my co-worker Akmaral, had a great idea. We should go to the mosque and talk to an imam about it. If anyone knows, they should know. Mark and I met up that evening and went to the mosque near his house. It seemed busy with activity, as people were preparing for Ait the next day. One young man saw us, and asked if we needed any help. I told him that we heard tomorrow was a holiday and that we wanted to "rezat" (cut, but also means sacrifice) a sheep. He told us that we should come back the next day after 9:00. He didn't fully explain what we should be expecting or planning on doing at 9:00 the next day, but Mark and I were happy. Even if our plan was now show up at the mosque at 9:00 and see what happens, we at least had a plan.  PART TWO PART TWO PART TWO PART TWO

Being Americans, we decided to actually show up at 8:45 in case we were supposed to get there right at 9:00. We showed up early, but it was well worth it to see the site. The courtyard of the mosque was PACKED with men praying together. And if the courtyard was that full, we knew inside was just as full. [Side note. In America, there is a public debate about the secularization of holidays (Santa versus Jesus, the Easter Bunny versus Jesus, etc.). And even though the locals don't seem to care if many holidays have lost touch with their religious roots, it bothers me to see. Therefore, I was really excited to see so many people actually gathering for prayer on the religious holiday. ] Prayer ended at about 9:00 and people filed out of the gates for 10 minutes. There were that many people. More and more people just kept leaving the mosque.   Finally, the crowd of people had dissipated, and Mark and I cautiously entered the courtyard. Most importantly, I didn't want to insult anyone or show disrespect for their holiday. We aren't Muslims, but we were interested in learning more and participating to the degree possible for non-Muslims. Muslim faith around the world varies a lot on its acceptance of non-believers, and I wasn't sure where the followers in Kazakhstan fall on that spectrum. I felt a little nervous walking into the courtyard. Remember, we had no plan. Just show up and see what happened. We were standing there, probably looking lost and awkward when a man started yelling at us.   It took a second for us to realize what he was saying, or maybe he started off barking orders at us in Kazakh. However, we noticed he was saying, Go help. Go help. He was pointing a finger at a pile of carpets rolled up against the wall. One other young guy was gathering up the carpets and carrying them to a different part of the courtyard. Okay, so we'll go help move some carpets. Mark and I went over to the pile and picked up some rugs. It only took about five minutes to move all the carpets to their new spot, but it felt good to help out. Assisting at the local mosque on Kurban Ait, that's something I never expected to do in my lifetime.   Once we were done with that though, we were once again lost for what we should do next. By now the hundreds of people that had been there were thoroughly gone. In the center of the courtyard, there wans't anyone around. However, off to the left side there was a stable. And in the stable there were about two dozen sheep. And next to the stable with the two dozen sheep, there was an imam blessing sheep before they were butchered. Jackpot.   So Mark and I go from awkwardly standing around the courtyard to awkwardly standing around the stable area. We were so close, but I still felt nervous. Were the sheep for sale, or were they already donated to the mosque? How much did they cost? If we walked up and naively asked, would we get ripped off by the people there? We did watch a couple sheep get blessed and then sacrificed. And then… we left.   Too nervous. Too scared. We came close. We did a lot. Visited a mosque, saw a sheep sacrifice. That was good enough, right? Man up. Man up. Do it. We went back in. Luckily, this time someone started talking to us. What do you guys want. We then explained, we want to buy a sheep, have it killed, then give its meat away to the poor. The guy said that we could do all that there if we wanted. We could buy some sheep. We could have it butchered, but the meat giving away we'd have to do on our own. He suggested we find some beggars in the bazaar and give the meat to them.   So we picked our sheep. A fairly thin-sized guy that we most definitely overpaid for. Then they tied him up, and brought him out of the stable. They killed it as humanely as they could (the sheep don't struggle much). While we were waiting for it to be butchered, they told me I should go get some plastic bags for all the meat. Then they skinned it, and divided the meat into pieces. While all this was happening, we began talking with some of the other guys that were there. Overall, they were pretty receptive to what our idea was. No one seemed to take offense that we were there. It seemed pretty novel that Americans had shown up to do this. Once all the meat was divided up in five plastic bags, they asked if we wanted the coat. I did, but I had no idea if it needed to be treated so as not to smell.   So we left the mosque with our five bags wondering how we would give out the meat. We had decided that we'd give most of it away, but we wanted to save some to give to friends here. That didn't quite work out though, because we were bombarded by people as soon as we left the courtyard. To women there who had been begging asked for some meat, as well as two guys. One of the guys we had talked to for a while inside the mosque; the other guy we had never seen before. Before we knew it, Mark and I had given away all of the meat except for the head and the four hooves. The one mystery guy ended up putting the meat on a cart full of food, so I wasn't sure if he really needed it. But how can a person really know? And the idea is about giving and charity. If he thought he needed it, then I don't mind giving it away.   We threw the hooves to some dogs on the way home, and we saved the head for a while. We even decided to name our belated sheep, Kizbolson, which means wish for a girl in Kazakh. (It's a play on the actual Kazakh name of Ulbolson, which some girls are called. Ulbolson means wish you were a boy. Yes, some girls must live their entire lives with the name, we wish you were a boy. We think this was the first time the name Kizbolson was ever even thought of in Kazakhstan's history.)   Overall, our goal was successful. We felt very integrated, going to the mosque and having a sheep sacrificed. Later, we gostied three houses to continue in the holiday spirit. Although, I didn't host anyone, so that was one part of the holiday I missed. I have more commentary on how those gostings went, but I may write about those later.   The next major holiday I plan on throwing myself into with full enthusiasm as New Year's. This year I'm going to be buying some fireworks. (Where some = lots!)

(So this post was written a couple months ago, but it got lost on the

cluttered desktop. Kurban Ait was celebrated on November 17, 2010.)I killed a sheep. Well, sort of. Actually, I paid to have a sheep

sacrificed at the local mosque in order to give the meat away to the

poor. Here's the story.Kurbain Ait is a big holiday for Muslims. It celebrates the day that

Abraham was going to sacrifice his son, but at the last minute, God

told him to stop. Abraham had shown his faith in God, and he was

rewarded for it. In his son's place, he sacrificed a sheep instead.

Muslims all around the world still continue this tradition by

sacrificing sheep on this day. From my understanding, any Muslim who

can financially afford it should sacrifice a sheep on this day. This

meat should then be used for a feast and given away to poor families.

While we don't make a lot in Peace Corps, I figured that if we all

pooled our money together we could afford to buy a sheep, have it

butchered, and then donate the meat to the poor.Two years ago, Kurban Ait was pretty traditional. At the time, I was

living in the village of Dihan that had about 1000 people. I didn't

actually see my host family kill a sheep, but we did go gosti a lot to

other people's houses. Last year, I did nothing at all related to Ait,

and it felt pretty sad. I did see some people slaughtering sheep

around my apartment complex (a practice which was outlawed this year

in Astana), but I didn't do anything. No gosting, no sheep. Nothing.

Living in the city is a lot different than living in the village.

Culture and tradition are around you, but they aren't always as

apparent and easily accessible.This year, I have decided to throw myself into all celebrations with

gung ho enthusiasm. This is my last year (finally) in Kazakhstan; I

have to live it as well as I can. So my first idea for Kurban Ait was

to kill a sheep and donate the meat to the poor. The obvious question

is, how? First, how do we find a sheep and have it butchered, and

second, how do we find the poor to give the meat to. I asked a lot of

people, and no one seemed to have a solid answer. It didn't help that

the weekend before Ait (it was on a Tuesday), I was traveling and

couldn't visit the bazaar to ask around for sheep. Monday the bazaar

is closed (like a barbershop), so we (by then Mark was in on this idea

as well) had no real places to seek advice.The second question, assuming we were able to slaugher a sheep, was to

whom do we give the meat. We had heard you should give the meat away,

but we didn't know where to find suitable families. I've read that

many Muslims in America donate some of the meat to food pantries, but

there are no food pantries here. In Taraz at least, there is no one

that is dedicated to working with poor families. Everyone I asked

didn't really give the meat away to the poor. They just cooked a lot

of it for a celebration and invited all of their friends and

neighbors. Some of these people were likely to be less well-off

financially, and therefore they are giving away the meat as charity.

That didn't seem to be in the spirit of what I read on wikipedia (a

great source, right?) that 1/3 of the meat should be for your family,

1/3 for your relatives and friends, and 1/3 for the poor. We wanted to

give our meat away to people who could really benefit from it. Our

best solution was to give the meat to the mosque, thinking they would

know whom to give it to.Well, it was the day before Ait, and we still had no clear idea of

what we should do. Then my co-worker Akmaral, had a great idea. We

should go to the mosque and talk to an imam about it. If anyone knows,

they should know. Mark and I met up that evening and went to the

mosque near his house. It seemed busy with activity, as people were

preparing for Ait the next day. One young man saw us, and asked if we

needed any help. I told him that we heard tomorrow was a holiday and

that we wanted to "rezat" (cut, but also means sacrifice) a sheep. He

told us that we should come back the next day after 9:00. He didn't

fully explain what we should be expecting or planning on doing at 9:00

the next day, but Mark and I were happy. Even if our plan was now show

up at the mosque at 9:00 and see what happens, we at least had a plan.To be continued...

Three Christmases away from home are a lot, especially when they are in Kazakhstan. The Christmas season just doesn’t exist here. I’ve blogged about it before, how New Year’s is kinda like Christmas but without a lot of the same message. Superficially, they look alike, but there are a lot of differences. Basically, if you want to feel like its Christmas here, you have to create it yourself, and that’s what we managed to do this year. I won’t write a lot about everything that we did, but here are the key points for why this Christmas was probably my best one in Kazakhstan. 1. Christmas party at Zhambyl Zhastary I had a party at my organization that went really well. Mark played Santa and we played a lot of Christmas games. Before I was told to make Christmas games in November, and I couldn’t think of any. But this time, I had found some online and thought of some myself. (Fun Christmas games: Draw things blindfolded, orchestra of Jingle Bells Animals, Find Santa (Frog killer but Christmas themed)). 2. Midnight Mass Mass was less crowded this year, and there was no choir. However, Laura, Annie, Mark, Asela, and I still enjoyed it. Annie and Laura are Kazakh speakers which means they understood nothing. However, they swore heard “Nazerbayev” about ten times during the homily. Mark and I did not hear this, and Asela confirmed the Leader of the People was not mentioned. We are still wondering what Russian phrase they kept hearing. 3. Christmas Breakfast Banana Pancakes at Mark’s house. 4. Post Office and the first Christmas miracle One advantage (the only?) of Christmas in Kazakhstan is that you can still receive any last minute packages. After waiting for only 45 minutes (there were four people in front of me, average time helping customer = 11 minutes), I finally got my package. AND the Christmas miracle was that they let me get Erin’s as well. Previously, the post office never gave us the package of our fellow volunteers, but this time all I had to do was call and get her passport information. 5. Bazaar in a Santa hat and our second Christmas miracle Being busy all week, we hadn’t had time to do shopping for the holidays, so we had to go to the bazaar on Saturday. Since it was Christmas though, I decided to wear my Santa hat all day long – even walking around the bazaar. I got a lot of “Hey Ded Moroz” calls, but some people realized that I was actually trying to be Santa Claus. One woman in the pig section even gave me a free slice of pork as a gift on the holiday. Oh, and in the pig section Laura managed to do the impossible. Earlier in the day, she had announced that she would find bacon. It can’t be done, I told her. I looked, and there’s no bacon. But with her persistence and positive attitude we found bacon in the Taraz bazaar. And not even a random package of frozen bacon from Omsk. Actual freshly made from butchered pig meat in Taraz bacon. BACON!!!!!! Year 3 just became a billion times better. 6. Christmas dinner Mac and CheeseFun Dolphins (The name in French sounds like this, they are really fried mashed potato balls)Glazed carrotsRoasted Chicken (too stringy, will be bringing back my old meat thermometer in March)Mashed PotatoesGravyCrab and apple saladCurried Egg SaladYule Log (I will post pictures of this amazing cake made by my French guests. It is unbelievable.)Sugar cookies 7. Christmas crafts! I was somewhat joking when I told Jessica that she should bring the Christmas crafts, but I knew from Xmas in Karaganda how much fun crafts can make Christmas. Jessica delivered and we: made reindeer with our handprints, crafted ornaments out of homemade clay, decorated our own individual stockings, decorate holiday-shaped cookies with colored frosting, and cut out snowflakes. We even baked wall pieces for the gingerbread yurt, but we never got around to making it. (In America, Brad made one though. Picture to be posted later.) 8. Christmas movies watched mostly on Saturday and Sunday Nightmare before Christmas (**** - haven’t seen it since I was a kid, amazingly creative)We’re No Angels (***** - everyone should see this holiday classic with Bogart)Home Alone 1 (**** - amazing how well this stands up to time but could never be made today because of cell phones)Home Alone 2 (** - good, but less Christmas spirit then the original by a lot)Glee Christmas Episode (3 times because Mark kept missing the end) (*** - some great lines from Britney)Office Christmas Episode (*** - what a great final scene in the parking lot)30 Rock Christmas Episode (***** - I laughed out loud at least three times)Love Actually (**** - possibly Asela’s new favorite movie)A Christmas Story (**** - reminded me a lot of Kazakhstan)Red Sleigh Down (**** - after singing the 12 days of Christmas a billion times this year in my English clubs, I can appreciate the running gag in this episode so much more)Rudolph (**** - I love that, at least on some level, America celebrates the differences of people)A Muppet Christmas (in French with English subtitles) (**** - watching movies in French is amusing) 9. Christmas Morning Two Banana pudding (with homemade vanilla wafers from Jessica)Bacon (!!!!!!!)Pancakes (made by Erin)Hashbrowns cooked in bacon fat 10. Gift exchange and stockings As per Zhamballa tradition, everyone got a stocking and Santa filled them during the night. He brought us toilet paper, candy, pencils, curt, chap stick, and fruit. In our annual White elephant gift exchange, people received: Brown Sugar, knife sharpener, head scarf, Trivial pursuit baseball edition (could there be a more worthless game in Kazakhstan), a donated smock, candy, and the Oblast gift (consisting of a Chinese new year plastic thing, a framed picture of a random Kazakh man found buried in my old apartment, and a dog puzzle.) This year, the oblast gift was almost lost when one of my French guests grabbed it. However, Annie took one for the team and stole it when it was her turn. 11. Caroling I challenged people in our region to write Christmas carols, and they came up with some great ones. I’ll post them later this week because this post is already getting way too long.

12. Web cam Finally, a Christmas where my parents understand Skype. It was great seeing them on the holiday rather than just talking to them on the phone.

Merry Christmas, everyone! I heard that there's this new program

called Skype and you can call internationally for not that expensive.

Crazy what's available in 2010. If you want to give it a spin, you can

try calling me for the holiday at 87057974646. (Hint hint)

And another news story about KZ; this one is about the oblast and city

I live in.Zhambyl Oblast takes steps to combat extremism

(http://centralasiaonline.com/cocoon/caii/xhtml/en_GB/features/caii/features/main/2010/11/24/feature-01)

I didn't know that this was a problem in the area, but it's

interesting to see the steps the government is taking. Also, I'm

impressed with the article. A lot of articles here are short and

confusing, but that one is very well developed.

So here are some random news stories about Kstan that people without

Kazakhstan as a section on their Google News page may have missed...Science

"While studying the ancient microcontinents that make up the geography

of central Kazakhstan in Asia, geological sciences professor Joe Meert

and colleagues uncovered evidence that multi-cellular organisms may

have evolved 100 million years earlier than previously thought, well

before the Cambrian Era..."

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-discovery-rekindles-debate-multi-cellular-life.htmlSports

"Raised on a farm in Kazakhstan and a beach-town suburb of Sydney,

Bose is doing his best these days to bring recognition to a program

based in tiny Thibodaux, La. Featuring a diversity in his game rather

befitting an international man of mystery, the 6-foot-6 senior

swingman ranks third in the nation in scoring, averaging 25 points per

game, and accounts for nearly 37 percent of the team's points..."

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=5942119Culture and life

A BBC reporter interviews three people about life in Kazakhstan.

Regular people with interesting stories. Gives a good view of the

diverse people that live here.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/2010/12/101220_outlook_kazakhstan_lives_audio.shtml?bw=nb&mp=wm&news=1&ms3=6&ms_javascript=false&bbcws=2

December 16 was Kazakhstan Independence Day. Kazakhstan got its

independence in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. However, a lot

of people I talk to associate this week's holidays with the Zheltoksan

riots from December 1986. These riots occurred when Moscow removed the

Kazakh leader Konaev and replaced him with a guy from Russia. The next

day students took to the street on December 17, 1986. Hundreds?

Thousands? Police responded. The exact details are still unknown and

kept hidden.This is interesting to me, because I don't see the two events as

directly related. Although the riots have been referred to the

beginning of the end, wouldn't the USSR have collapsed without

students rioting in 1986? Was this really a call for national

independence? If the USSR had collapsed in October instead of

December, would people still cite 1986 as the beginning of Kazakh

independence? Do Kazakhs view these events differently than other

nationalities here? I have mainly spoken with people my age about them

(people I know), but they would have been one years old at the time.

I'd really like to know more about how people who were students at the

time and older view the events, and if young people view them in the

same ways.You can read more about the events on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeltoqsan

I remember when my director (then counterpart) first told me that her husband was a professional sports trainer. What sport, I asked. Football (soccer for Americans)? Volleyball? No, she replied, arm wrestling. What?! That's a sport? And there are trainers for it?

Yes, I was ignorant of the sport of arm wrestling. I had seen it on TV while flipping past ESPN a few times, but I never really thought of it as a sport. However, Natasha's husband is a trainer, and he's a pretty good one at that. (He used to compete, and he looks it, but he mostly sticks to training others now.)

This past week he was in America for the World Armwrestling Championships USA (http://www.2010usaworlds.com/agenda.html) in Mesquite, Nevada. Three (or four? I forget exactly) of the athletes he trained were going to compete. After a quick Google News search, I found a couple interesting articles about the event.

This one from a local paper describes the fascination some Russian athletes had with local Salvation Army Santas. I can imagine their interest because while I have seen lots of strange things in Kazakhstan, I haven't seen a Ded Moroz standing outside ringing a bell and people walking up and giving him/her money. Really, if it wasn't ingrained in your culture, wouldn't you think that was strange?: http://www.thespectrum.com/article/20101210/DVTONLINE01/101209018

The next one is from the WSJ, and it covers the controversy and politics associated with on the top levels of the sport. One quote featured in the story: "You want to get the best grip possible. A lot of these guys don't use chalk so their hands can get kind of sweaty and slippery." Another quote: ""We train with the guys. The stronger the competition, the better."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704457604576011644283275696.html

And how did my director's husband do? Well apparently, he's a pretty good trainer. One of the girls he trains got first in the youth category for 50 kilo left and 50 kilo right. She then entered the women's category and won the 50 kilo right. His brother, who he used to train, won the 100 kilo men's right category. Full results can be found at:

http://www.worldarmwrestlingfederation.com/2010Day_1.pdf

http://www.worldarmwrestlingfederation.com/2010Day_2.pdf

http://www.worldarmwrestlingfederation.com/2010Day_3.pdf

http://www.worldarmwrestlingfederation.com/2010Day_4.pdf

So my friend Becca's blog was recently featured on Soros's blog for her description of ZhasCamp. I was there too (way back in October, has it already been two months?). Her blog's a pretty good description of the conference and the exciting things some youth are doing here in the KZ. Check out the video on the page too to see highlights from her org's awesome summer camp last year.

http://blog.soros.org/2010/12/think-informally-act-efficiently-youth-activists-gather-in-kazakhstan/

I don't know a lot about Kazakhstani politics, but this whole wikileaks thing has got me a little more interested. Overall, the cables from Kazakhstan don't reveal much. One of the most shocking revelations is that the Prime Minister..... enjoys dancing! Imagine that. A person from Kazakhstan loves to get down and boogie. Dancing is the best part about Kazakhstan culture. They dance all the time! And there's no grinding like in America. Its fun dancing with any dancing accepted. There's no mocking the bad dancer in Kazakhstan, because there are no bad dancers. I really think the biggest culture shock is going to be me being laughed at when I bust a move at Brad and Karen's wedding next March.

Anyway, this is what the cables revealed about the Prime Minister:

Prime Minister Karim Masimov was tripping the light fantastic in Astana, according to the cable, which detailed a night out at trendy Chocolat nightclub."Although the club offers a VIP area, Masimov chose to sit at a table in full view of all of the club's patrons," the cable said, citing a US embassy official who spotted the entourage."Masimov himself chose to dance on an empty stage above the dance floor. His companions quickly tired but Masimov remained, dancing alone and animatedly on the stage for another 15-20 minutes."That sounds awesome! This guy who isn't afraid to dance alone. Dancing alone is reserved only for the best "big dancers" (a category I assign people who do just that. Dance big). Whenever I see someone out on the dance floor still dancing after being abandoned by all their friends, I tip my hat to them. That takes guts and a true love of the dance.

Apparently, Masimov wasn't upset by this revelation. He later told the media, ''I like it very much,'' Mr Masimov said on Wednesday. ''First I am on the internet with my wife. I like dancing with my wife and to advertise in the traditional way, I have to pay a lot of money for that. But this time it's free. And I am very happy for that.''

This guy has quickly become my favorite Kazkahstan politician for three main reasons:

1) Big dancer and proud of it.

2) His nickname is the "the wily Uighur" among expat businessmen, which means he must eat delicious food. Uighurs are an ethnic group from West Kazakhstan, and they make some of the best food in Kazakhstan. If you are ever in Kazakhstan for just one meal, and you want something delicious, then go to a Uighur (or Dungan, which is an ethnic group similar to Uighurs) cafe.

3. He has an awesome mustache. Click the link above under point 2 and see how awesome his mustache looks.

So for all the mustached, big-dancers of the world who enjoy eating great food (which depending on my shaving habits I can sometimes be included in this group), I think we have found a potential spokesman.

This survey asked the Kaz20 group about their experience in Kazakhstan. 29 people responded out of 36 or so. It was conducted about 6 weeks before most volunteers left the country, so it does not capture that period of time. Also, this is not statistically accurate because it did not capture the whole population and it was not done randomly. However, we can find out some interesting things. All questions were self-interpreted. 

Weddings

Most attended between 1 and 2 weddings.

9 volunteers never attended a wedding

One volunteer attended 5 weddings.

Dogs

5 volunteers were bitten by dogs (17%)

Books

1752 books were read

an average of 62 books per person.

Minimum books read was 2;

the maximum books read were 400.

Movies

4009 movies were watched. This is about 1.5 movies per week.

Someone claims to have watched 800 movies – almost a movie a day.

Someone reports having seen only 1 movie.

Sim cards:

14 volunteers bought only one Sim card in KZ

9 bought two sim cards

One volunteer bought 6 sim cards

Banya

The average number of volunteers banyaed with was 12.

The maximum was 51.

American money

10 people spent no American money.

One person reports spending $3000.

Weddings in America:

On average, people missed between 2 and 3 weddings in America.

Cell phones:

13 volunteers bought more than one cell phone in Kazakhstan

TV Series

One average, volunteers watched 5 complete TV series

Hard drive space

In total 10882 gigabytes of hard drive space was filled.

The average hard drive filled was 418 gigabytes.

Money saved:

15 volunteers indicated saving no money in Kazakhstan.

The maximum saved was over $2000.

The average saved was about $200.

Weight loss:

On average, volunteers lost -5 pounds with the most remarkable weight loss being -40 pounds.

Amount of volunteers who had the following amenities in their homes: 

Internet: 51%

Washing machine: 46%

Bed: 96.5%

Shower: 62%

TV: 65%

HF: 34%

Garden: 27%

Water: 76%

Toilet: 79%

Banya: 28%

Cable: 38%

Roomie: 3%

Beer

9 volunteers prefer Shymkent.

2 like Karaganda

2 like Fresh Cup Karaganda

1 likes Fresh cup karaganda soft.

Someone actually said Alma-Ata was the best beer.

Juice

17 volunteers prefer Juicy

Juice Flavor

Cherry is the favorite with 8 votes.

Guava and Multivitamin are second with 4 votes.

Leave days

Average leave days remaining was 11.

Max was 35;

Minimum -1.

Home

41% of volunteers had gone to America

Flown in KZ

34% of volunteers had flown in KZ.

Grants

31% of volunteers report doing a SPA grant.

31% report doing a PCPP.

0% report a PEPFAR grant.

VESTI

44% wrote something for the Vesti.

Blog

50% kept a blog.

ETing

48% considered seriously ETing

Tutoring

Over half the volunteers did not spend money on tutoring.

The average amount was 1854 per month.

5 volunteers spent the maximum monthly amount.

Fights

8 volunteers report getting in fights

Arrested

One volunteer was arrested

Floods:

10 volunteers report flooding their apartments

2 volunteers report flooding them twice.

Things dropped down the outhouse include:

200 tenge, glasses, flash drive, poop, pee, tp, and a phone

Banya

19 volunteers say banya is awesome

7 say so-so

3 do not like it.

Alcohol contracts

No one is on an alcohol contract.

Reprimands

4 people have reprimands

Congratulations on the first day of Winter! While we are all taught that the start and close of the seasons fall on the equinoxes and solstices, Kazakhstan (and I am assuming all of the former Soviet Union) mark their seasons on the first of the month. So spring starts March 1, summer on June 1, fall on September 1, and winter on December 1. Also, people sometimes wish each other Happy First Day of Winter, or Happy First Day of Spring, but the way Russian works, they don't say "Happy ______," they say congratulations. So you often get congratulated for the new year or for having a birthday or for the start of a season you thought was still 22 days away. So for everyone out there, "Congratulations on the first day of winter!"

December 1 is also World AIDS Day, translated into Russian as World Fight Against AIDS Day and into Kazakh as lots of words I still don't know how to read. This difference in translation may be to prevent any confusion from people who thought the day was celebrating the disease and not efforts to eradicate it. Although the population of K-stan only has a small number of infected people (15,000ish by reported numbers), some characteristics of the population (heroine use, infidelity in marriage, high use of prostitutes) make it at-risk for a larger outbreak.

Finally, December 1 marks the beginning of the OSCE summit. For those of you not in Kazakhstan, this is an extremely big deal. While a lot of news coverage was devoted to things like the G20 summit or the NATO summit held over the last few months, this is the really important summit. I doubt that those other two summits had billboards all over the country dedicated to it, had a child named after it, had its very own TV channel, and shut down half a city. For those of you who may have never heard of the OSCE: "The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is the world's largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization. Its mandate includes issues such as arms control, human rights, freedom of the press and fair elections. Most of its 3,500-plus staff are engaged in field operations, with only around 10% in its headquarters." For Kazakhstan to hold the chairmanship the past year is a really great honor because it shows it as a leader in Central Asia. I'd post some pictures of all the billboards advertising the summit, but I don't know how to upload pictures with access to Blogspot still being restricted in Kazakhstan.

 Wow, how things have changed over the past two years.   I remember my first Thanksgiving in Kazakhstan. It was a rough, lonely day. I printed off small cards and gave them to all of my co-workers in an attempt to celebrate the holiday. That night I went home and timidly asked my host mom if I could make mashed potatoes. When they were all mashed, I remembered I needed to add butter. However, we had no butter, so my host mom threw in a large chunk of lard, and the mashed potatoes then tasted like everything else I had in Kazakhstan.   That weekend was much better. It was the first time I met my future friends of Dave, Susannah, and Matt. It was also the world premiere of the Hotard casserole. And at the insistence of locals that we must play some sort of game, we devised Bear, Pilgrim, Indian, a variant of Rock, Paper, Scissors, although you must perform your character. The next day, Susannah rushed off to comfort her then-boyfriend in North Kazakhstan and we were left alone to wander the mysterious city of Taraz.   Two years later, and most of the mystery, confusion, and wonder are now removed from celebrating this holiday in Kazakhstan. I just get pumped that we are going to pig out on kilos and kilos (oops, pounds and pounds) of delicious homemade food.   For Thanksgiving Day itself, I got to teach one of the preschool English classes my organization runs with sponsorship from the US Embassy. We made cut out turkeys, played Thanksgiving memory game, and even made Pilgrim and Indian hats. When I wore my pilgrim hat home, I was stopped by the police, but that wasn't really a surprise. I did look pretty ridiculous in it. They looked at my documents for a few minutes before finally getting to the larger issue: Why are you wearing a paper hat? It's a holiday in America, I told them. This is the hat we wear. Their attitude warmed up immediately, and they even wished me a happy holiday!   Of course, Thanksgiving in Taraz always falls on a Saturday rather than a Thursday, so the whole oblast can come and celebrate. Before the big day, Mark was able to secure two turkeys, although he did this way too easily. Two years ago, Dave had to kill the turkey. Last year, Jenny had to find one using her local network of friends and colleagues. This time Mark bought the birds frozen at a local super market. (He did have to go to two supermarkets to find them though, so life is a little harder here than in America.)   After a bazaar run to get all of the needed ingredients, the cooking commenced. We worked from 1PM until 7PM. And our spread this year included: Turkeys (2) Stuffing Cheesy mashed potatoes Gravy Mac and Cheese Potato salad Glazed carrots Sweet potato casserole Corn pudding with a chocolate waffle crust Roulette Corn Bread Rolls Apple pie Walnut Pie Stuffed apples   Everything was absolutely delicious and wonderful. Noticeably missing is the annual Hotard casserole, but I did prepare the sweet potato casserole and corn pudding with chocolate waffle crust in its place. We invited some locals, but only about 7 people came. The total number of eaters was 14, but we had planned for 20. Asela was pushing hard for a game, but we didn't bring back Pilgrims, Indian, Bear. Instead we let her play the traditional "Wishbone" game with Chris. Food, friends, and more food. I can't imagine a better holiday here.

 

For two years, my family never learned how to use Skype. I had barely used it myself. But my parents finally invested in a web cam and, more importantly, in learning how to use the service. Last night, it really paid off. I was able to sit at my computer more that 6000 miles away (it was a question my mom had last night) and talk with my whole family.

I was on the computer in the dining room and everyone was sitting around the table. They weren't really talking with me. We were talking as a family. There were the usual heated discussions that of course didn't get anywhere. There were side conversations between family members. Half the time I was just sitting and listening.  Unfortunately, my internet speeed was so slow (why are holidays at the end of the month after I use up all my allotted bandwith?) that I just saw blurry blobs moving around a screen, but I could identify everyone. 

This is the third Thanksgiving I wasn't home for. And I still won't make it back in time for next year's. But it felt a lot more like Thanksgiving this year than all the other years. This year, I am thankful for Skype.

Today on my Google News feed, I saw that Taraz (the city I lived in) is talked about in the NYT. The story is about an American couple trying to adopt a baby from Kazakhstan. I think I had met them many many months ago at an Internet cafe, but I never stayed in touch. You can read about their story below.

New York Times story

Taraz doesn't get much description, but it is described as, "Taraz, a city on the old Silk Road where English is rarely heard and boiled horse meat is typical fare." Yeah, that's pretty much accurate. 

Sometimes, I really really want to write a blog to vent about something, but I can't. This is one of those days. ERRRR!!!! ARRR!!!!

So apparently, the photos from yesterday didn't load. Here is a link to a Picasa album with the photos, plus some more photos from the last few months.

Michael's photos

I just got back from volunteer camp that was the launch of the National Volunteer Network in Kazakhstan, as well as a year long campaign to promote the network called World of Kindness. Overall, the conference was really well run and the session were very informative. However, I left with a sense of not understanding what it was for. Was it to just talk about volunteerism? Was it to get us excited about launching the network? I don't know. But the people were great and the trainings were well-done.   Whenever I go to these training/seminars/camps (I don't know why a two-day meeting a hotel is called a camp rather than a conference, but that's the term they use now), I like to note new ideas I encounter. I've been to a lot already, especially being involved with student leadership stuff at UGA, so most things I've done before in some way, shape, or form. When there is something new, it really stands out.   First activity: Paint mixing. The first day they brought us all in a room and put us each around a table. The group standing around the table popped a balloon that had a word inside. Then the trainers gave each of us a plate with water in it and put a set of paint on the table in front of us. We had to mix the paint inside the plate to form our special color. Then they gave us flour to mix in with the paint. Then glue. Then oil. Each was supposed to symbolize something, but that was in Russian and I didn't understand. Then they told us to remember the word we had, and we had to finger paint it on the board. Finally, other teams had to guess what word we had. My personal favorite part about this game is that two guys on my team (because they were older Kazahk males, and therefore dressed nicely for this type of conference) were in nice suits. However, they attacked the task with as much energy as everyone and managed not to get any paint on their suits. Interesting ideas from this were: the different ingredients symbolizing different things, popping a balloon to find out the club, and guessing rather than just explaining our paintings. All of these were unneeded in the overall activity, but they made it more interesting.   Second activity: secret angel. This was super easy to do, and it was a lot of fun. Everyone at the conference drew someone's name out of a hat. They were then this person's secret friend for two days. They were supposed to write nice notes, give creative gifts, and just make sure this person is cared for (some word in Russian that doesn't translate well is used to describe this succinctly). This is done secretly, so gifts should be given through third-party messengers, notes posted when people aren't looking, etc. At the end of the conference, people reveal themselves to their secret friend. I got a few nice notes and candy that were fun, and I gave away fruit and tea that I had left over from my train journey. A great success story was from one woman who said she had a very frugal husband that didn't believe in giving lots of gifts. But her enthusiastic angel had given her TEN gifts over two days. She said she's take them all home and show her husband her many gifts from a perfect stranger.   Third activity: closing wishes with string. Maybe, I had done this before, but I don't remember exactly. Anyway, at the end of the conference, we were each given a yarn necklace with twenty short (maybe three inch) yarn pieces loosely tied to it. We then had to take off these pieces and tie them to other people's necklaces. When we gave them away, we also had to tell that person something nice about them from the weekend or wish them something well. Then you are left with lots of nice things said about you, and a physical yarn necklace symbolizing all of the wishes. It's a really effective way to close out a conference/camp/training.

Balloon towers. A fun game that I led with Hilary.

One of the guys on my group that had painted in his suit. This is at the end of the conference with with wish necklace.

I was given a homemade card from an orphanage. It was a great honor and really sparkly. I loved it.

I have a new phone number. My new number is 8 705 797 4646. This is an unofficial Beeline number (meaning that they don't sell it at Beeline stores, but it is a beeline number.) I pay 35 tenge a day (20 cents), and I can talk for 35 minutes a day. However, if I talk more than 35 minutes or if I call from not in Zhambyl Olbast, I think its about 35 tenge a minute. I'll keep my old sim card to use when I travel outside of Zhambyl Olbast though. And I still have a Pathword phone and an ACTIV sim card that gets used when I call Activ. Two years ago, I started with just one number and now I'm so cool I have four. Really, its just a way to deal with the expensive cell rates they have in Kazakhstan for talk time. With this new number, I should cut down immensely on my monthly cell phone costs.   So yeah, 8 705 797 4646. Call if you ever want to talk and catch up and say something like, Hey Michael, its been 2 years and three months, how's it going? 

I really liked the post that fellow volunteers Paul and Susan had about their Halloween party up in Pavlador (http://susanandpaulkz.blogspot.com/2010/11/first-year-as-peace-corps-volunteers.html). So much, that I was inspired to tell about our festivities here. First, let me just summarize the month of October. The last few weeks have been pretty busy. October 9  and 10 I was in Almaty for Zhascamp (www.zhascamp.kz). The next weekend was FLEX testing in Taraz. Then the next weekend Mark and I went to Zhanatas. Then the next week was Halloween and a trip to Almaty to say goodbye to the Kaz20s. This weekend was a picnic (today) and the new volunteers come tonight (volunteer for Taraz). So I haven't had much time to just sit around and relax. Every weekend has been fun, but fun in a gulyating kind of way and not in a otdihating kind of way.   So back to Halloween. Like always, my org does a Halloween party for our students and volunteers. This year, we had our party on the 30th (Saturday night), not because of religious reasons (apparently they did that in Georgia) but just because it was convienient. I once again dressed as a cow (8 years running; thanks Brad! When should I retire the costume.) Mark (site-mate) was a mummy made better by a bronzing spray his girlfriend made. We had scary masks, Indian saris, and ghosts, but nothing way spectacular with the costumes. And of course, we had games. Because like every party here, you can't have a party with no games. Strange question one for the night was, when is the party going to get started, after the party had already started. See it was 6:45, the food was laid out, the music was going, people were around. Looks to me like the party is going, but because the program of games hadn't started yet, there was no party. (Second strange question of the night was repeatedly asked me by one of the students. What's next, he would say? Can we scare people? My response was, what do you mean, scare people? You can scare people whenever you want. How do we coordinate a group scaring of people. Although maybe he meant go outside and walk around the town scaring people, which people did later.)   Games we played included: pin the amulet on the witch, toss ping pong ball into jack-o-lanterns, mummy wrap, and apple bobbing.   The party lasted about two hours or so, and then we all went home. I walked home in my cow costume. And by chance, it happened to be Day of the City. And by chance, Taraz decided to go all out and celebrate it this year. (Last year, I know there was a city day, but I don't think anyone cared.) So the square was full of people! More than I've ever seen in Taraz on a Saturday night just walking around. And I was in my cow costume. And it felt great. I loved doing stupid things for attention in America (e.g. Mulhawk Spring 2008), but I feel so restricted by the Peace Corps 24/7 Face of America standard here. However, it was Halloween, dang it. And it was fine. Some laughs and stares, but surprising not even a stop by local police. I think some people realized it was Halloween weekend; some may have thought I was just a guy in a costume dressed up to take photos with, and others… I don't know what they must have thought of me.   On actual Halloween, I was invited to another Halloween party. I didn't really want to go (I finally wanted a day of just resting), but I decided to give a shot. It was actually a lot of fun. Mostly just a daytime disco at a local café, and once again the costumes were disappointing. Most of the students there said they couldn't find one (well, you should just make one then). In the end, I was glad that I went.

So a couple months ago, my friend's director was in the Mrs.

Kazakhstan pageant

(http://mrskazakhstan.kz/?q=content/[vocab-raw]/missis-taraz). Jessica

told me that at the Taraz competition, the women had to make salads on

stage. I thought that was a novel and interesting idea for a beauty

pageant. Since it was Mrs. Kazakhstan, and wives are expected to do

all the cooking, it was very culturally appropriate.However, now there is another beauty pageant coming up called «Мисс

Драгоценность Тараза». That translates to Miss Jewel of Taraz. I don't

know the word for Jewel, so the first time I started to read it, I saw

Miss Drag(something) and was initially confused, knowing that

competition would never happen in Taraz. Anyway, on the web site for

Miss Jewel, the rules of the competition say contestants will have

three tasks:

1) The best story about yourself.

2) Best dish made with her own hands.

3) Best outfit.Again with the cooking! Will they make cold salads? Will they each

have a skillet to work with, or even elusive access to an oven?

Overall, I don't like beauty pageants that much, but I am a fan of

Iron Chef, and I like the idea of beauty pageants moving more in that

direction.

I walk by the theater twice a day every Monday through Friday. I've lived in three apartments now, and my path to work from each one of them passes by the huge structure. It's smack in the middle of town across the street from our square. And I often see the banners hanging outside advertising the plays, but like most things that are constant like that, I never went. I imagine that millions of New Yorkers have never been to the Statue of Liberty following the same logic. What's the rush? There will be more time to do that later. (I have been in the theater itself – four times already. Twice for performing in KVN, once for a NGO forum, and once for the ballet. But I had never been to a drama performance there.)   So about a month ago (wow, I haven't updated in a long time), I saw a banner that was different than the usual one hanging outside the theater. 10th Annual Kazakhstan Drama Festival. Taraz. September 15-22. On it was written a schedule with plays being held twice a day. Most of it was written in Kazakh, so I asked two guys standing around to translate it for me. They said there would be a play in the morning every day at 10am, and one in the afternoon at 7pm. Groups from all over Kazakhstan would come here to perform. Where do I get tickets, I asked. No tickets. Free for everyone. Free plays! I'm in. I called Asela and asked if she was free at 7pm. We were going to the theater.   Now when I asked those guys to translate the banner, I swear they said that it was a kid's play that evening. So I went in expecting a puppet show or something. What we got was a love story set in Germany during World War II. In Kazakh. I loved it. The play opened to a scene of a squad of Kazakh soldiers who just heard the news that the war was over. There was laughing, joking, and pranking among their happy ranks. Then they dispersed and one soldier was left wandering. He stumbles upon a young woman and when he saves her life from some artillery fire (I guess the war wasn't quite over), they fall in love. Then Asela leans over and tells me she's German! Crucial plot point that would have been missed without some translating help.   The play (or as its called in Russian, spektackle) then shows the guy's commander back in headquarters wondering why this usually good soldier went AWOL. He is determined to find him and punish him for his subordinate behavior. Eventually, the squad does find him. And he is punished. For deserting his comrades and for associating with an enemy. The commander is sadistic and enjoys torturing him, asking him where they can find the girl's location. Eventually, the commander's commander shows up. Then the girl shows up. She pleas for her man, and the higher-up commander lets him go after she leaves.   He searches for her and finds her. But he tells her he must go back to Russia on the train. She begs him to stay, so he gives her his hat. She is left yelling "Peter, Peter!" (but in Russian, its like Pai-ter, Pai-ter), clutching his hat, as the stage goes dark.   And it was really well done. The young guy that played the AWOL guy did a great job, as did everyone else. The stage design terrific. The costumes were authentic looking. Most stuff in Kazakhstan is way-over-the-top glitz and dancing and tackiness. This was not that at all, and I was super impressed. And despite it all being in Kazakh, I understood most of the play. What was on the stage was pretty understandable.   I was hooked. And decided I had to go back later in the week to see the premiere of the Spektackle "Baurzhan Momushylu."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/world/europe/05kazakh.html?src=me&ref=world

I can't wait to see this, but I don't know. I am as skeptical as the writer of the article.

What to blog about…   The more time I spend in country, the harder and harder it is to think of bloggable things. Like this weekend, Mark, Jennie, and I were walking back from Frisbee and I saw this security guard standing on the porch of a jewelery store with a rifle slung over his shoulder. He overheard us speaking in English, and said hello and asked us to stop and talk with him. We told him that we didn't have the time, and we kept walking. Random people with weapons wanting to speak with you on Sunday mornings, sounds kinda strange, but really not a big deal.   I already blogged a little bit about this, but about two weeks ago I changed apartments. My old apartment was big and cheap and had pretty good amenities. However, I was tired of leaky showers and rocking toilets. I mean it's nice to have them (sorry village volunteers, but if you visit you can use mine), but I want them not to be a hassle when I use them. Finally, my previous landlady told me she wanted to increase my rent, so I decided to test the market. One of the women we know from ZhamZhas said she was moving to Almaty and wanted someone to rent her flat (apartment). I checked it out, and it was glorious. This place is Posh Corps if there ever was one. I have a washing machine, microwave, refrigerator, cable TV, a huge kitchen, tons of cool kitchen gadgets to try out, and even a mattress. I never realized that I have always been sleeping on futons or stacked up pads in this country. But finally, this is a real, comfortable mattress. It's amazing. (Come to think of it, I had been sleeping on futons in America for ten years or so, but aside from the one in Illinois, it was always a very comfortable futon.)   The only two things that could make it better would be a shower head that can be mounted to the wall. You have to hold it the whole time. (Wow, I sound so spoiled typing that sentence. Can I imagine myself in twenty years at a RPCV gathering? Yeah, I had to hold the faucet for my indoor heated shower the whole time. I couldn't even suds with two hands! Life was hard.) And an oven. For teacher's day, I wanted to bake something for my co-workers but I had no oven. (Instead I had to order pizza for delivery. That's something to blog about! The first time I've had pizzas delivered somewhere in over two years!)   Also, the new location is superb. It's about five minutes closer to my office, which will cut off 50 minutes a week from my walking time. And it passes by my favorite donor stand and cabbage peroshki lady. Plus, there is a giant super market across the street from my house.   I'm ready for my third year.

Coming soon: Blog about Kazakh theater

Moving out of my old apartment and into my new place. No oven, but does have a washing machine. And a freezer that doesn't seem to turn into an actual block of ice. (I should have taken pictures of my last one.) Thanks to Mark, Courtney, and Asela for doing a lot of the heavy lifting for me.   Visits from new trainees. The new volunteers are coming on field trips to see what volunteer life is like. The first group was a lot of fun, but they got lost a couple times. This week, I have decided to give maps to the new group that comes.   Work. I have a to-do list of about thirty things every week. I have a lot of things to do from English planning to volunteer planning to conference planning to meetings. It's busy here, but I can't imagine life not being busy.   COS conference. All of the Kaz 20s who are left gathered in Almaty for one last conference. It was awesome. Thanks to everyone who was there and made it special. We even had a talent show that featured Madonna, butt-shaking Glee dancing, juggling, Lady Gaga, and impersonations. That talent show was at a cookout that was awesome, but could be improved for next year. (Improvements include: pickles, sliced onions, yellow mustard, and bbq sauce.) But Paul also brought over his N64, which enabled me to get my butt kicked in Golden Eye.   Other stuff. Frisbee starting back up. And playing one last game with Jason in Almaty. It was a great day with tons of hucks and running and games to 3 or 8 depending on how you look at it. Frisbee here was good on Sunday. Hoping to get it going regularly before the winter sets in.   Next blog will focus on my first trip to the theater to see a Spektackle! 

Weekend – Normal and not   The last two days have been normal, strange, and normal for being strange. Life in the Peace Corps is definitely interesting in that it is very active and varied.   Friday started out with a strange amount of success. I showed up at work early to copy some audio files onto a student's flash card to find they had forgotten their memory stick. After that hiccup though, I went by a local university and picked up some forms they were supposed to fill out. In addition to the forms being ready, I had tea to celebrate Ait (end of Ramadan). Next I went by another university and met with a professor there, and she also filled out forms that I needed. Then I went to work and my 1:00 appointment was on time. I gave her a volunteer book for her college and she gave me the name of an acquaintance who can hang wall paper. Then my 3:00 appointment was on time. I spent about an hour assisting someone with their resume and teaching them that past work experience should include descriptions. (I will soon do a post her about resumes in Kazakhstan.) Finally, the girl came back to get the audio files with her flash drive. Rarely has a day ever gone that smoothly.   In the evening, Asela and I went on a double date with one of her friends and her new boyfriend. We ate at Bavarius which is a strangely American café. There you can find pitchers of beer, onion rings, garlic toast, and fried mozzarella sticks. It was a fun night.   Today I made a speech about Frisbee to about 1000 people at the stadium during a health festival. I then was able to briefly play on a grass field for about one minute to demonstrate the game. During this minute I successfully made a gratuitous layout catch and got grass stains on the UNICEF t-shirt my friend had just given me. Within five minutes ten locals immediately pointed out how I had gotten dirty. I thought that was the point.   The rest of the day was filled with me packing up my apartment, settling issues with a neighbor, and my landlady coming over unannounced to show off the apartment. That's right. I'm moving apartments. I decided to find a landlady who is nicer and will actually do repairs when things break. (Apparently, it's somehow my fault that the sink leaks water and the toilet now rocks when you sit on it. I have no idea why these things occurred, but my guess is the sink she got was cheap and the toilet is clearly installed on uneven tile.)   Finally, I went to a wedding of an old friend. It'd been a while (about a year) since my last wedding, so it was nice to go to one again.   Now I'm back at my apartment waiting to go to the train station so I can head to COS conference where it'll be awesome and sad. It'll probably be the last time I see a lot of my close friends who are going back to America. But that's not until Monday.   Now I'm just thinking about tomorrow when I'll get to play Frisbee in Almaty. It's been about a year since I played a competitive game with more than four people on a team. Here's hoping for sevens.