It's been 10 days since I arrived in my hometown of Davenport Iowa. Since that time, I've hung out with my brother, mother and father, and celebrated Thanksgiving. And now that my Peace Corps experience has ended it is time to close out this blog.

Reflecting on it all...

Thinking about Peace Corps, it was something that I needed to do. Maybe it was a calling or an act of a crazy person (probably more of the latter than the former) but I realized that if I didn’t do it after college, I’d wake up at 40, married without kids and an office job somewhere…and join the Peace Corps. And if not then, I’d wake up at 78, retired, with a house and boat somewhere…and join the Peace Corps. Or Moon Corps. Or whatever “corps” they’d have when I am 78. It was a feeling, a need, that I can’t really explain with words. I also wanted to gain some meaningful life, work, professional and personal experience. Gaining experience was my personal mission for the past two years. Looking back on everything, I believe I got the experience I was seeking. And a bit more.

Professionally, I've raised a good bit of money through grants and community fund raising, organized some projects and programs that will help people years after my service, and helped prepare the newest group of Youth Development workers who have already done some awesome things in their short time as volunteers. Personally, I believe that my service helped me to mature in areas that weren't initially evident to me, but were sorely needed in my life. And I've learned how to better pick my battles, although I still need a bit of work on this. I think I may be more mature, but I'm not sure :-)

Peace Corps made me grow in ways I never imagined. However, with all growth comes some pain. The experiences I had came at a physical and emotional price. Because of stress, illness, and a couple of bouts of food poisoning, I lost about 10% of my body weight. I’ve been depressed, concussed, lonely, spent way too much time in scary Kazakh hospitals and took up some unhealthy habits. My relationships with my family and American friends deteriorated because it was hard to communicate from literally the other side of the world because of time differences, technical issues, and 10,000 other little things. When the stars aligned and I could skype or talk with people back in the states I felt really awkward and out of touch because I really didn’t know what to talk about! I missed 5 weddings (one of which I was asked to be the best man), lost my first love, missed the births of 2 cousins, many holidays and two family reunions. Over 2 years, I’ve spent less than a week with my family and less than 24 hours with my father. The last time I saw my brother play in any sporting or musical event, he was in 8th grade. He’s now a junior in high school. It wasn’t until Istanbul that I began to realize just how much of myself I gave over the two years, and how exhausted I was because of it. I hate cheesy slogans, but Peace Corps gets it right when they say that it is “the hardest job you’ll ever love”. But was it worth it? This was a question that a lot of the Kaz-22 trainees (now volunteers) asked me during their training, and it would always cause me to make a weird face of confusion. I wasn’t sure then, and I’m still not 100% sure now. But I think, yes, it was worth it. I’m happy that I was able to contribute to the development of NGOs, not for profits and community foundations in Kazakhstan. I'm happy that I finished. I’m looking forward to finding new ways to use the skills I acquired, and I know that I’ll never forget the life lessons I learned. It is interesting to note that I feel better about my service now than 2 weeks ago. I think that as more time passes I will have a better idea of what my service meant to me, and what I got out of it.To my Family and Friends

And while I did finish my service, I couldn't have done it without the people who helped me along the way by giving encouragement. I cannot thank them enough. It tended to be the smallest things that helped the most: it could have been a package, a letter, or a message through facebook or even on this blog. Whenever I was at my lowest, someone, somewhere, would give me a word of encouragement that would get me through the day. Case in point: my first Christmas in Kazakhstan, I had to work. The night before it rained, then iced, then snowed. I was unhappy about working on my favorite holiday and very homesick. I walked about 2 miles to work, in which I fell into a pothole with cold water along the way, soaking my shoes and socks. When I got to work, there was a package from a close family friend which contained, of all things, dry socks. There are countless other times I could cite: Facebook messages when I was too depressed to get out of bed, text messages that made me laugh when I was in the hospital, letters with stuffed animals, or the advice "Just keep living".

With good friends and family at my side, I'll take on anything!

My Blog, and What will happen to it

Regarding my blog, the main reasons that I started it were to tell American people about Kazakhstan, give a glimpse of what life is like as Peace Corps Volunteer in Kazakhstan, and to let my family and friends know that I was alive and show them work that I was doing. If you subscribed to my blog, or read it through facebook, or just happened across and it learned just one thing about Kazakhstan or Peace Corps, then this blog did its job. I hope you enjoyed reading it.

This blog was also for me. I enjoyed blogging while I was in Peace Corps and found it to be a very rewarding and good outlet for a lot of my feelings. It has even caused a good habit: Since May I've spent about 15 minutes every day just jotting down things that come into my head. Some turned into blog posts, many did not, but it was a good way for me to focus, to de-stress, and to get things off of my chest. And, it was fun! It allowed me to express myself in a way that I never have done before. I don't think that I'll blog again until I find something interesting to talk about. I know that some returned volunteers continue blogging about what life is like for them when they get back to their American lives, but I don’t that type of blog is for me. I think those types of blogs are a bit depressing. I’ve said many times that I’m highly nervous about transitioning back to American life. So far, my transition has gone better than I thought. I still have a ways to go, (my godmother kept on asking me why I take off my shoes before coming inside, and I freak out in restaurants because I think they will charge me for refills ...), but so far the adjustment has gone better than I expected.

One thing that surprised me about this blog was that it allowed me to talk to people all over the world, from Brazil to Poland who were interested in Kazakhstan and Peace Corps. Also, a lot of the Kaz 21s and-22s told me that they read my blog before coming to Kazakhstan and they found it useful. Because of this I won't delete my blog, as I hope it can still provide relevant information about Kazakhstan and Peace Corps to future volunteers or people who are searching for stuff on the country. And if any of those aspiring volunteers wishes to talk more in depth feel free to email me, I'd happily talk to you! If you want to read more blogs from Peace Corps volunteers, I'd direct you to the right hand side of the screen, or to this website that catalogs Peace Corps volunteer blogs from all over the world.

I wonder what I will think of my blog 5 years from now

My 5 favorite posts:

Eating Sheep FaceWinter Camp in Northern KazakhstanPopular Music in KazakhstanMo' Money' Mo' Problems...NGOs, grants, and grassroots fundraisingI'm a bad Poet. Now Everyone knows it

What will I do next?

One of my top priorities is to find a job. For this, the whole world is fair game (with exceptions..I don't care how much they pay NGO workers in Iraq, I'm not going). Since last Tuesday, I've sent off 25 job applications..to not for profits, NGOs, and government organizations. I will send out more. I've been focusing my search to the cities of New York, D.C, Boston, Miami, and Chicago as well as some cities internationally. Almaty's (!!!) also in the running! I'm doing this for a couple of reasons: I like those cities, they have pretty good public transit (I sold my car before Peace Corps), and the job opportunities there match my future career goals. Sorry Iowa, you're out of luck...

The reality is that unemployment is high, finding a job is tough, and I need a job sooner than later...

So the plan is this: If I get a job offer before the end of the year, I'll take it. Personally, I'm not very optimistic. In that case, after Christmas I'll live with my aunts and find temporary work...in Brooklyn.

Jay-Z likes New York. Alicia Keys likes New York. I like Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, so I will like New York!!!

All joking aside, New York intimidates me because it is so big. Half of the population of Kazakhstan could fit into New York City! But I think it can be a good place for me. Living in New York puts me in close proximity to DC and Boston. The many NGOs that work internationally are based on the East Coast. There are also lots of good grad schools in the area that will give scholarships to returned volunteers.

So until the time I get a call for an interview or it becomes time to move, I will hang out in Davenport. I'm catching up on my favorite tv shows like Glee, House, and Lie to Me, watching movies in the theaters (I'm looking forward to the Warrior's Way) and keeping up my language skills by watching this show in Russian. Hopefully wherever I end up, I'll take a Russian class at a community college so that I won't lose what I've learned. I'm also eating lots of food to regain my lost weight and running a couple of miles outside every other day to make sure the extra weight doesn't turn to fat (after feeling what -40F is like, 25F isn't that bad).

Most importantly, I'm spending time with my family. December is the first time in over 2 years that my mother, father, brother, and myself are all in the same city, let alone the same continent for more than a week, and I'm going to take advantage of it by spending as much time with them as I can. I've also planned trips to Iowa City and Chicago in December to see friends. Before Peace Corps, I would have freaked out about the job thing and turned it into an obsession. I don't want to make the same mistake twice, so I'm going to take my own advice.

So that's it!

I know I’ll be keeping in touch with many of my friends and volunteers who read this blog via email, telephone and Facebook, although I can't say how long I'll remain on it. I don't like Facebook.

To those of you who have been reading this blog but I never got the chance to interact with you, thank you so much for reading, and I wish you all the best.

До свидания!

~Kyle

Happy Thanksgiving!While deleting files from my computer after everyone passed out from food comas after dinner, I came across some unpublished blog posts. I didn’t post them initially for many reasons: I didn’t know where they would fit in the scheme of this blog, I didn’t know enough about that particular topic at the time, or wasn’t able to express my feelings properly at the time. I had around 12 potential posts and I thought about getting rid of all of them, but kept two of them because they could still be useful to current or future Peace Corps volunteers or people who are interested in Kazakhstan. I am posting them as is… literally just copying and pasting into a Google documents, so they are rough, unedited, and contain more spelling and grammar mistakes than usual. On being Black in Kazakhstan- The most popular question I’ve received by far, is “what’s is your experience like being black in Kazakhstan?” I got this question from everyone: Family, friends, Peace Corps staff, Peace Corps volunteers, and my local director and co-workers. While I’ve talked about it in a limited context to trusted family and friends, my thoughts on what it’s like to be black in Kazakhstan is not something I talk about often because conveying what I felt is very difficult. At the same time, I think it is an important question that is worth answering. I wrote this in September.

On being a Volunteer Training Assistant - My thoughts about the last couples of months in Kazakhstan as a VTA. I wrote this in October. I hope it can be useful for 2nd year volunteers who are considering applying for the position next year.

For volunteers, blogging in Kazakhstan can be tough because of infrequent power and internet access (if you live in a village) and logging on to the internet can be expensive. Also, the blogger.com website is blocked in Kazakhstan. While all of these obstacles make email and blogging hard for volunteers, many volunteers do have blogs. My blog is wrapping up (I have only 2 more posts left), if you are looking for more blogs about Kazakhstan Peace Corps volunteers in Kazakhstan, I'd recommend these:

The Adventures of Hotard. This is a blog of a fellow Kaz 20 OCAP volunteer. The majority of our group left when our 27 month contract ended but he decided to stay on for a third year. Regarding his blog, I enjoy it because he tends to not to focus solely on his work (work, while important, can get boring to blog about), but he also has many hilarious adventures and blogs about the cultural things in Kazakhstani life that are different from American life. One of my favorite recent blog posts from him is an interesting and odd story about beauty pageants in Kazakhstan.

 Becca's Blog: Peace Corps in Kazakhstan A Kaz 21 whose blog tends to focus on her projects. She is an OCAP (NGO assistance) volunteer, and while this program was replaced with the Youth Development program, I think her work is a good example of the work and the potential that a future Youth Development volunteer can do if they are paired with a stable NGO with dedicated and reliable people. Check out her most recent project, which took her outside of Kazakhstan to Bulgaria to a training on HIV/AIDS.

 

 Wide Open Spaces, also written by a Kaz 21. I've found her blog to be very truthful and thought provoking. She does a great job explaining about the world around her and the little things that make life great (or difficult) for volunteers. She has a great posting about my favorite summer drink in Kazakhstan.

 Pure Crop Beaches A blog jointly written by a Peace Corps married couple that is both English teachers. They too, are in my group but have decided to stay a third year. They write jointly about their work and lives and they have great pictures. Check out their post about their work at Camp GLOW, a program that teaches Kazakhstani girls about sexual health, empowerment and self confidence. It is a very inspiring project, and I'd strongly recommend for female Kaz 21's and Kaz 22's to get involved.

 The blog Kzblog.net. It's not written by a Peace Corps volunteer but by an expat. Although the author is not a volunteer, I still wanted to include it because it still mentions living in Kazakhstan. While this blog is very well written and occasionally focuses on topics that Peace Corps volunteers don't touch on, I still found it to be a very interesting read. What I like best are the pictures, which are just absolutely amazing! If you want to read more, check out a recent post about a complaint against Halloween.

Today, I am thinking while high. In this case, the word high is used with regard to distance above the earth, as in 25,000 feet high. My flight from Miami to Atlanta has free wi-fi internet in the plane! Who would have thought we could do that!

Every day I spend about 15 minutes just jotting down the thoughts that come into my head. It's a good exercise that I started in Kazakhstan, and one that I'll continue to do in the future. This is what I wrote down for today:

I like Miami. A lot. It has a feeling of motion, like everyone is doing something, but they aren't in a crazy hurry about it. I also like how multilingual the city is. I heard more Spanish, creole, French, and Russian (!!!) than English! This did wonders for helping me to begin to adjust!In the US, the small portions are too big. When I saw Unstoppable with my godmother, I ordered a small popcorn. It was huge, I could only eat half of it. Earlier on in the week, we went to Mcdonalds (I really wanted french fries), and I ordered a combo menu, and once again, I couldn't finish it! I think that for the immediate future I will order from the children's menu at restaurants. Hopefully they'll still allow me to have beer.

Read this on the way to the airport. Tell me something I don't know.

25, living at home, no job...this wasn't exactly how I planned for everything to turn out immediately after Peace Corps. To be truthful, I didn't really have a plan. "Job hunting is like having a full time job" someone once told me. Peace Corps and that training deal count for full time jobs, and I couldn't do overtime. But things will be ok for the short term. I think. However, it's never too late to get started: I applied for a job in D.C. while I'm in the air. Thanks, Erica!I'm really happy to see my mother and brother againI'm really nervous to see my mother and brother again.

After hanging out in Istanbul, I parted ways with Ashley at the airport and hopped on a plane to America. From Istanbul I flew through Kennedy Airport in New York and then onward to Miami. It was a very long day, I saw the sun for over 16 hours! I spent a week there, soaking up sun, eating seafood and just getting my head around being in America again. But why Miami? First, I wanted to see my Godmother. I have a close relationship with her, and the last time I saw her was during my college graduation. She is a remarkable woman, and I look up to and respect her a lot. She’s also a badass (she once fended off a pack of dogs that attacked her with a stick, which is so much more awesome than my strategy of throwing rocks at dogs), has the keys to the city of Miami, and walks around 3 miles daily. She’s lived in Miami for many years, and the last time I was in Miami was when they took Elian's bed. Miami also has great weather, and after spending 2 years in the largest landlocked country in the world and enduring two very cold winters, seeing oceans and beaches and the sun as well as experiencing 70 degree weather every single day is a welcome change. The second reason is while I feel ready to be in America, I need to gradually acclimate to everything. I do not want to get overwhelmed with seeing everyone, family stuff, and the other 10,000 things I must do to restart my life, from buying a cell phone to applying for jobs. I need some time and space to get used to American things again. For me, when I get overwhelmed or really stressed out, I tend to block out everything and everyone around me and focus inward. It’s like I try to create a really big personal bubble, and I destroy anyone who tries to break into it. As a result whenever I undergo a huge life change (graduation, entering/exiting Peace Corps), sometimes I get standoffish, detached from reality, withdrawn and I reject people. This happened when I came back to America in February, and I don’t want it to happen again. Being in Miami allows me to reach out to my friends and family, get used to being in the US again, and start job hunting gradually and on my own terms so that I don’t get overloaded, freak out, and alienate the people who mean the most to me.

An example of cultural readjustment: The look on my godmother's face when I asked her where to throw toilet paper.

I didn't realize exactly how tired I was until I came to Miami. Istanbul was relaxing, but not in the way I imagined. The first three days at my godmother's house I did nothing but sleep and eat. We spent the rest of our time all over Miami: South Beach, North Beach, Miami Beach, in downtown Miami, and watched the newest Denzel Washington movie Unstoppable. It’s pretty good, but my favorite character is the train. I also spent my 25th birthday in Miami. I didn’t do much but I took my cousin and her boyfriend to see the newest Harry Potter movie (and paid for it too, in following the Kazakh tradition of the birthday person paying for everything. My Kazakh babushka would be so proud.). After that I had dinner with my godmother; a mixture of Caribbean food and seafood.Tomorrow, I'll head back to the midwest, and to Iowa.

Kazakhstan Peace Corps volunteers, if you are looking for a cheap and easy vacation destination outside of Kazakhstan, I’d recommend Istanbul. If you get a ticket far enough in advance flying from Almaty to Istanbul isn’t expensive (around 400 USD round trip), visas are cheap (20 USD!!), and the food is amazing. They have lots of fruit! The city is easy to navigate and people speak English. Kazakh speakers will be pleasantly surprised: Kazakh numbers and certain food items are close to Turkish. I was very impressed with the city! This year Istanbul was awarded the 2010 European Capital of Culture, which is pretty cool. After hanging out in Ephesus, Ashley and I came back to Istanbul. Here is a list of some of my favorite things to do there: 1: See the whirling Dervishes. You can read more about them here. Basically they are an old Islamic sect that expresses their connection with the world and music and spinning in circles. Spinning allows them to feel connected to everything: people, the planet, and even electrons. The music is pretty awesome, and watching these guys twirl is pretty awesome. 2: Sit at a café, drink Turkish coffee, smoke a hookah, and watch the world go ‘round. I rarely drink coffee and smoke but I’d highly recommend everyone to take a couple of hours to hang out at a café, drink Turkish coffee, fire up a hookah and watch the world go by. Turkey and Istanbul in particular, is a crossroads of East and West, and it’s so interesting to see the diversity and watch everyone moving about and doing their thing. 3: Learn about Mustafa Kemal Ataturk - if it wasn’t for this man, Turkey as a modern nation wouldn’t exist. Ataturk is to Turkey what George Washington, Martin Luther King Jr., JFK, Abraham Lincoln and Rambo are to America. Seriously. People in Turkey love this man, and his name and face is on everything. Never mind the small fact that he’s been dead for awhile now. Why do Turkish people hold him in such high regard? Read this account on Ataturk from one of my favorite websites of all time, www.badassoftheweek.com. I dig this site because it features articles on historical figures, real life people and the occasional mythical creature and the over the top, badass, things they did. (Warning: contains profanity…and lots of references to groin kicks, so be careful!). 4: Go to a Museum, Palace, or Mosque- The three main things to see in Istanbul are the Aya Sophia (museum) Blue Mosque, and the Tokapi Palace. They all are about a 10 minute walk from each other. There are also a ton of other museums to see (although the one I was looking forward to the most, the Museum of Ataturk was closed). It would take weeks to explore them all. Blue Mosque

The most interesting things I saw were in the Palace. My friend Rachel turned me on to finding religious relics. I thought that only Christians and Catholics were into saving stuff from influential people and events, but in Turkey I learned that almost every major religion has some sort of relic. Turkey’s relics were acquired from Jerusalem and the West Bank through the mess with the crusades and from when the Ottoman Empire was a big deal. There are tons of relics and awesome stuff to see in Istanbul and especially in the palace such as Moses’ staff that parted the Red Sea, the Prophet’s Mohamed teeth and beard hairs, some really big swords and a diamond as big as your face. 5: Buy cat food – Istanbul is a cat city: they are everywhere: climbing on buildings, hanging out on street signs, and just wandering around. Most of them are nice and you can pet them for a very long time. It’s easier if you have food, but it’s not required, as the cats will love you anyway. After the rigors of Peace Corps, making a cat purr is very therapeutic. 6: Take a side road – Istanbul has a lot of tourist areas, but the vibe of the city changes even if you wander off onto a side road. You don’t even have to go far; just going one block from the popular Taksim square yields quiet neighborhoods, tiny (and cheap) cafes, and really nice people. Tourists don’t frequent these areas, which makes it even better. I had a “Peace Corps moment” when I entered a small café asking for directions for the Museum of Ataturk. The owner made eat lunch with her family, saying “Eat, Eat” about 10,000 times in Turkish (which sounds a lot like the Russian word for eat, or she was saying the Russian word for “eat”), and I sat and hung out with her and her husband for a half hour. They flipped out when I told them I was looking for the Museum of Ataturk, and proceeded to give me the long version of his life and how awesome he was in Turkish. We barely understood each other (German was our common language, and we both spoke it poorly), but the kindness was clear. 7: Go to the Spice (Egyptian) bazaar – Do not buy anything in the grand bazaar, as things are really expensive and it feels more commercialized, much like a mall. I prefer the spice bazaar, which feels more like an authentic bazzar and has stuff regular people buy like spices, fish, and cheeses. It’s a good place to see a real bazaar in action, but watch your valuables and mentally change your opinions on personal space before entering. I would recommend buying something small, maybe a kilogram of Turkish delight or an evil eye, just to get the experience of bargaining and haggling!

“I can help you spend your money!” – Turkish delight salesman in the Spice Bazzar

After completing my COS and becoming a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV), I waited in Almaty until around midnight and then took a taxi to the airport where I caught a 3am flight to Turkey. When I saw the sun rise again, it was over the skyline of Istanbul. After spending a stressful morning wading through customs and trying to find my lost money (Western Union is stupid) by lunchtime I was hanging out in the city center eating French fries and Turkish doner kebabs. The whole thing was weird, very surreal. A week ago I was cursing my neighbors in Russian because they were burning trash outside my window while I was hanging out my clothes to dry. Now, I was using English to order coffee in Starbucks and wondering why my computer wasn’t connecting to the wi-fi internet. However, experiencing this weirdness is the exact reason why I wanted to take some time in Turkey before going back to the states. I see Turkey not only as a tourist destination for me, but as an opportunity to help me begin to adjust to America. Turkey is in a unique position in the world, straddling 2 continents which give it a blend of both East and West. Turkey has things that while not identical, remind me of Kazakhstan, like saying “Asalam alaykim” as a greeting (to men), smelling burning garbage in the evenings, seeing SUVs yielding for donkey carts, hearing the call to prayer from local mosques, and lots of tea. At the same time the country has things that remind me of the West and America: McDonald’s and Starbucks, 5 lane highways, sneakers, and hamburgers. And it doesn’t hurt that the country has over 2000 years of history from 3 major empires on display, lots of hookahs and Efes beer, baklava, and my personal favorite treat, Turkish delight! I am not alone on this trip. Joining me is Ashley, who is also an RPCV from Kazakhstan. She finished her service about a week earlier than me and since then she has been hanging out on beaches and ruins in Cyprus. She hopped over to Istanbul a day before me. I know Ashley well, as we worked together on a winter culture camp near Kostanai, and I give her credit for practically saving my life because she sewed together my coat after the zipper broke in -40 weather. She’s a cool person and a great travel buddy, although I find myself wondering what would happen if I changed her cell phone ring from the Ohio State fight song to something crazy, like Michigan’s fight song. It also really cool to travel with another RPCV as we’ve began to decompress and reflect on the past 27 months together, I like talking to her as she has a great perspective. We spent a day in Istanbul eating food and then took a 10 hour bus south to the town of Selçuk to hang out and climb on the ruins of Ephesus, The ruins are very cool and very big, and it took us the majority of the afternoon to explore and take photos. Some things about Ephesus that surprised me: · While it was located far from Jerusalem and Rome the city still played a big role in biblical history and Christianity. The apostle Paul lived there for many years, Mary moved to a house about 6km from Ephesus after her son died and rose again (depending on which book you believe J), and the city was even mentioned in the book of Revelations, although I’m not sure if this is a good thing because Revelations is the scariest book in the Bible. · Ephesus is a big deal in Roman history, as they made the city the capital of their Asian territories. · The Greeks oversaw the building of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus which (depending on who you talk to) is one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world The ruins.

Cats! I found this kitty friend in the ruins of the Church of Mary. She was too big to fit into my bag, or I might had kept her!

My favorite portion of the ruins was the outdoor theater, the very same one where St. Paul got yelled at by townspeople because he made a speech against paganism and the gods. The people weren’t happy because Paul was talking crap about the gods, and they happened to like their huge temple to Artemis, so they yelled at him for over 3 hours and then threw him out of the city.St. Paul must have gotten an earful because the acoustics of the theater are so good that Ashley could hear me whisper from over 50 feet away!

Today is my last day as a volunteer and my last day in Kazakhstan. Even though I will be leaving early tomorrow morning, today was busy as I was undergoing my "close my service (COS)". COSing involved chasing everyone who works in the Peace Corps office, and getting their signatures as I returned language books, closed my bank accounts, and underwent a physical. The whole process took about 5 hours. When I got the last signature, I received a handshake, a word of congratulations in Russian, and certificate of completion.

Going on my office wall...someday.

People keep on telling me that I should feel proud of myself. However, my Regional Manager said how I felt best when she took one look at me and said, "Kyle, you don't look happy. You look tired. No, that is not the word. You look exhausted." And I am. Perhaps later I'll be proud. Right now, I feel emotionally drained after running trainings, moving, and saying goodbye to everyone. I think that I need some time to process everything that I went through over the past 27 months.

And I will have some time. While I'm leaving Kazakhstan in a couple of hours, I'm not going directly back to America. When sending volunteers home, Peace Corps gives them the choice to let Peace Corps handle their travel arrangements back to their hometowns, or take the money that a ticket would be worth and make their own arrangements. A lot of my fellow Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) took the money and are currently in Thailand, Cambodia, Russia, Europe, Africa, and Austrailia as they slowly make their way back to America.

I alsochose the latter and with the help of my uncle, got a sweet deal on plane tickets. Therefore, my schedule for the next two weeks involves stopping in the cities of Istanbul and Miami. I will be in Iowa for Thanksgiving because my Mom who told me it is unacceptable to miss another holiday.

I opted not to go straight home because the journey there wouldn't be as much fun!

As for this blog, I've decided that I'll continue it until Thanksgiving. I feel weird: I'm not a volunteer anymore, but I'm not in America. Perhaps expressing my thoughts here over the next two weeks will help me to being to make sense of how I'm feeling as I begin to reflect on my time in Kazakhstan. I know it will be a good way to process my thoughts as I begin my readjustment to America. At the very least I'll give an account of my adventures in Turkey.

Too bad that I am leaving, because in my final days I've become almost famous! A Kazakh national tv news station ran a piece on the new Kaz 22's and their swearing in ceremony, and you can see me and some of the Ecik YD volunteers on it, playing the dombra and dancing at the Swearing in ceremony. It's about a one minute video in Kazakh, and you can check it out here. I don't know what the volunteer at the end is talking about because she is speaking in Kazakh, but I'm sure it's something great because I understood the word "youth" and "food".

“I…do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the United States Peace Corps on which I am about to enter. So help me God.” -Oath taken by Peace Corps trainees during the Swearing in Ceremony* I’ve already said my goodbyes to my friends in Karabulak and Taldykorgan as well as to my fellow Kaz-20 volunteers who have already left Kazakhstan. The last part of my goodbyes was to my friends in Ecik such as my co-workers at Local Community Foundation (LCF), and the Youth Development trainees (who were sworn in as volunteers on Saturday). The goodbyes at the LCF were hard because my director and counterpart were bummed out and I was in a bad mood. We submitted an application to Peace Corps to have a Youth Development volunteer (my replacement), but we were denied. The LCF is one of the most legit organizations I have ever seen in Kazakhstan, and would have benefited greatly from a new volunteer. Over the past year, we have been promoting youth development initiatives and projects in our region, and we did some really great things like coordinating a youth bank (teaching kids how to write grant proposals for self initiated projects) and organizing a summer camp on youth leadership. We also had summer internships that we offered to kids and created a base of volunteers to promote philanthropy during the holidays. And don’t get me started about the plans that they have for the future: starting a job shadow program to get kids exposed and interested in different vocations and jobs, in which they already won a 7,000 dollar grant (with minimal help from me). On their own, the LCF is awesome. With a Youth Development volunteer aiding and augmenting their project ideas; they could be beyond amazing. However, when it comes to Youth Development and NGOs in Kazakhstan, there are always more organizations than available volunteers. Someone is bound to lose out. Even so, the fact that I won’t be replaced hurts, and I’m still a bit sore about it. Although we were all sad, we went out to lunch, and they gave me lots of Kazakhstan chocolate (about 5 pounds worth), and a picture book of plants and nature that is special to Kazakhstan, and lots of well wishes and advice. I’m going to miss them terribly, and will stay in touch with them through Skype and email. After that, I moved out my apartment, and left Ecik for Almaty.How I'll remember Ecik: A dusty town, but in a very pretty location. Pictures by Jenni J.

The next day was the swearing in ceremony for the Kaz-22 group. The ceremony was about an hour long and involved speeches from the US Ambassador to Kazakhstan and a representative from the Ministry of Education of Kazakhstan. I always enjoy the speech from the Ministry because they usually pass along praise from organizations and schools whom have worked with a Peace Corps Volunteer. Although they are gone, the Kaz-20 teachers were praised heavily in the speech for the work they did in Kazakhstani schools and colleges during their two years. My favorite bit of praise was about a friend of mine who lived near Kyzlorda who was called “A teacher from God” by her principal. I wish I was that awesome. Speaking of awesome people, I’d like to congratulate the newest volunteers in Kazakhstan, the Kaz 22’s, and especially the 8 Youth Development volunteers from Issyk. They are a great bunch, and I enjoyed working with them. I feel like they have the right qualities to be great volunteers: they are confident in themselves and their skills, but not cocky. They are optimistic about their upcoming 2 year service, but are realistic about what they can do. They are willing to work hard, but can also let loose and relax. They are dedicated, but not crazy. Well, not that crazy; they do tend to bust out in laughter for seemingly no reason at all. Because they have those qualities (even the laughing bit), I think they’ll be great and very successful. I wish them well.They don't believe me, but if they keep working hard in two years their Russian will be better than mine. After the ceremony they were shoved onto trains, taxis, and marshukas (vans) to travel to their sites all over Kazakhstan where they will begin their 2 year service. After that, there were more goodbyes: With my sitemate (whom I forgot to show this web based show. I think she’ll find it hilarious), and Kaz 21’s from close to Zharkent and Taldykorgan respectively. Then I ate some great Indian food, said some more goodbyes to the last pair of YD volunteers who would leave the next morning, and then slept for about 10 hours.The YD training team from Ecik. We are so proud of the new volunteers! (and Shymkent!)

All of my goodbyes are done. My role as a trainer for the Kaz 22s is complete. All of my grants are turned in and approved. Tomorrow, I will be officially done with Peace Corps.

*This Oath is also used by anyone in the Armed forces or civil service; practically everyone involved in government except the President.

“Things…are…happening!!!” -‘Supernova’ at COS conference Almaty is the setting for the second part of my goodbyes because it is where the Peace Corps office is located. Before leaving every volunteer must pass through the office to COS* (Close of Service), which includes a final medical checkup, interviews with the Country Director and Regional Managers, and signing some documents. Only after this are volunteers free to leave. The advantage that I have is that Ecik is an hour away from Almaty so it is easy to visit and say goodbye to the majority of the Kaz-20 volunteers as they leave Kazakhstan this week. Kazakhstan is the largest Peace Corps country, which means that volunteers don’t see each other very often unless they live in the same area. With effort, volunteers can visit others to work on short term projects and for fun, but it can take a lot of time. My closest friends in Peace Corps lived about 6 hours (Taldykorgan), 14 hours (Shymkent) and 48 hours away (Kostanai). As a result, volunteers communicate mainly through text messages and occasional phone calls. There are some volunteers in my own group whom I’ve seen only 4 times after our training period because they are so far away. So what does this mean? When I was pissed off, or down in the dumps or needed someone to talk to or even a hug, it wasn’t like I could just go to see someone who understood what was going on. My closest Peace Corps friends weren’t exactly just down the street but in some cases lived literally days away. This is not a complaint, because I wasn’t the most isolated of my fellow volunteers, not even close. There were some volunteers who lived 3-4 hours away from the nearest American; which is perfect definition of the word alone. And even if a volunteer has local friends that speak English, it’s can still get lonely because they won’t understand the difficulties of living and working in Kazakhstan as a Peace Corps volunteer. Add into the equation that it is very hard for volunteers to talk regularly with friends and family based in the US because of the10-14 hour time difference. And while they may try, they too cannot understand everything. All of this equals to some volunteers getting pretty lonely and feeling isolated over the course of their two years. Even with the distance and difficulties of regular communication, I became close to a couple of volunteers who I will try to stay in touch with when I get back to the states. It’s weird, because even though I haven’t seen them face to face very often over the past two years they are still close to me. So, I spent one night in Almaty this week to say goodbye to the Kaz-20’s who are finishing up their COS. We ate Chinese food, rented an apartment, played charades, listened to obscene amounts of Lady Gaga and generally just hung out and talked, reminiscing and telling stories about our last two years. The horrible situations that made us cry ago were suddenly funny to look back on, and the funny things became even funnier. When I think about some of the crazy things that volunteers in my group went though, I can only shake my head. Some of them went through some heavy stuff and had very bad and ridiculous situations, the type of situations that if they happened to me I would have probably quit. And while a lot of people in the Kaz-20 group left early, most of us stayed on. For those who stayed, I’m glad they did. Without them, the past two years would have not been as interesting, productive, and not as fun, and I probably wouldn’t have gotten through them. . 1st photo: Hanging out with Kaz 19’s and 20’s during Christmas in Taldykorgan, 2008 2nd photo: Dinner after PDM Kaz-21 seminar in Taldykorgan, 2010 *It’s not grammatically correct, but I think it’s cool that many volunteers have adapted the acronym “COS” as a verb. For example, “I’m COSing today”.

To prepare for leaving Kazakhstan next week, yesterday I began to pack away up all of my things. I don't have a lot of material things, because I've moved 4 times over the past two years in Kazakhstan. Every time I move, I throw out anything that is not essential, because I hate hauling heavy bags for long distances. I already gave most of my souvenirs from Kazakhstan to my friends and family when I came back to America in February. So all in all, I'm traveling light, lighter than when I arrived two years ago. All of my current possessions will fit into a hiking backpack and a large duffle bag. My dombra has its own case.

My luggage that I'm hauling all of my stuff in is drastically different that what I brought when I first arrived. In 2008 I arrived with a rolling backpack, rolling duffle bag, and a small and medium sized backpack. All of my rolling backpacks broke within my first 3 months in country. It wasn't that the luggage was cheap; it got beaten to death on uneven sidewalks and rocky and uneven roads. I was forced to purchase new luggage and bought a hiker's pack which is so much easier to transport around Kazakhstan. I would recommend for anyone who is coming to Kazakhstan and is not living in a major city to bring one, because it's easier and the roads and sidewalks outside of the cities will destroy rolling luggage. Hiking packs allow you to have your hands free, has greater mobility (you can run with them), and are easier to place on busses or on your lap when traveling by marshurka (a big van).

My clothing has been decimated. Everything article of clothing that I own has at least one hole in it, some in embarrassing places so I don't wear them in public. Colors have faded, buttons have fallen off, and zippers have malfunctioned, usually at the most inconvenient times such as in Kostanai in January when it was -40 outside. My mom taught me a lot of useful things, but sewing wasn't one of them. She tried, but I was terrified of needles as a child, and that fear is still with me today. Even if I knew how to sew, I don't think it would have helped.

Clothes that I'm bringing back:

1 pair of jeans (heavily frayed)

1 pair of dress slacks

1 suit (Worn only 3 times!!)

1 pair of tennis shoes (holes in the heels)

5 pairs of socks and underwear (all of the socks were bought in Kazakhstan, the original ones are destroyed)

4 t-shirts (all with holes)

1 long sleeved shirt (has my fraternity letters on it, it has tons of holes but I can't bear to part with it)

1 sweater (taken from another volunteer)

1 hoodie

1 heavy coat (bought in Kostanai)

1 dress shirt

1 tie

This is a sad list, considering the original clothes I bought with me. Although I'm not looking forward to it, I'm going to have to go shopping when I get stateside. I hate shopping.

As far as electronics, I have been very fortunate. My computer has held up very well, and never broke while I was in Kazakhstan. I know of many volunteers that were forced to purchase a new computer, or go without because theirs got fried, dropped, or were so heavily laden with viruses that they became unusable. My power cord burnt out because of a power surge, the "I" key has fallen off, and it takes a good 5 minutes for my computer to load, but considering all that I put it through, I'm very impressed.

I am taking no books back home with me. Books are important to the sanity of volunteers, as they can be read by candlelight and on the long bus and train rides in Kazakhstan. My site mate read over 100 books in her village over her two years. I don't know the exact number of books that I read here, but I have 32 books scattered over my apartment, and I know I've read them all. Peace Corps has a small library in their Almaty office, and I'm donating all of my books to it. There are several books I'll always associate with my Peace Corps service such as "The Road," "The Once and Future King," "The Art of War", "Where There is no Doctor", "Ivanhoe", Dante's "Inferno", "World War Z" and the "Unfinished Tales" by Tolkien. Each of them carries a special memory, both good and bad, of my time here.

What I will take back are the certificates I received. In Kazakhstan, certificates are a big deal, and are used as proof of completing seminars and as official thank-you for work that is completed. I have about 10 certificates from different NGO's, schools, and even one from a local mayor for the projects I did while I was here. I'm not sure what I'll do with them when I get back, maybe put them in a scrapbook, frame a couple that are especially colorful or important. I do know what I'm going to do with my official certificate of completion of service from Peace Corps: that's going on my wall.

 8 more days. I think I can do it.

Since coming to Kazakhstan I’ve taken an interest in superstitions. Learning and sharing superstitions with people of other cultures is very fun, a great cultural exchange, and collecting them has become a bit of a hobby for me. People in Kazakhstan get a hoot out of hearing American superstitions about black cats, the number 13, walking under ladders, breaking mirrors, and summoning the Bloody Mary.

Last year, I wrote a blog post about 7 superstitions that I thought were interesting. This Halloween, I have 5 more. I originally had 6 but that’d make 13, and both Kazakhstani and American people consider this number unlucky. I did not want 13 superstitions on my blog, not that I’m superstitious or anything…(well…not that much!).

Showing money to the moon When the moon is at its smallest, people will sometimes show a small amount of money to the moon. Then they put the money away and try to forget about it. The idea is that as the moon grows so will the money. I tried this last month with a 100 tenge coin, and found 200 tenge my pants pocket a couple of weeks later while doing laundry. Was it because I let moonbeams hit it? Who knows! Preemptive celebrations aka “early happy birthday” It’s bad luck to wish somebody a happy holiday or birthday until the real day happens. What if they die or you never see them again? Then it is your fault. There’s no penalty to wish someone a belated birthday or holiday (outside of being that person who forgot the date) but it’s definitely against the rules to give an early congratulations.

Cats and boyfriends (The mystery of the cat lady) This one I’ve heard on 4 different occasions, usually from babushkas. As many people already know, cats are possessive, selfish, greedy creatures that care only about themselves. They wish to be the most important thing in their owner’s lives. If it’s not about them, then they don’t care. However, the surprise is that cats have special powers to repel potential lovers. For women, if they own a cat, it will extend a field of negative energy around the person that will scare away young men so the woman can never get married. I think this makes sense, as it explains why cat ladies die alone.

Maybe she is Emo because she doesn't have a boyfriend.

Whistling inside Whistling is perfectly acceptable outdoors, but is not inside. If a person whistles inside, other people will blame this person if any money goes missing because whistling makes money go away. Many a Peace Corps Volunteer has been yelled at by babushkas (whom are always right) about whistling inside.

Safety Pins and the Evil Eye. The evil eye is a big deal, which is the fear of being harmed by other people’s envy. Usually people wear a talisman to protect themselves. I own one myself and always keep it in my bag. But since anyone, anywhere, at any time can give you the evil eye, what if you do not have a talisman handy? A safety pin can work just as well to repel the evil eye in a pinch. Wear it over your heart for maximum results.

Want to avoid homework? Wear a safety pin!

No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth.

- Robert Southey Over the last 27 months, I've met some really awesome people in Kazakhstan, and I am doubly lucky because not only do I know them, I call them my friends. They picked me up when I was down and showed me how to live and survive in a foreign place. We spoke different languages, had different cultures, but still found a lot to laugh and communicate about. We made great community projects, talked about some serious stuff, then laughed at each other for hours. And now with a week and 5 days until I leave, seeing my friends one more time to say goodbye and thank you is one of the most important things right now to me. The first part of my goodbyes took me back to the friendly confines of Taldykorgan and Karabulak. Although volunteers cannot travel during the last 90 days of their service, they can go on business trips, and although I had a great time hanging out and drinking chai with my Karabulak friends and beer with my Taldykorgan pals, there was work to be had. My goal in Karabulak was to give my old director the final report for our grant to establish Kazakh Courses. We reviewed the report together and made some corrections. She also gave me letters that were written by some of the adults who attended, as well as the teacher. Once I translate them, I'll include them in the thank you packet I created with my director to the people who donated to the project. This means that I'll make a final trip to the most stressful place in Kazakhstan, the post office, but it is the best way to convey the gratitude and thanks that the people and my director in Karabulak have. After that, I saw my host mother one more time (she apologizes to my mother because I am so thin) and my host sister (she told me to "stay cool"). Even the woman on the 3rd floor of the Akimat who hit on me constantly until I changed towns even came down to the 2nd floor to say goodbye, but not without being awkward one last time by telling me it was a shame I never agreed to go on a date with her while her boyfriend was standing next to her. Everyone thought this was funny. The boyfriend did not. I just felt awkward. And on that note, I hopped into a taxi and left Karabulak for Almaty. To get to Almaty from Karabulak, one must find a taxi in Taldykorgan. Because I had some time to kill, I took a long walk around town for the last time to reminisce in my own head about the good and bad (but mainly good) memories that happened there. I started by the (in)famous club Luxor, now renamed, renovated into a café, and not as shady, although I will never ever go inside again. From there I walked past "the apartment"; the place where almost every male Kaz-19 volunteer in Taldykorgan lived at one time or another. There used to be a cat that lived under the door (the local kids called it "garbage"), but it's not there anymore. From there, I went past the Oblast Akimat, past Hessen Pub, turned left at Shashlyk Place and strolled down the Arbot. By then, it was time to go. (Photo Captions:1st: Kazakh Courses in Action. Currently 44 adults and 8 youth attend the classes.

2nd: Counterparts, friends, and my babushka in Karabulak. They'll always have a place in my heart, even though they loved to laugh at the awkward things that would happen to me.)

In the recent past I had a blog post about popular music in Kazakhstan. And while pop is the music that dominates the airwaves in Kazakhstan, there is another type of music that is just as well known: traditional Kazakh music. My interest in traditional Kazakh music started when the head facilitator for the youth development program in Ecik suggested that we take some time to learn how to play the dombra. The dombra is the most popular Kazakh traditional instrument. According to archeologists, the dombra was invented over 2000 years ago, as they found ancient statues of people playing a two stringed instrument in a plucking manner in the ancient city of Khorezm. It’s lightweight but tough, made of wood and is a bit smaller than a guitar. The two strings are tuned a 4th apart, and people usually attach feathers to the ends.. If you want to read more about the dombra, you can check it out here. One thing that I love about Kazakh musical culture is that each traditional instrument has a legend about how the instrument was created or what powers it’s said to have. For the dombra, it is said that if played correctly and with passion it has the ability to communicate without words and even save people from death. My saxophone never did that! The legend of the dombra goes like this: Back in the day when Kazakhstan was a nomadic country, a khan (leader) forbade his son to go hunting. Like all teenage children since the beginning of time, he didn’t listen to his father and went out anyway. While the son was out trying to find dinner against his dad’s wishes, he came across a herd of kulan (something like a deer), and shot the leader of the herd with an arrow, wounding but not killing it. The lead kulan, called Aksak Kulan (lame “deer”) took the arrow shooting personally and used its hoof to kick the khan’s son Chuck Norris style, killing him.

Not a roundhouse...but just as effective

When his son didn’t return from the hunt, the Khan got angry. He was so angry that he declared that anyone who came to him with bad news would be killed by having molten lead poured into their mouth. The lead thing may sound a bit excessive, but the Khan was only following in the footsteps of this guy with the same title who went into the history books as one of the greatest conquerors of all time. Not this Khan. Out of fear of being forced to quench their thirst with liquid metal nobody told the Khan what really happened to his son for a long time. Eventually, an old dombra player used music to get the Khan to realize what really happened. The dombra player played so sadly that the Khan realized that his son was dead. Since the dombra player never said anything, the Khan couldn’t kill him. So instead, the Khan ordered that the dombra be filled with molten lead, thus saving the life of the musician and everyone else.My dombra. Because it is now in my barely competent hands, I doubt that this particular dombra will save any lives. I don’t think I’ll get really good at the dombra in my remaining 3 weeks in Kazakhstan. I’m not good with stringed instruments, I like woodwinds better. I’ll be happy if I could play and sing a song or two by the time I leave Issyk. Our teacher is the head music director from the local Kazakh school and she is very patient with us. She doesn’t speak English, but we get along just fine and I am learning a lot. Music is one of those special things that transcends language. However, I have high hopes for the trainee that also joins us in our lessons, as she’ll have at least 2 years to practice and will probably become a dombra hero.

October: the last full month of my Peace Corps service. As of today, I have 40 days until I leave Kazakhstan. No more, and no less. I’m starting to get excited, because the end is in sight. I used to measure my Peace Corps service in years…then months. 40 Days? 40 Days is nothing!

I’m having a hard time finding motivation to care about anything work related, perhaps because I’m so close to being done. It feels like the last semester of college again, when I had classes to attend, stuff to do, but I didn’t really feel like going (and didn’t really care). Usually there is a sense of duty or obligation (and sometimes desperation) that provides the fuel that keeps me plugging away at whatever I’m doing, but over the week I’ve come to the conclusion that the motivation tank is running on fumes. I find myself using more and more of my time watching episodes of House and playing video games than focusing on things that I need to do. The exception is my work assisting the Kaz-22 Youth Development trainees (who are coming along just nicely). Working with them is a pleasure, and now that I’m done with my primary assignment at the Local Community Foundation, they are my #1 priority. Honestly, they are the reason why I don’t barricade myself in my apartment and waste the month watching old tv shows and playing videogames until my plane leaves.

I don't think its very productive to watch the whole 3rd season of House...in two days.

Whatever the case, I have to snap out of it. The end is near, but there is a lot to do:

Creating my "Close of Service Document", a one page account of what I did as a volunteer. This will be the only surviving document that Peace Corps will have of my service after I leave, so it has to be good, and more importantly, accurate. Confirming tickets home, and researching fun things to do in Istanbul, Turkey. I’m going to spend a week there on the way back to the US. After researching Egypt and Greece as other vacation alternatives, I decided that it may be better to go to one country and spend a meaningful amount of time there than skipping around to 2-3 countries but only spending 2-4 days in each. So as much as I want to travel to Egypt, the pyramids will have to wait. They’ve been around for 1000’s of years, so I think they can hold on for another decade or two. Revamping (again) my resume, so I won’t be unemployed (for long) when I get back. Retaking a Russian language test. I initially took it during the Close of Service Conference, but I wasn’t happy with my results, so I’m going to try again before I leave. Packing up my stuff. Giving away what is useful, throwing out the rest. Studying for the GRE. In between my House watching binge, I’ve been doing GRE prep. I have study materials, and run through problems for about 2 hours each day. One of my goals for 2011 is to go back to school. For awhile, I thought that I wanted to do law school, but since then I’ve changed my mind. It’s hard to do proper research on this sort of stuff from the other side of the world, but I’m seriously looking at schools that offer programs in Non Profit Management, Public Policy, or Central Asian Studies. Peace Corps also has a “Fellows Program” which allows for returned volunteers to get higher degrees for cheap (or free!) at some pretty good universities. So watch out! I may run an NGO someday. Tying up administrative loose ends with the Kazakh course project by turning in the final paperwork documents to Peace Corps. However, some of the documents and receipts that I need are still in Karabulak, so this means that I must pay a visit to Taldykorgan in October. Although it may cause some long days for me because I must still also help out the new trainees every day, I’m certainly not crying because Taldykorgan is the best city in Kazakhstan. Preparing my organization and site for a new volunteer. This means helping them to find host families, creating a plan of work, and recruiting a counterpart. As well as cleaning out my desk/shelf. Call it fate, magic, voodoo, and Act of God or whatever, but during the last 27 months I’ve met some very influential people in Kazakhstan; people who have shaped my service and my life. Some are teachers, students, old counterparts, and a few are even volunteers. I’m bad with goodbyes, and mushy stuff, (and will hopefully see some of them again) but I can’t leave Kazakhstan without telling them about the positive effect they have had on my time here, and thanking them for it.

Usually I’m very consistent with my blog, but have lagged behind during the past couple of weeks. My disappearance from the internet wasn’t due to any particular problem, I’ve just been spending a lot of time taking care of work and other little things so I haven’t been near an internet connection. Although I didn’t have the opportunity to post anything, I did type out what I did around the times that they happened. If you would like to read more about what I have been up to in the past couple of weeks, check out the links below: Wasps, Summer, and the Rise of Satan ( September 6-10) Camels and Close of Service (September 14-16) Lady Gaga comes to Kazakhstan? (September 20)

Today Kazakhstan is celebrating 15 years of having a constitution. America has had a constitution for over 200 years, and the English had a document kind of like a constitution from practically the beginning of time, but Constitution day is a big deal in Kazakhstan. Almaty had fireworks late at night, there was a big parade in Issyk, and everyone got a day off from work except the trainees who still had a 10+ hour day of language and technical sessions.

The wary never rest.

My morning was spent trying to keep my upper body away from everything, especially my shirt, because I had a painful encounter with a wasp. Sunday was laundry day, and because dryers do not exist in Kazakhstan I hung my clothes out to dry. On Monday morning I went to retrieve my clothes from the line. Sometimes bugs like to camp out on drying clothes and usually a good shaking gets rid of them.

So knowing this I shook out my clothes like normal, and then put on my favorite shirt which was just on the line. Little did I know that there was a stubborn wasp that avoided my shaking ritual, and was tucked on the inside of the shirt out of view which I put on.

It was not fun, for me or the wasp.

I started screaming and jumping down as it stung me repeatedly on my stomach, which brought my neighbors to my door because they thought something bad was happening to me. And it was. They totally understood when I told them what happened (or understood that I was totally crazy) and now I have 3 welts on my body that still hurt.

Something that I'm reading:

Fellow Kaz 19 Returned Volunteer Erin Curtis is famous after being featured in an article on CNN by describing issues she encountered adjusting back to America after living in Kazakhstan. In the article, she described my nightmare scenario: struggling with cover letters because of English troubles, being socially awkward, freaking out in stores because of too many choices and all of that stuff. As I get closer to leaving (November 8), I'm sure I'll blog more about how I feel about this, but reverse culture shock is real and it scares the crap out of me.

Most of my friends in Peace Corps know that I am borderline obsessed with the soft drink Fanta. During training, I usually bought one every other day, and would always keep an eye out in the stores for new flavors.

My interest in Fanta actually started in 2006, when I studied abroad in Germany and discovered the non PC (politically correct, not Peace Corps) drink called the U-Boat. A U-Boat is the following: Take a glass of Fanta (Any flavor, but orange works best), and a shot glass of vodka. Drop the shot glass into the Fanta, and drink. Repeat as needed. Be careful, like their metallic submarine equivalents during the Second World War, U-Boats have the ability to sneak up and overwhelm the unaware.

Different countries and regions have different flavors of Fanta. In America, orange Fanta is usually the norm. It is possible to find other flavors, but it is rare. One of my personal goals in Peace Corps is to try all of the available flavors of Fanta that are produced in Kazakhstan. During the past 2 years, I've tried 9 different types of Fanta: Orange, Berry, Mango, Tropical Fruit, Holiday version, World Cup version, Red Berry, Green unidentified kind, and what I call "cream soda" version. Out of those nine, my favorites are Mango (naturally), Red Berry, and World Cup version which sadly won't appear for another 4 years. The other 5 are also pretty tasty, and the Tropical Fruit flavor makes a great U-Boat.

Come to think of it, I've never tried a flavor of Fanta that I didn't like.

Until today.

I went to the store to buy an ice cold Fanta after lunch. I was banking on grabbing an orange or berry one, but I saw a type I'd never seen before, so I quickly bought it.

My plan was to sit off to the side and drink Fanta while watching the shocked reactions of the new trainees as they experienced a session that was facilitated by the lead Peace Corps doctor in Kazakhstan. The session was titled, "Diarrhea and you: Drink filtered water", so I figured that they would have some great reactions of shock and disbelief as the doctor told some pretty gruesome (or awesome, depending on your point of view) stories accompanied with some equally gnarly photos. Sometimes these photos and stories are about the doctor's time in Angola in the 80's when he was a medic in the Soviet Army, which makes it even more extreme (or awesome, depending on your point of view).

Everything was perfect: I had no sessions to facilitate today, I had a new flavor of Fanta, and the trainees were about to be grossed out while learning some important stuff at the same time. Everything was going right until I popped open the bottle and took a swig. The only way I can describe apple flavored Fanta is "foul". It's like apple flavored Mr. Clean. Or Pine-Sol with apples inside. I don't think that I could describe in words how horrified and grossed out I was after drinking this. It was so awful I couldn't finish it. I've eaten a sheep's cheek, gnawed on horse, and drank deer's blood mixed with vodka, but those things don't compare to the gross flavor of Apple Fanta. It's that bad.

So this post is for all of the other Fanta drinkers out there. Don't drink Apple Fanta. It will ruin your day.

 

 

It’s been a wild and busy week, because I have been helping prepare Pre Service Training (PST) for the newest group of volunteers to Kazakhstan, the Kaz 22s. We designed sessions, set up general logistics, and drank lots of chai with host families and school directors. Although a lot of things are last minute, we still got enough done to get PST up and running for the first couple of weeks.

So with 4 other VTAs, we went to the airport on late Thursday night/Friday morning and met the Kaz 22’s. They are 75 people strong, and we spent Friday and Saturday going through orientation which involves getting vaccines, teaching Peace Corps acronyms, and other administrative stuff. I facilitated sessions on host families, basic culture and history of Kazakhstan, and safety and security. Talking about host families and culture were my favorite sessions because it was a reminder for me of how different my “normal life” is here. For example, I made the following chart:

DO Take off your shoes when you go insideDrink hot tea with your family, even though its summerAttempt to tell your host family your whole life story through pictures, even though you just met them an hour ago. DO NOT Throw Toilet paper into the toilet…it clogs up everything and creates a disaster. Throw it in the garbage insteadShake hands with women. People just don’t do this.Freak out if your host family goes into the banya with you…and then gets disappointed when you don’t want to be hit with tree branches. It’s a cultural thing. And it doesn’t hurt. Much. After a day and half of orientation, we all got into busses and went to our training sites. My training site is Issyk, so it was nothing new for me. As we got closer to town, I started to feel a feeling I haven’t felt in awhile: pride. I was proud because the trainees were not looking down at the dirt roads, wild dogs, or trash fires that usually frames the first impression of Issyk from a trainee point of view, but up at the hills and mountains nearby which are still snowcapped despite the summer heat. Several of them told me that Issyk was pretty. I was floored, because I’ve never heard a trainee say that before. In this blog I frequently mention how awesome Taldykorgan is for a variety of reasons (mainly, because it is), but I really do like Issyk. It’s a pretty place, a great place with great people, history and culture.

Shortly after arriving into town, the trainees met their host families. They were mobbed by their families, smothered in hospitality and curiosity, and then whisked away to eat. What was funny was that what was incomprehensible Russian and Kazakh two years ago actually made sense. Chatting with the host families was hilarious. Some of my favorite things they told me:

“She’s a vegetarian? They still eat meat, right? No? Well…we’ll work with her…but we will leave meat on the table, just in case she changes her mind.”

“He’s very tall. And very thin. We will feed him immediately.”

“An engineer? Interesting. We’ll feed her when we get home.”

And from my original host family during my PST, who also has a Kaz 22 trainee: “We understand why he is so thin, but you Kyle?! Shame! We are having dinner at 7. You will come too. We are having horse.”

Throughout orientation, I have been feeling quite weird, because I these are the exact same things that happened to me when I first arrived. Being hugged by strangers. Eating horse. Being injected with two needles in each arm at the same time. Learning how to say “hello” correctly. Learning how to poop while squatting correctly. And other things.

Perhaps this shows how big of a nerd I really am, but the reoccurring thought in my head today as I interacted with the trainees, answered questions, and just observed what was going on around me was this quote: “All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.”

And it did happen before to me…as of today I have been in Kazakhstan for exactly two years.

Oh Frak...Am I a Cylon?

It’s not the dinner and a movie type, but it still makes smile and get all giddy like an idiot. I just got the official word from Peace Corps: I will be leaving Kazakhstan on November 8th. It’s so good to know that questions such as “where will you be for your birthday?” “When are you leaving Kazakhstan?”, “What are you doing in November?” and “When can you start?” will no longer be answered with “I don’t know”. For the past two years, “I don’t know” has been my fallback phrase. Now, I feel like I can start concretely planning for my life after I’m done here. I won’t go directly back to the United States, but am researching costs of stopping in another country on my way back. Turkey, Greece, and even Egypt are all possibilities. The best part was telling my mother this morning that we will bake cornbread together on Thanksgiving Day. Now, back to work. These sessions for the new trainees won’t write themselves.

In Kazakhstan I've found that music fills a critical void in my life, mainly because it has helped me retain what little sanity I have left. Whenever things get a bit too much, a couple of hours listening to music calms me down. Many of my favorite memories over the past two years involve music. The night I was sworn in as a volunteer, I bonded with the Kaz 19s near Taldykorgan by singing along to old school music videos on MTV piped in from Russia and drinking beer. Other memories regarding music also pop into my mind: impromptu dance parties in my host family’s living room, listening to traditional Kazakh songs on the dombra during Naruyz, and having musical adventures in Taldykorgan by rocking out in a bar until 3am.

I’ve found music to be a great way to foster cultural exchange. Many youth in Kazakhstan like rap and can name at least one American rapper (usually Tupac or Jay-Z), yet get really interested when I start talking about the *other* American musical forms, like jazz, the blues, and even (god forbid) country. Over the past 2 years I’ve also found music to be an easy way to practice Russian and Kazakh on my own. I’ve even taken a liking to Kazakh rap/R&B, and Russian pop. I’ve found that looking up lyrics and matching them with my dictionary is a good way to learn some new words. So what have I been listening to over the past two years? What’s hot in Kazakhstan? Here are three groups/artists that enjoy a fair bit of airplay in Kazakhstan and on my Itunes player:5ivesta Family, "Зачем" (Why?)Who they are: A pop group from Russia...became pretty popular in 2009Why I like them: Their lyrics are easy enough to follow, and their songs usually have a “rap break” that’s pretty cool. Russian rap is my guilty pleasure. And their lead singer’s cute. My counterpart just shakes her head in shame whenever she catches me singing along, but I don’t care. In addition, they have a number in their name, and only the coolest people and musical groups can pull that off, like 311, Pope John Paul II, and Ochocinco. What’s this video about?: This guy sees a woman, and falls in love with her. He keeps on giving her compliments, and gifts, and she accepts them but she won’t give him a definite answer to whether she feels anything toward him and usually will dance with him in the club, but he “goes home alone”. She doesn’t love anyone else, but keeps on kind of stringing him along because there’s no one else around. So the natural question to ask is “Why?", which is the title and the refrain of the song.

Russian pop: my guilty pleasure

Ерболат - "Мен Казакпын" (Yerbolat - I am Kazakh)

Who is he : Yerbolat is a Kazakh rapper/R&B singer, and is pretty popular all over Kazakhstan. Whenever I go to a school assembly, concert, ceremony, one of his songs is usually played as an intro. He even gets some airplay at weddings.Why I like him: Yerbolat has figured out how to blend Kazakhstan’s old history with new beats, and makes it sound very cool in the process. Many of his songs feature the dombra and several other traditional instruments. He also raps frequently about Kazakhstan (and even follows the American rap music tradition of making fun of other regions in Kazakhstan…East Coast vs. West Coast anyone?), in Kazakh, the national language. Yerbolat also has some pretty intense music videos, including one which basically involves people fighting in a boxing ring, dog fights, and copious amounts of him and his crew firing machine guns in the air because that’s awesome. If you are into that sort of thing.

I’ve also heard that he’s originally from Taldykorgan, which is just further proof in my mind that Taldykorgan is the best city in Kazakhstan.What’s the video about?: This music video shows the highlights of Kazakhstan’s history, with images of the old mosque in Turkestan, the Soviet takeovers and uprisings after the first world war, the first space flight (everyone knows that the Russians launched the first manned space flight. What people don’t know is that it was launched from Kazakh soil), nuclear tests and protests, the rise of Astana, and ends with some footage of Kazakh athletes in the Beijing Olympics. Yerbolot’s the guy with the microphone.

When I get back to America, and people ask me "what's Kazakhstan?" I think I'll just show them this video

Alexander Rubak “Fairytales”Who is he: A wicked talented dude who is rumored to have a nasty mean streak behind stage. He was born in Belarus, but then moved to Norway. You can read more about him here. Why I like him: This guy sings in English, but I don’t think I would have never heard of him unless I lived in Europe or Asia. He won Eurovison 2009 with the highest score ever, which is like "American Idol", except every country sends their best musical act. He plays the violin, and actually makes it look awesome (I’m not a violin fan, but he makes it look cool). I like his lyrics and his songs have a lot of energy, the type that makes people get up and dance in crazy circles, myself included. In my mind, he’s what Jack Johnson should have been if he was awesome.What’s the video about: At this point, your English is probably better than mine. So sit back, listen, and figure it out.

Playing the violin has never looked so cool.

When Peace Corps staff talk about what Pre Service Training (PST) is like for new trainees to Kazakhstan, they usually say its like "drinking from a fire hose" because of the amount and the speed of information that trainees are exposed to. It's fast and it can be overwhelming, kind of like trying to stop a fire hose on full blast by trying to drink the water.

It's not like this, exactly. Or at all. But there is a lot of stuff for trainees to learn at PST. (Speaking of learning, who knew that you could post videos on a blog?! Now that I can do this, I'll upload later some videos that I made during the youth leadership camp in Issyk)

If PST for a trainee is like trying to quench your thirst from the local fire department, then the days leading up to PST for Volunteer Technical Assistants (VTA) are like attempting to get a glass of water by sticking it under Niagara Falls. I say this because VTA's play a role in organizing PST usually by taking a large amount of information, sorting out the useful stuff and cramming it down into comprehensible sessions that a person freshly arrived from America should be able to understand.

For the VTAs to the Youth Development Program (YD), sorting through large amounts of information is especially important because this program is very new to Kazakhstan. It was a pilot program last year, and from that experience Peace Corps has learned some powerful lessons on how to work with youth in Kazakhstan and they want to incorporate these lessons into their future trainings. This means that a vast majority of what was done with the YD program last year needed to be scrapped, reworked, or plain old reinvented. This task of redeveloping training this year falls to me, another volunteer and 3 talented Kazakhstan nationals. So while I've completed my primary work assignment, I've still got a ways to go before I finish in Kazakhstan because I'll be involved with this until early November.

As of late I've been sitting in front of a computer for days designing various technical sessions. Some sessions are easy to make because I've done them before like PDM, grassroots fund raising and leadership trainings. However, some sessions are very hard because I've never heard of the concepts before. The hardest part is figuring out how some American concepts regarding youth development fit into a Kazakhstan framework.

For example, how does the 40 Assets Approach apply to Kazakhstan youth NGOs? Although I usually end each day with a headache, it's fun to research new topics and to design trainings that Peace Corps will use for up to half a decade into the future.

And that's not all. When the actual trainees arrive, the VTAs role switches to a mentor, translator, liaison, facilitator, teacher, storyteller, cheerleader, advocate, musician, cook, and anything else that is required to assist new trainees and Peace Corps staff for 11 weeks. I'm looking forward to it!

Being a VTA is fun but it is a lot of work. If anyone has a spare duplicator that they'd want to send to Kazakhstan it would be greatly appreciated.

in the hills and mountains overlooking Almaty on a hazy day

After doing some hiking in the hills and mountains above Almaty, I took a quick trip to Karabulak, my old site. My reason: to check up on our grant project and grab documents to start the final report. My grant project involved starting Kazakh classes for adults in Karabulak, a large village and my old site. You can read about the details about the project here. When I got transferred to Issyk last year, I had a talk with my old director and Peace Corps about continuing the project. Because I was leaving Karabulak, I was given a choice: either scrap the project, or continue on remotely. I decided to do the latter, mainly because I knew how excited the community was about this project. Although I wouldn’t be able to come to Karabulak as much as I’d like (I originally planned on visiting once a month, but things got in the way), we had so many community partners like the local government, schools, teachers, and interested people that I was confident that it would still be successful without me being around every day. When we received the funds in early December, we went to Karabulak and bought the materials to build tables, chairs, a whiteboard, and the books. I haven’t been back since. Going back to Karabulak wasn’t as weird as the first time. It was as if I never left. My host mother still scolded me in rapid fire Russian about how I need to eat more. My old director still told everyone about how I thought I almost blew up my host families house. The young woman on the third floor of the Akimat (government building) building still hit on me, and I still shot her down like I did during the 10 months I worked there. And everyone thought this awkward exchange was just as funny as the first time it happened.Some things never change. But what did change was the project. For the first time, I got a chance to see everything first hand. In the basement of the Akimat, a huge room was converted into a classroom. I saw all of the chairs and tables we bought in December. In addition to the Kazakh/Russian textbooks we bought, I saw 9 Kazakh/Russian Dictionaries. I asked my director where they came from, and she said that they were donated. My director and I then went to lunch with my host mother, and while we ate she told more about our project. She said that after I left in December, they built the tables, found a teacher, and organized everything. In the first group, 30 adults came, but 7 dropped out because there was “no homework”. They finished the basic course, and then the community decided that the courses be opened for youth in the summer. Currently 10 kids are taking Kazakh courses. Since I left, Karabulak has had 3 different Akims (mayors), and each endorsed the project. Furthermore, the current Akim said that as long as the courses are going and that there is interest in the community, that the utilities and rent will be free, and they will continue to pay the salary of the teacher indefinitely. It also seems that the community has plans to expand the courses. Karabulak has a sizable portion of emigrated Kazakhs from China. Although it is way complicated, the short story about them is that they left for the western portions of China when the Soviets came into Kazakhstan. Because they left so long ago, they did not learn Russian. Many do not speak Chinese, although some families have lived there for over 50 years. They only speak Kazakh. And although Kazakh is an official language, enough people in Karabulak (and nearby Taldykorgan) speak Russian, so that knowing some Russian is very helpful. Therefore, people in the town are looking at starting a Kazakh - Russian course, where people who only know Kazakh can learn some Russian. This has been pushed especially by the director of the local hospital (where I went the first time I was hospitalized), who says that his doctors, who are mostly Russian and Korean, are having a hard time properly treating people. It’d be easier, he said if his patients knew some Russian, in addition to the Kazakh that his staff knows. But overall, everyone is very happy and proud of the project, and it looks like it is going to continue in the future. I had a fun time running around Karabulak talking to the stakeholders and getting their accounts of how the project progressed as well as collecting receipts for their purchases chairs and books. With their stories, and what I have saw, writing the final report will be an easy process, one that I hope to complete by the end of September.

The thing that makes me the happiest is that the people who donated to the project were not forgotten. “Do you know who they are? Do you have their information? We’d like to thank them!” I was told on several occasions. While I do not know all of the people who gave to the project, they said that when I come back for the final time, they will have something for me to give to the people that I know who donated, either personally or through the offical donor list that Peace Corps provided me earlier during the summer.

What they are planning to do, I do not know, and they wouldn’t tell me. But the main message from the people of Karabulak to everyone who made this project possible, named or unnamed is a hearty thank you. And also a thank you from me. I had pictures, but my USB on my camera is corrupted, and need to get another. My old director said that she will send them to me. When I get them, I’ll post them.

On Wednesday, with a click of a mouse, I officially finished my work with the Local Community Foundation! The mouse click sent an email that contained our final report for the grant that took my organization to Ukraine to attend a personalized seminar about new fundraising methods. I think it was a very effective trip, as my director came back spouting information about 50/50 raffles, cold calling techniques, and sponsorships. I could have told her about these things, but it wouldn’t have the same effect as actually seeing these things in action. And besides, she got to spend a lot of time picking the brain of Yakov Rohalin, a man who in 2002 won the “best fundraiser in the world” award. He’s a pretty big deal. He’s got an interesting story, and you can read about him and the organization which my director visited (in English) here: What will come of this trip…I do not know. It’s the beginning, but the implications could be huge for my organization in the coming years. I wish I could stick around to find out, but my time helping this organization is done. Perhaps the next volunteer can pick up where I left off. I know I should feel really happy to have finished my primary work in Kazakhstan, as that was the main reason I spent 2 years of my life here. Having an opportunity to assist NGOs was the main reason I came to Kazakhstan in the first place, and now I’m officially done. I know I should be ecstatic, and proud. In reality, I just feel kind of numb. And mentally exhausted. Perhaps my mind hasn’t totally grasped everything; it hasn’t hit me yet. So…I’m going to spend a couple of days hiking in the hills and small mountains above Almaty so I can get a closer look at this monstrosity, search for chili peppers to perfect my vegetarian chili recipe, and just sleep for a couple of days.

I wrote the following email today:

“I know I have a bunch of free days. I feel stupid that I didn't use all of them. It’s just that we OCAPs travel more for business, you know? Different from the EDU/UNI people. I think YD will have the same leave situations in the future, but it’s not in our hands; we won’t be PCV’s for much longer! Can’t wait for the Kaz 22s and PST! And also COS conference! It'll be great!"

Peace Corps loves acronyms and abbreviations for everything. As much as I really hate reducing words and phrases to letters, I've found that I do it a lot myself.

So here is a list of some of the most common abbreviations that are widely used for volunteers in Kazakhstan:

OCAP – Organizational and Community Assistance Program. The people who help with NGO assistance, like me! However, this program is now discontinued.

YD – Youth Development Program. The people who help youth organizations and children. Kaz 22’s will be the first group with only YD volunteers. This program replaces OCAP.

Kaz (insert number here) – Every volunteer that arrives in Kazakhstan comes with a group, and each group is given a number. I came with the 20th group of volunteers to Kazakhstan, so I’m a Kaz 20. The newest group to Kazakhstan will be called the Kaz 22’s. What is important to note that while it’s rare, multiple groups can come within the year. So while I’m a Kaz 20, Peace Corps has been working with Kazakhstan for about 17 years (the first group arrived in 1993).

EDU – Education Volunteers; the teachers at the equivalent of K-12 schools.

UNI – University Volunteers; the teachers at colleges and universities.

PCV – Peace Corps Volunteer.

PST – Pre-Service Training. This is a 10-12 week crash course for Peace Corps Trainees that teaches how to live, function, and work in Kazakhstan. It’s pretty intense, with a standard 6 day work week crammed with language, cultural, and technical sessions.

PST: The time when "things happen"

PCT – Peace Corps Trainee. Newcomers to Kazakhstan are called this until they are officially sworn in to become volunteers at the end of PST.

COS – Close of Service. This is the date for when a volunteer’s service is completed and they get to go home.

TIK - This Is Kazakhstan. This is used when things can’t really be explained any other way. How can a school organize a festival which includes a banquet for everyone in the village, in 20 minutes? How exactly did the taxi driver pass 2 semis on a bridge with 1 lane with oncoming traffic in the middle of winter? Why is lunch at 1pm, and not at 12? Where exactly did that bottle of vodka come from? Some things are better off remaining mysteries. TIK explains this.

TIK ≠ "THIS IS SPARTA!!!"

I spent the last week helping the Local Community Foundation to organize their first youth summer camp. It was focused on youth leadership and project design. 17 young people from all over the Almaty Oblast came to the camp, and my director and I showed them how to write a project proposal plan, a budget, and identify community resources. In short, it was kind of like the Project Design Management seminar I helped organize in Taldykorgan for Peace Corps, but for youth. And way more fun.

Why do good kids go bad? This poster has the answer. Too bad its a jumble...half upside down, half in Russian and Kazakh.

"Parts of a project" in Kazakh.

Although learning how to design a community project doesn't sound like a sexy theme for a youth summer camp, it wasn't all we did. We also had a couple of sessions on leadership and played a lot of team building and leadership games. The LCF partnered with an ecology camp in Ecik, and they organized several day trips for us to see many of the cool things around Issyk like the Golden Man, Lake Issyk, and the waterfalls behind Turgen, a small town about 15km from Issyk. Through them, I learned so much more about the history of Ecik and the Golden Man.

Lake Issyk. Located about 15 km from my house, it is a lake hemmed in by mountains, and also provides some water for the town. According to my director,about 50 years ago (I forget the exact date) the dam that held in the water broke, and all of the water rushed downhill, taking out the town below and killing a lot of people.

Opening the door to the "rock yurt". Yurts are traditional Kazakh homes, as back in the day Kazakhs were nomadic. Yurts are usually made of cloth, and are warm in the winter and cool in the summer. This yurt is special, because it's made of stone.

But what really made the camp enjoyable were the kids themselves. They were fantastic, motivated, and always interested. And they were very musical. Out of the 17 youth, 6 could play the guitar and dombra, 4 were enrolled in music schools, and all the rest had some musical ability.

Talent. She has it.

And they sang. And danced. And played dombras, drummed on tables and rocked out on the 3 guitars they brought. On their breaks they would have impromptu jam sessions. They would invent songs on the fly about anything: the weather, the food, how they were feeling. It was kind of like watching a 5 day Glee marathon. Although I had to physically cut them off so that we could continue our work, I enjoyed every minute of it.

We spent hours having conversations about the history of jazz music, and the stories behind some of the most popular Kazakh songs. It also made me realize how much I miss playing my saxophone. Since coming to Kazakhstan, I haven't been very musical, and I miss it very much. When I get back to America, finding a sax is going to be a high priority.

It was by far the most fun I've had at a camp, ever.

Hanging out

After the camp, I was exhausted. My director and I worked 8 days in a row setting everything up and doing the camp. And while I want to curl up on my couch and watch episodes of Dexter (my now second favorite TV show), I can't take a break quite yet. I have 15 days to close 2 grants, organize a session on fund raising for other local NGOs, and another summer camp session.

Many of the emails I've received from future volunteers have this question at the end. And every time I don't know what to write.

So the only thing I mention is to make as much time as possible for hanging out with the people you love and relaxing. Do all of the things you love to do and get in all of your guilty pleasures. Eat McDonald's breakfast, even though it is bad for you. Make Mexican food. Go bowling. Go out with friends to clubs, drink, dance, and be merry. If you don't need a summer job, then don't get one. If you have one, use all of your leave days. And a couple of the medical ones. Take lots of pictures. See the family. Destroy the little brother, sister, or cousins at Mario Party.

During the summer before I left I did some of this but not do as much as I should have. Or could have. I was thinking that I had to be always on the go, always doing something, and that if I wasn't busy I was a failure. I kind of regret that.

Kazakhstan and Peace Corps will come soon enough. Work will also come soon enough. The trick is to prepare for it while not overlooking and skipping over the people, friends, and family right in front of you. They will be your strongest advocates, cheerleaders, your base. It’s the memories of the good times and pictures of them that will help you when the going gets rough.

Speaking of taking it easy, although I desperately want to take some time off I won’t be able to for the near future. July is a very busy month. It’s my goal to wrap up all of my projects and close down my work in Ecik by the end of the month so that I can take a break until training. Earlier in the week I broke the news to my director and organization, and while they were sad that I am leaving them sooner than later, they understood.

There is a lot for work for us to do together before I'm done: organizing 2 seasons of a leadership summer camp, writing reports to close out 2 grants, and facilitating a half day seminar on grassroots fund raising. To say the least, I'll be spending a lot of time at work.

From here until August, every day will be full of fun...or work.

"What should I know before I go?" This is a question that I've received a lot recently, and one that is the most difficult to answer. Usually I tell people to search on the internet for information, but I think that's a copout answer because I believe that the best way a person can truly know about Kazakhstan is to actually go visit, and the only way to truly know about Peace Corps is to do it. Blogs, pictures, and conversations can only explain so much. And there is only so much information on Kazakhstan available in the US, unfortunately. Want to learn more about French history? Piece of cake! Want to learn more about early Kazakh history? Good luck. But I think it is smart for a person to learn more about a place where they will be living for the next two years before they get there.

So when I get this question, I usually recommend a book. As Dr. Seuss so eloquently said, "The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go."

3 books about Kazakhstan and Central Asia that I found very interesting and aren't boring

Apples are from Kazakhstan: The Land that Disappeared by Christopher Robbins. This is a travel log of the author, who went around Kazakhstan doing some pretty cool things like hanging with guys who hunt with Eagles, eating Kazakhstan's national dish, and even spending time with the president of Kazakhstan. I found it very funny, random, and real, and would recommend it to anyone who is coming to Kazakhstan, or has someone that will be going in the near future.

 2&3. Setting the East Ablaze: Lenin's Dream of an Empire in Asia and The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia, both by Peter Hopkirk. Before the Cold War, there was the "Great Game": the race between Russian and Great Britain to colonize Central Asia. While Kazakhstan only gets a shout out in these books, I highly recommend them because they give a good account of historical events in Central Asia during the 18th, and early 19th centuries and the countries that were influencing these events. Don't let the size or content of the book intimidate you. While it is chalk full with historical references it reads like a cross between James Bond and Hatchet with people getting body parts chopped off, daring chases over mountain passes in winter, honor and glory, epic land battles and general acts of courage and badassness. They are pretty sweet.

This is a question that has been asked by practically every new Peace Corps trainee to Kazakhstan. It's a smart question. While Kazakhstan is the coldest Peace Corps country, it can get to over 100F in the summer and dip to below -40F for days at a time. And that's just the beginning. There's snow, sleet, hail, rain, ice, dust storms, sand storms, wind storms, and practically anything else that Mother Nature could throw down from the heavens. How does a person pack for weather like that?

Very carefully.

Many volunteers have found success with clothing that is durable, lightweight and versatile. If it's fragile in the states, it probably won't survive here. There is a packing list that is given to all trainees, and while it's not bad, it's not a perfect list, and will never be because everyone is slightly different. Some people will need 5 pairs of socks. Others will need 7. It's just how it is.

Clothes aren't the only thing to consider when packing. The best packing advice I received came from a Kaz 19 who told me this during my training to "pack what keeps you sane."

This is why this post won't say exactly what to bring, or what not to bring. There is no "miracle perfect list" packing for Kazakhstan. The point of this post is to state that I'd recommend for anyone coming to Kazakhstan to bring things that are versatile, tough, multi purpose, and will keep you from ripping your hair out during the 6-8 month Siberian winter when isolation, cold, and extended periods indoors becomes a factor for all. If one brings these types of things while using the Peace Corps packing list as a guide (but not the bible), they will have not gone wrong in their packing.

So when it comes to material stuff, what has kept me sane?

5 things that I'm thankful that I have in Kazakhstan

Oblivion, Homeworld, Harvest Moon, and Pokemon (video games) – I'm a nerd. I'll admit it. However, when I thought of packing for Peace Corps, the words "video games" were the last thing on my mind. I actually brought the computer game Oblivion with me on accident; I left it in my CD drive because I was playing it the night before I left Davenport. I'm glad I did. While I spend my fair share of time learning language, visiting friends, working, and having cultural adventures, I've learned that you shouldn't do this 24/7. I needed time to myself; time to hang out and do nothing. Add in some brutal winters where you can't spend too much time outside because it's too cold stuck in an apartment by yourself over a 5 day holiday weekend, and I found myself quickly racking up some time playing Pokemon. I even "caught them all", although if you ask me about it in person, I'll deny it.

 Thermal underwear. I'm happy that I didn't skimp on these. I bought a pair that was used by mountain climbers: lightweight, good until -50, doesn't smell after multiple uses. Go ahead, laugh it up, but some places in Kazakhstan are so cold that smelling is the last thing on your mind; staying warm is the main priority.

 Ranch Dressing and Taco seasoning – My cooking skills have improved drastically since I've come to Kazakhstan, and not exactly by choice. Moving out on my own meant I had to cook for myself, and not in the "lets go to the corner store and buy something to reheat in the microwave" sense. If I want something special, I must make it from scratch (or pay a ton of money for it in Almaty). And while I can make my own taco seasoning, there's something about the prepackaged stuff and Ranch dressing that reminds me of better times.

 Swiss Army knife – my little brother is the Boy Scout of the family, but that doesn't mean that I didn't learn a thing or two about being prepared. I've found that my Swiss Army Knife has made life easier for me in Kazakhstan, and it was a late addition to my final packing list. I'm happy I brought it, because it comes in handy in many sort of situations. From chopping some cheese and tomatoes for lunch while hiking in Kyrgyzstan to cutting rope to play the teambuilding game "the electric fence" I find myself using that knife quite often.

 Hoodies – As much as I hate the Patriots, Bill Belichick got one thing right: Hoodies are comfortable. There is nothing better than coming back to my apartment after a long trip, unpacking #4, using #5 to open a bottle of wine, using #3 to make dinner, sit around in #2 under my pajama bottoms with #6, and play #1 until the wee hours of the morning. Sad? Perhaps. But that's the stuff that keeps me sane. I think. J

 4 things that I regret bringing to Kazakhstan

Anti Diarrhea tablets – Oh, I used them a lot in the beginning. But I didn't need to bring them. As soon as I hit the ground in Kazakhstan, the Peace Corps doctors gave me an awesome medical kit that had every basic OTC drug I could think of. And a couple that I couldn't. If I knew this before I could have saved the weight and brought something more important. Like jellybeans.

 8 ties, 5 dress shirts, and 3 dress pants – It's not that I regret bringing ties and dress shirts. I use them in my work, as I interact with local, national, and international NGOs and donor organizations on a daily basis. I just regret bringing so many. In Kazakhstan it is ok to wear clothing multiple days in a row provided it doesn't smell and is in good repair. Knowing that, I could have brought 3 dress shirts, 2 dress pants, and 2 ties, and saved the extra weight for something better like polo shirts.

 Books – This one hurts, as I used to work in a children's library. I love books, and will read practically anything. However, Peace Corps has a library with material that isn't great, but not bad either. And with new technology like Kindle, the Gutenburg Project, and plain old PDF files, reading books electronically has never been easier. The books that I brought were used for fuel to light my host family's banya during a very cold winter.

  Khaki or tan dress pants – I have a pair, but I haven't worn them since training. This is just my experience, but I have yet to see a man in a business setting with these. When I go hiking in the mountains above Almaty, I see many people with cargo pants, an old favorite of mine, but when it comes to business, navy blue and black are kings.

 The 3 most important things that I bought in Kazakhstan

Hiking backpack – I didn't have this initially when I first came to Kazakhstan, but got extremely lucky and found one in Taldykorgan's bazaar for 5000 KzT. The reason why I bought a hiking backpack was that my entire original luggage that I brought back in 2008 was destroyed. Completely. Like the first humans, I learned that it is easier to roll things than to carry them, and brought two rolling suitcases with me to Kazakhstan. Within 3 months, my luggage was annihilated: beaten to death on rocks and stones stuck in snow banks, and bogged down in mud. When I leave Kazakhstan, It'll be with a hiking backpack and a medium sized duffle bag. The phrase, "pack what you can carry" is one to be taken seriously.

 Winter coat – Smart, because it worked out in my favor. I brought a light coat and a dress coat with me to Kazakhstan, as something to get me through early fall. I did this because I wasn't sure what type of coat I'd need in Kazakhstan. Trainees don't learn initially where they will be placed until about halfway through training, and since Kazakhstan is such a big place, I decided to save my money to buy my winter coat there. I didn't want to be sent to the south, and have a heavy coat that I wouldn't use. On the other side, I didn't want to end up in the north and be unequipped. So I waited until after the "great site announcement," took a Sunday afternoon with a fellow trainee, went to Almaty, and bought a winter coat that was appropriate for my site.

 Winter boots – Same story as the winter coat. However, I must say that the boots I have here are the warmest things I have ever bought. Winter footwear has been a cultural battle between me and all of Kazakhstan. I hate boots and never wear them in the states. They are big and clunky and loud. But boots are needed for Kazakhstan winters, and I learned this quickly after stepping into cold puddles, falling on my butt, and generally being miserable.

Every July in America, about 80 people who complete the long and grueling application process to join the Peace Corps begin to get their invitation letters to come to Kazakhstan. They have the rest of the summer to get their lives in order, settle their affairs, and prepare to live for 2 years in a country drastically different from their own. Excitement ensues. And nervousness. And anxiety. They want to know everything they can about what to bring, what to wear, what to learn, and how to live. And why not? Joining the Peace Corps is kind of a big deal. They are not the only people who are excited. Every July in Kazakhstan, about 100 Peace Corps Volunteers begin to get really stoked for these new future volunteers to come. For some, the excitement means that they’ll be able to leave their organizations and schools to go back to America, knowing that someone else will proudly carry on and build upon the work they have started. For others, the excitement comes with the hope that they will gain a “sitemate”: a fellow volunteer that lives (relatively) close whom you can collaborate on projects, have fun, and generally be awesome together. Others are excited just to be excited. They all want to help the new people along as much as possible, because they were in the same place one, sometimes two years before and they know how it feels. And why not? Being in the Peace Corps is kind of a big deal. So these two groups, the prospective volunteers in America and current volunteers in Kazakhstan begin to reach out to one another. With the presence of the internet, this has become easier than ever. There are message boards, Facebook groups, blogs, and Google-knows-what-else . For awhile I’ve been fielding about 2-3 emails a week from prospective volunteers. While I love talking to prospective volunteers, I’ve started to wonder why I haven’t blogged more on topics that would directly interest them. So, I’ve decided that my next three blog posts will focus on the top three questions I’ve received so far from people that will soon come to Kazakhstan: · What should I bring? · What should I know before I go? · Any other advice? As always, my opinions are only one person, just one volunteer that lives in Kazakhstan, and should be taken as such, and nothing more. However, if anyone has any questions and wishes to discuss anything in more detail feel free to contact me at kyle.charles17@gmail.com. I dislike message boards and Facebook, but I love email.

Today, the summer volunteer at the Local Community Foundation (LCF) remarked that lately I've been smiling a lot and asked what was so funny in my life. I told her that there was nothing funny in particular, but that things in my life are going very well. It's not a singular event that has made me feel this way, but a bunch of smaller things grouped together. And while maybe even talking about it may cause it to end, I figure that if I'm going to blog about the difficult times, I should also talk about the good times too. (After I typed that, I knocked on wood, spit air three times, and moved my evil eye from my bag to my back pocket. I should be ok now.)

So why have I been so happy lately? I'm happy because:

The LCF gained 2 new employees, a summer intern, and a lawyer. This is very important, because in August, the LCF will lose their grant and project managers to different work. However, now we have replacements. Even better, the project manager decided to continue to work with the LCF into July part time to help train her replacement! Our office is a little bit crowded right now, but I love it because there is always someone to work with, and everyone is so nice. And the new people and intern insist on stuffing me full of cookies every day. On the other side I shared some Girl Scout Thin Mints that my loving mother sent me, and among 6 people, they ate only 3 cookies! They said they were "interesting", which is code for "not very good". Their loss, as I will eat the rest.

 I also learned that I too have a new job. In August I will become a training assistant for the newest group of Peace Corps volunteers to Kazakhstan. While my exact role and duties are to be determined, I'm very excited. If you told me 2 years ago that I'd not only still be in Kazakhstan but helping teach new volunteers about Kazakhstan and Peace Corps, I would call you a liar. Even reflecting where I was at physically and mentally even 4 months ago, this would have been unimaginable. This Peace Corps journey has been a long and winding one, and I think that this final role here will bring a sense of closure to my time here. This new job also brought me one step closer to learning the exact date I'd leave Kazakhstan since I will stay until the completion of the training of the new volunteers. So now I'm targeting somewhere around the 6th of November.

 I also took a mini vacation to the large town of Zharkent. Situated about 350 kilometers to the east of Almaty and about 50 kilometers from the border of China, Zharkent is unforgettable to me as it was the place where I cut a sheep's face with a kitchen knife. I went mainly to hang out with a fellow Kaz 20, relax, and see a project that a new volunteer designed during the PDM conference that I helped organize in Taldykorgan a couple of months ago. The project was a summer English camp, where interested students at the local college could get extra grammar lessons and practice talking in English in a fun environment so that they wouldn't forget what they learned over the long summer. It was cool to see this project evolve, from an idea scribbled on butcher block paper to being realized in a classroom. But best, was just hanging out. There was chili, French fries from scratch, chili with French fries, a Southpark episode about Kanye West, great conversation with friends old and new, an outdoor picnic, and a Kazakh spaghetti style dinner where the conversation centered on obscure magical pagan traditions.

 For the really random things, even for Kazakhstan. I bought a mango in Almaty from a strange man in the Green Bazaar; the first one I've eaten in 2 years. I got a free ride from a Serbian man because we talked about the World Cup and how awesome soccer is from Almaty to Ecik. Kids in my apartment complex have been nice. My neighbor gave me some homemade bread. When I find cocoa powder, I'll try to make brownies for her. Dogs haven't troubled me. A good friend from Kostanai will visit me soon on her way to paradise (Europe). It's summer. Tomorrow is July; I have only 4 full months in Kazakhstan. I don't have to work from July 4th through the 7th, as it is a national holiday in Kazakhstan. My father called… all the way from Afghanistan. Fanta has a new flavor called "lemonade" which tastes like diet cream soda.

 

 And I love all of it.

Every weekday I do the exact same actions of millions of Americans: I get up, eat breakfast, get dressed, and go to work. However it's the process of actually getting to work that serves as a daily reminder to me of exactly how far I am away from my home country: I stick out my hand and hitch a ride.

I am such a rebel. This goes totally against what I was taught as a child. It is engrained in American children to never enter cars with unknown persons, even if they have candy and a lost puppy. We are taught in America that if you hop in a stranger's car, you will be kidnapped and killed and you will never see your parents again and all people who hitch rides are crazy escaped felons from prison that will stab you in the neck while you drive and then steal your car. Yet, even with those reinforced principles in my head, I stand on the main highway with my hand out every day waiting for someone to pick me up. This is because hitching in Kazakhstan and especially in Ecik is the only way to get a taxi and the fastest way to travel. And it's part of the culture. In Kazakhstan and many Central Asian countries, any car is a taxi, and any person is a potential passenger.

In principle, this is something I think that we as Americans could adapt to our lives. Imaging driving to work every day, stopping once or twice to pick up 2 or 3 people who work in the same highrise or building. They pay you a dollar each way. That's could be lunch money at Wendys! It could revolutionize carpooling. Too bad that in America this would never work because we believe that hitchhiking = death.

I don't have to take a taxi if I don't want to. I could take the bus but they have become less frequent since school finished in June. If I see a bus I take it, as it is slightly cheaper than a taxi (40 vs 50 tenge), but waiting for a bus could make me hours late to work. Walking is another option. However, Ecik situated at the base of a mountain range, so I'd have to walk uphill to work. This takes about an hour and it's not very fun in bad weather. However my future nieces, nephews, and godchildren don't need to know how often I did this, as I'm not above lying. I already know what I'll tell them: "When I was in Peace Corps, I walked uphill an hour every day to work for two years through Siberian winters, and I wasn't even paid! So don't complain about how hard it is to hoverboard to school…"

So, how do I catch a taxi to get to work? It's not very hard, but slightly different than the American views of hitchhiking:

First, nobody in Kazakhstan sticks their thumb out to catch a ride. Instead, it is more common to point a finger, a hand, or in some cases, a whole arm. In Ecik, people use hand signals to communicate with drivers. For example, from my apartment, if I want to go to work, I point uphill. If I'm at work and wish to go home, I point my index finger toward the ground and circle it, because I live in the outskirts of town, where you'd have to turn around to go back to the center of town. If I wish to go to Almaty, I point to the direction of the city. If I don't want to get into a particular car, I shake my head once like a pitcher rejecting their catcher's choice of throwing a fast ball and it will pass me by. If the car is full, or if the driver doesn't want to stop they can do the same thing.

When a car stops, I stick my head in the window and scan the vehicle quickly while telling the driver where I want to go and how much I'm willing to pay to get there. What am I looking for? All of the things that our parents warned us about as teenagers: crazy drivers, alcohol, drunk people, cars with NOS, short shifters, and turbo boost meters seatbelts, loud music, and joyriders. This introspection goes both ways. While I'm looking at the driver, the driver is looking at me too to see if I am drunk or crazy. I've been in cars that have stopped for a person, then suddenly drive away because the person was drunk beyond belief. Nobody wants to take a drunk person anywhere, and nobody wants to ride with a drunk. On the particular day that I'm blogging about, I shared the car with a 9 year old girl who was going all by herself.

Is the car safe? I'm not a total gearhead, but examining the outside of the car while it stops and sticking my head inside, I can get sense of whether it and its driver can carry me to my destination safely. Is it falling apart or heavily dented? Held together by tape? Does it sound more like a lawn mower than a real car? Do the breaks squeal and the tires lock up…on dry pavement? If I see any of those things or if my gut says "don't get in", I give a head shake and wait for another car. It's not a perfect system and I've blogged about a car accident I was in a year ago, but since that time I've become more careful.

When the car stops is also when I negotiate how much I'm willing to pay. Metered taxis are rare to nonexistent, so haggling is common. Many towns have a fair price: in Ecik I can take a taxi for 50 tenge anywhere in the city limits during the day. In bad weather and at night the prices can be 70 to 100 tenge. Although it's usually 50 tenge, this doesn't stop taxi drivers for asking for more, especially if they think I don't know the standard rate (which I do). Anyone that overcharges me and refuses to budge gets a simple, "I've lived in Ecik since 2008. I know how much a taxi costs." Then I head nod them along and wait for another car. A little bit of patience goes a long way.

One good thing about my time in Kazakhstan is that it has made me a more direct person who is willing to speak up to get what I want and to stand up for myself. There is a big difference between, "I'm going to go to the center. Is 50 tenge ok?" than "I'm going to the center for 50 tenge.", although one would use the exact same words in Russian. As a non native Russian or Kazakh speaker, I've learned that intonation is important.

Talking about the price up front cuts down drastically on the chances of getting ripped off. Although this hasn't happened to me in a long time, if a taxi driver tries to rip me off, usually by not giving me change (which is why having exact change is valuable), it usually causes me to start yelling in rapid fire Russian about how I shouldn't be taken as an idiot and my opinions about honor and shame that would make my Karabulak babushka say "Great job!". For reasons I don't know, people get surprised and taken back when I start screaming. But this rarely happens. The only time I pay early is if the driver stops for gas. Why would a driver stop for gas? A professional taxi driver would always have a full tank. The answer to this is that not every taxi person in Kazakhstan is a professional, as all cars can be taxis. And not all cars have a full tanks of gas.

When I get to work, I pay the agreed price, and leave. After that, I walk around the corner and up the stairs into the Local Community Foundation's one room office, and begin my work day. Just like millions of other Americans

I just get there differently.

Whenever I talk to family and friends back in America, the question “what are you doing this weekend?” usually causes a sarcastic response from me. Not that I intend to be mean, but weekends are not a big deal for me in Kazakhstan. Usually I’m so exhausted from the week that I spend Saturday and Sunday as mental recharge days so I can go all out during the week. Earlier I posted about what an average weekday was like for me. I decided to do it again, but with what I did during this past weekend. It's not exciting...but it's what I do.

Saturday 8:30am – Wake up. Eat breakfast, yogurt with oatmeal. I don’t like to eat breakfast in the morning. I prefer it for lunch, or dinner, but as of late I’ve been getting hungry more often. It could be the new diet. 9:00am – Discovered that Saturdays are the day when Ecik doesn’t have water! During the summer, many large towns and cities have a day when they shut down the water systems to repair pipes or to divert water to local farms. My neighbor says that it will come on late in the day, perhaps around 5pm. I usually take Saturdays to clean and wash my clothes. However, it is impossible without water so I need to find something else to do. 10am -9pm – Instead of cleaning, I watch the 1st and 2nd seasons of Arrested Development, and read Ivanhoe. I’d like to say that I’m doing “Peace Corps things” on the weekend like teaching kids, saving the world, or whatever people imagine the ‘ideal Peace Corps experience’ is, but truthfully on weekends that I’m not traveling or working I watch recorded TV shows or read books. Sunday 8:30am – Wake up. 9am-3pm – Watch the rest of the 2nd season, and parts of the 3rd season of Arrested development 4pm – the water is back on! Actually it came on yesterday after dinner, but I was busy watching Arrested Development. I washed my clothes, mopped my apartment, and cleaned everything. 5pm – Went to the local store to buy potatoes. Along the way, I came across some little girls that have befriended me. They told me that some boys were throwing rocks at them, and this was very painful. I told them that in America, boys trouble girls because they like them, but if I saw the boys, I’d tell them to stop. Along the way to the store, I did see the boys, and although I’m a fan of rock throwing (at dogs that try to eat me, not girls) I told them the exact same thing: that it’s a tradition in America that boys trouble girls that they like. At the store I bought potatoes (2 kilograms = 1 dollar) 5:30pm – while walking back the girls came to me and thanked me and said that the boys have stopped throwing rocks. They asked me what I said to them. I said it was a secret between men and that they’d learn when they were married and had kids of their own. 7:00 – Although I’ve hinted that my time in Kazakhstan has enhanced my cooking skills, I can now say that I think I have mastered potato soup from scratch. I’ve been tinkering with it for many months, and I think I’ve now perfected my recipe! If you give me water, potatoes, flour, milk, and some salt and pepper, I can make a mean pot soup! 7:00-8:30 – Read more Ivanhoe. It’s not the best book I’ve read in Kazakhstan, but very interesting, and reading makes me feel more productive than watching episode after episode of Arrested Development. 8:30-12am – type out emails on Outlook while watching the Italy/New Zealand, and Brazil/Ivory Coast games on repeat and get ready for Monday.

Scientists say that humans dream every night, but I usually don’t remember mine. Once in a while especially when I’m under a lot of stress, I tend to have vivid dreams. Two nights ago I had a horrible dream that freaked me out.

In my dream, I had just arrived back in the US after finishing Peace Corps. I went to Davenport Iowa, my hometown, and went to my house, where I rang the doorbell. My mother answered, and she was surprised to see me. And then she said in Russian, “Why are you here? This isn’t your home.” In addition to my mother, random people from my past and present also appeared in my dream which made it even weirder. A fraternity brother, a childhood soccer buddy, a roommate from college and even my site mate from Kazakhstan told me that I shouldn’t be in America, and that my place wasn’t there. It was by far the worst nightmare I’ve had in a long time, worse than my nightmares based on this movie which kept me up for 2 days and is the main reason I sleep on my fold out couch instead of my bed.

I think I know the catalyst of my dream. Earlier in the week the Kaz-20’s, the group of volunteers whom I came with to Kazakhstan with in 2008, came one step closer to learning the exact day that we’d be leaving Kazakhstan. All of our names were picked from a hat, and this determined the order of who got to pick what day to leave. As much as I like Kazakhstan, I had been looking forward to this day for a long time. It exceeded my expectations unlike the day during our training when we learned where were going to spend 2 years of our lives. Although volunteers weren’t physically present at the event and were notified by email, it felt more “draft like” to me. Maybe this is because the names were randomly picked out of a hat while our skills, experience, personal interests, language ability, personal preferences and characteristics were used to match volunteers with their organizations and schools.

Out of the 44 volunteers that are left in my group, I currently have the 19th pick to decide when I get to leave Kazakhstan. The dates are somewhere between the 1st through the 12th of November. Because it is common for volunteers to end their service early to start work or to attend grad or law school my number may rise even higher. I may even be one of those people.

With a little bit of math I determined that I have as of today I have a maximum of 150 days before I touch American soil again. It would be less except there is return trip of epic proportions that needs to happen. 150 days sounds so deceptively far away, but yet so close.

On day 151, I’ll have to move on with the next phase of my life. What doesn’t worry me is finding a job, adjusting back to American life or any of that stuff. What worries me the most is finding my place, the best place for me, a place that I can call home.

Although this blog is specifically for my work and life as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kazakhstan, bear with me as I sidetrack a little bit. Today marks the beginning of the World Cup! For a month, people all over the world will be glued to their televisions watching the best sport on earth, soccer. For me, the World Cup is my World Series, my NBA championship, and my Super Bowl all rolled into one. It’s a whole month of amazing sports awesomeness. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to watch the games, but my landlady showed up this morning just to tell me that there will be 24 hour coverage of the World Cup on the Russian Sport Channel which I get! So when I’m not at work, or traveling for work, or sleeping, you’ll know what I’ll be doing. I also plan on being in Almaty for the England- US matchup so that I can watch the game in the next best place besides the actual stadium: In a pub. I’ve even requested off for the day before, during, and after the final game! Before they get started, there are 7 things that I think will happen during the world cup: US will beat England, 3-2. Our fast forwards, revamped midfield, and new attacking style will take the English defense off guard, kind of like how they were taken by surprise during the War of Independence. Both teams will get out of group play, but the English will lose in the round of 16. The US will get to the round of 8. 2. At least 3 African teams will make it to the second round (Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa), and 1 team from Africa will make it to the group of 8. A lot of people underestimate African teams in the World Cup, not because of a lack of individual talent, but because of the quality of coaching. This time around, I think many African nations have invested in great coaches that will get their squads to play as a unit. Because of this I think Nigeria will go deep into the tournament, coming out on top in group play, beating Argentina, and getting as far as the group of 8. 3. Team that I don’t know anything about: North Korea. I don’t think this will really matter because I they won’t make it out of pool play anyway. They won’t lose every game though. They’ll tie the Ivory Coast. 4. Three underestimated teams: US, Nigeria, Denmark. They won’t win, but they’ll exceed expectations and upset a team (or two). 5. Most overrated team: France. They’ll barely get out of the first round, probably on a tiebreaker, but will lose in the second. I haven’t been impressed with their qualifying rounds, and their sham of a victory against Ireland that won them a spot in the tournament in the first place really irks me. I believe in karma, especially when it’s against the luck of the Irish. 6. Winner: Spain. It’s the deepest team in the tournament. While many teams have 5-8 top tier players, Spain has so many top tier players that even their substitutes could probably start on any squad. 7. The final won’t come down to penalty kicks. There will be a winner after 90 minutes of play.

Late Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, I became very ill from some pelemini (something like ravioli with meat). I had vomiting, diarrhea, and fever sweats to the point I was incoherent. Wednesday morning, the Peace Corps doctors made me go to Almaty, where I received a couple of IV’s and a couple of anti vomiting, anti fever, and seemingly anti everything shots. It took a day, but now I’m back on my feet, although I’m still wavering a bit. Becoming so ill that I’ve had to be hospitalized isn’t something new. This has happened before. I don’t want it to happen again. But this time was slightly different because after all of the other mental and physical things I’ve gone through here, I just know that my body will not be able to handle another episode of vomiting so hard that I collapse afterwards on the ground, becoming so dehydrated that my kidneys hurt, and passing out in taxies from exhaustion. Something has to give. In this case, I think meat. I’m going to try cutting meat out of my diet for the remaining time that I am in Kazakhstan and perhaps beyond. There is some research I’m going to have to do, and some vegetarian friends I’ll want to contact first, but I am very sure that as soon I can figure out a way to make sure that I’m getting all of the nutrients, vitamins, and minerals that my body needs that meat will be a thing that I won’t be consuming for awhile. I floated the idea by my organization in passing, and they thought it was blasphemy. There was a great amount of yelling and big Russian words of protest at the Local Community Foundation when I told them I was going to give up meat. They too, do not want me to get ill, but they are concerned about a different issue: my weight. I’m very thin. It is a trend in Peace Corps that when males come to Kazakhstan they tend to lose weight. I’m not a dietician, but after talking to many others the general belief seems to be that the combination of less preservatives in food, more physical activity, and more carbohydrates tends to make males drop weight. I’ve heard of male volunteers losing anywhere from 10 to 30 pounds while eating 3-5 meals every day and not exercising outside of walking. On the other side, females tend to gain weight while eating the same food. I don’t know too much about this. I’m not a big guy. My mom’s side of the family isn’t tall, but are stocky and broad in the chest. My cousin Arnold is built like a tree (and also is a vegetarian). The men on my dad’s side tends to be taller and leaner. I think of my Uncle Lester, who is around 6 feet tall, but is very wiry. More like titanium plated barbed wire, because he’s in the military and really tough, but you get the idea. I’d like to think that I’m a 5 foot 6 inch version of him. J I have the wiriness of my dad’s side, and the tallness(is this a word?) of my mom’s side. So, I’m short and thin, with not a lot of weight to gain or lose. The most I’ve ever weighted in my life was 135, and that was during high school. Right now, I’m somewhere between 115-120. So I don’t have a lot of weight to lose before I disappear. I’ve stopped working out, running, and even playing soccer, and have drastically increased my caloric intake. Stress also plays a factor in my weight. I’m cursed (or blessed?) because when I’m under stress, I don’t eat a lot. This helped out a lot during college, where I laughed in the face of the freshman 15, because I actually lost weight. So I’m going to take this weekend to figure this food thing out. It may take some work, getting inventive with new dishes and trying out new food, but I’m really going to give it a try and see what happens. I would really like those 15 pounds back right now, though.

The horrible dog of pure evil, Satan, has returned to my apartment complex. I thought he was dead or found a random soul to feast upon, but he's back and angrier than before. I saw him rooting around the trash pile while I was leaving for work today. He saw me too, and we exchanged the usual pleasantries reserved for mortal enemies: He growled and bared his teeth, and I picked up a large rock. I would have taken a picture, except I was afraid he'd rush me and then my soul would have been consumed.

If Satan knew what was good for him, he'd move on. It's summertime, and as the temperature rises in Ecik so does my temper toward devil canines.

I'll smite that mutt if he gets too close

Although I still believe that Taldykorgan is the best city in Kazakhstan, I must admit that during this past week I have become fond of Almaty. Almaty is about 50 kilometers from my small town of Ecik. It is the largest city in Kazakhstan but not the capital (it was switched to Astana). Nevertheless, Almaty is still the main banking and financial center of the country and serves as the main transportation hub for air and rail for people who travel within the country. Chances are that if you are traveling somewhere in country, you'll go through Almaty first.

Almaty (translated from Kazakh, means "father apple") is very beautiful all year around, and it can be argued that there is more to do in this city than in any other in Kazakhstan. My personal favorite things to do include shopping for strawberries at the Green Bazaar, admiring all of the amazing statues and the Orthodox Church in Panfilov Park, and hiking in the mountains outside of the city. There are lots of plays and concerts to attend for the culturally minded, and just as many cafes for the culinary minded, and twice as many bars and pubs for the socially minded.

The Orthodox Church in Panfiov Park, Almaty.

The statues in Almaty and Kazakhstan are usually big, badass and very intense. This is the monument to veterans that served in World War II, and my favorite monument in Kazakhstan, Located in Panfilov Park.

For all the fun and cultural things that one can do in Almaty, it comes with a price. Literally. Almaty holds the distinction of being the 44th most expensive city in the world according to Mercer's Cost of Living Index of 2009. This doesn't sound like a big deal, until you consider that according to this list, it is more expensive to live in Almaty than Chicago or Miami. And those cities aren't cheap either. This is one reason that it is rare for a Peace Corps volunteer to be assigned to Almaty, and the main reason why I avoid spending too much time there. It is a money sucking pit of fun and good food.

While the city is amazing, the expensiveness of Almaty can be harmful to the account of a volunteer that is not disciplined with their money, because we don't get a lot of it! However, after going several months without fresh brewed coffee and American style food, volunteers who go to Almaty can't help to spurge at Pizza Hut or Gloria Jeans Coffee, or running inside the supermarket called Ramstore for some type of American food that is hard to find in Kazakhstan (and expensive) like peanut butter or Pop Tarts. And this doesn't include getting a beer at one of the many ex-pat bars in town to catch up with other volunteers who are also passing through.

Between hanging out with the Kaz 21s, who must come to the city to do their medical exams this month, stopping in for a day to help out with an English summer camp, and charting hiking routes for this awesome project, I spent about 5 days and around 10 000 tenge in Almaty this past week. Converted to dollars, it is close to 75. It may not seem like much, but on average what I spent in Almaty in one week equals I spend on food in a month.

But I'm not complaining, because having the opportunity to get a white mocha coffee and blueberry scone for breakfast, a vegetarian pizza for lunch, burritos with salsa for dinner, and a pint of Belgium white beer was totally worth it.

Only this week, though.

Tomorrow is a new month. Time seems to fly when you are having fun, or something like that. While my self imposed time off was beneficial, it wasn't exactly what I envisioned. In my fantasy world the words "Taking a break" means just that. In reality it meant "saying that you will do nothing, and then people knock on your door to drag you outside to do something awesome". I never did have the willpower to say no to doing interesting things or going on adventures. The odder, the more obscure, the more interesting, the better. And although all I wanted to do was stay in my apartment, cook, and watch movies by myself, my local friends, director, and co-workers had other plans for me. There was fun to be had, work to do, and new people to meet! And although at first I hated it because I wanted to be alone, in retrospect it was for the best. So what was I doing over the past couple of weeks? Here's a quick run down:

Failure: Mission Kokpar. Success: Everything else (Shymkent)

One of the things I must do before leaving Kazakhstan is to see a game of kokpar. It involves two teams on horseback fighting over a sheep carcass to throw into a hole. I think this is totally badass. Kokpar is most popular in the southern regions of Kazakhstan so while my organization went to Ukraine, I paid a visit to Shymkent in order to hang out with volunteers and to witness this totally awesome sport. Just like last time, kokpar was elusive and it didn't happen. But getting the chance to spend quality time with friends, play basketball, eat great food, and meet new people was better than any kokpar game. Thanks to all of the volunteers in the area for letting me tag along for a couple of days, and especially to Becca for hosting me in her sweet new apartment!

While I am still on the subject of awesome things, I was also in Shymkent for Victory Day. Celebrated on May 9th, it is a holiday to remember the soldiers and people who were in World War II. Kazakhstan played a part in the war, fighting on the Russian side. There was a parade, complete with a marching band, tanks, and a couple of WWII veterans with so many medals that the shine messed up my photos. I even heard an all female capella group sing a rendition of "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" and "In the Mood". That brought back a lot of memories of the days when I played in this dixieland jazz festival.

From Shymkent, Kazakhstan, introducing the Southern Kazakhstan Oblast Marching Band!

Veterans with lots of medals. Check out the shine.

Me with awesome Kaz 21s and my Kaz 20 roommate from staging. It was great to hang out!

The Mid-May Meltdown (I'm not 100%, but I'm getting better)

Every volunteer goes through a period of trying times, and for a variety of reasons, I almost made the third biggest mistake of my life by almost leaving Kazakhstan early. It wasn't pretty, but I'm getting back on my feet. In the meanwhile, I decided that I will remain in Kazakhstan until the end of my service in early November.

The "State Youth Forum in Ecik"

While I was on my break, my "counterpart" came to me with this one. Her request: to help prepare the Youth Bank of Ecik for a statewide youth festival.

A quick explanation of the Youth Bank: It is a collection of youth in Ecik between 14-20 that were given money to finance projects for youth in the region. These projects must be initiated, led, and organized by youth. They financed 4 youth led projects in the region: A soccer tournament, a play, a dance competition, and a photo contest. Helping the Youth Bank was my major project from September until February, and was a lot of fun. I sit on their board of directors, and am a mentor to many of the youth. In addition, I got to teach them about budgeting, grant writing and reviewing, time management, leadership, basic project design management, and some other stuff. They taught me slang, how to swear in Russian (when no adults were around), showed me around town, and gave me a recipe for how to make Russian style pancakes (blini). And lots of chocolate. I'm proud of the Youth Bank, and proud of the kids who participated. Although we finished our work in February, many Youth Bank members still stop by the office to say hello, and I see them around while I'm doing errands in town.

Oddest Peace Corps secondary project ever: guest judge for the Youth Bank financed youth dance competition. I'm not qualified to be a dance judge at all (my dancing skills are better now, but still very bad), but the students requested me because I was impartial and didn't know any of the dancers personally. We had to give on the spot critiques! I was *slighty* nicer than Simon, and wittier than Randy Jackson and all in Russian too! This dance duo won second place.

Working together with Aigerim, my "project counterpart" (I don't have an official counterpart), we met with the original Youth Bank members. This was easier said than done, as they are busy with finals in school. Together, we designed t-shirts, printed out a banner with our emblem, and marched in the parade. They did the designing, Aigerim and I did the leg work.

I love parades! There was dancing, shashlyk, singing, and lots of cheering. The pictures aren't as good because I was in the thick of things, but it was very sweet to have our organization introduced to the Oblast Akim (like State Governor?) and yell "We are the Youth Bank! Hooray!" in Kazakh.

Check out our banner and t-shirts.

Hooray Youth Bank!

Mission: to march around the track and be presented to the Oblast Akim (State Governor) in the big wooden structure .

Me with the Kazakh equivalent of ROTC of "Al-Farabi" School and the Enbekshikazakh District boxing champion in the 10-12 age group bracket. He's small, but fast, and could easily beat me up. Probably you too.

Festival at Ecik Stadium: Kinda a big deal.

Me with Aigerim, my "counterpart of right now". My eyes are closed because evidently I still have trouble understanding the difference between the number "3" and the word "now" in Kazakh. To the left of Aigerim, you can see a young girl in traditional Kazakh dress.

Project Advisory Committee for the new Youth Development Program in Kazakhstan

This committee brought me to Almaty for a day to provide recommendations for Peace Corps Youth Development (YD) Program. My program, OCAP (Organizational and Community Assistance Program), has gone the way of the dinosaur, and in its place is a program for youth development. This is the program's first year, so Peace Corps wanted recommendations on how to make it better.

When it comes to demographics, Kazakhstan is a very young country with a lot of youth. This is a big deal, because today's youth become tomorrow's leaders, doctors, teachers, and stuff like that. Youth are important. So much so that the government has a made youth development in Kazakhstan a national priority.

So NGO leaders, Peace Corps staff, and government officials came together to review the YD project plan objectives and talk about what a Youth Development volunteer can do in Kazakhstan. My role in the committee was to give a volunteer's perspective, to give a first hand account of what a volunteer could realistically do on the ground. Although I was giving my opinions and ideas, it was very eye opening because I got a glimpse of exactly how much work goes into designing a Peace Corps program (a lot). Now I am very excited for the new Kaz-22 volunteers who will come in August and get to be a part of this program!

My Summer Camp Campaign

In addition to winter, spring, summer, and autumn, America has other seasons such as football, season, BBQ season, pool season, and wedding season. Kazakhstan has something of the same: Holiday season, when there are a ton of holidays for about 2 months straight, Shashlyk season, when it gets warm enough to eat meat on a stick outside, and my personal favorite: Strawberry season, when everyone sells strawberries and they are dirt cheap. Strawberry season will start soon and only lasts for about 2 weeks according to my fruit lady at the bazaar.

For volunteers, the most important season is summer camp season. This season starts on May 26th, and goes through August 1st, which are the days when kids are off from school for the summer. Volunteers love summer camp season because it gives them the chance to hang out with kids and other volunteers, focus on things that are of interest to them such as sports, culture, arts and crafts, and get a chance to see different parts of the country without using precious leave days. Many volunteers organize their summer plans by the end of May, and I was no exception. Last June, I was really into summer camps, but this June I'm keeping things low key by staying close to home. Because of work I'm not sure about my July plans yet, but possible destinations include Taraz, Astana, or Petropavolsk.

My schedule for June. It's pretty bare, except for the camps, which are in light blue. My Organization's travels are in light red (I get those days off, they don't need me then), and dark blue is hiking in the mountains. Black is for Peace Corps work. This is considered a light travel month during summer camp season! :-)

I've decided to take some time off from work, Peace Corps stuff, and blogging. Normally I'd just not mention anything, but many of my family members read my blog (hi Dad!), and if I go more than a week without posting something, they start to worry that something bad happened to me. There is nothing wrong and I am quite fine, just that during the past couple of weeks I've had a couple of experiences (both good and bad) that collectively were overwhelming, and I need some time to reflect on everything, decompress, and decide what I'm going to do next.

I'll resume posting again in late May or early June.

This weekend, I went to Taldykorgan to celebrate a birthday of a good friend. We kept the party low key, with a cake, lots of movies, and just hanging out and talking.

In many of my posts, and in many conversations, I've raved about the awesomeness of the city. However, I've never explained why this city is so great and why is my favorite in all of Kazakhstan. Don't get me wrong, the other cities I have visited in Kazakhstan are nice, like Kostanai, Ust Komegorsk, Almaty, and Shymkent. They have great qualities: Kostani has insane ice sculptures in winter. Ust feels almost European. Almaty has everything you could ever want. Shymkent is very green, very Kazakh, and gets spring really early.

I know I have a personal bias, because my first site was 20 min from Taldykorgan, but even after living in Almaty's shadow for 8 months, I still think that But Taldykorgan (usually called Taldy) is the best. In fact, Taldy is one of my "top 5 cities I would want to be in right now."

Why? I'll list 5 reasons:

1. Weather, population, climate: Kazakhstan is a country of extremes, with temperatures ranging from -40F in winter to over 100F consistently in the summer, depending on where you are at. However, Taldykorgan doesn't have any this problem. While their winters are cold, it doesn't get as cold as northern Kazakhstan (which still has snow) and doesn't get as hot as the South Kazakhstan. It's not dusty, and the city is very green. Taldykorgan is also a very small city. Almaty dwarfs it, as does Karaganda and Shymkent. But even so to me, Taldy gives off a small town middle america vibe that reminds me of my hometown, Davenport Iowa. It's large enough to be in a city, small enough that if you want, people will remeber your name. And there's something in that which I like.

2. History. One would think that Almaty, because it was the old capital of Kazakhstan and the largest city in the oblast (state), would also serve as the oblast capital. However, Taldykorgan was awarded this status in 2001. I always love it when the small guy wins against gigantic odds.

3. Food: Taldykorgan has some of the cheapest good food in a city in all of Kazakhstan. For the price of 1500 tenge (about 10 dollars), you could eat out for 3 meals, and eat well. 1500 tenge could get you through 1 meal, maybe 2, in Almaty. Taldy, despite its size, has a wide variety of food:

Laghman place: Get plates of laghman as big as your face for about 300 tenge!

Blini (pancake) place: Denny's, Kazakhstan style. Hamburger place: Get *almost* American style hamburgers hereShashlyk + place: Eat shashlyk (meat on a stick) outside on a huge patio, and watch the world go by. Now upgraded with nifty couches, a tent, and beer.Hessen Pub: The only place mentioned by name. The other places have names, but it's just tradition to call them by the food you can buy there. Hessen pub is a German style restaurant that brews its own beer. It's not bad. Although the most expensive place in town, you can eat, drink, and be merry for under 1000 tenge (if you are smart!) That's practically impossible in Almaty!Kvass place: Kvass is a lightly fermented drink from bread. I love this stuff, and Taldy has a place that sells Kvass to go!Korean Place: You can eat some pretty ok Korean food in Taldy. It also serves dog. I haven't tried it, although I haven't ruled it out. I have to figure out how I feel about eating something that usually tries to eat me.

4. Soccer! Taldykorgan has a soccer team, FC Jetiszu. For the size of the city, it fields a good team and usually finishes middle of the pack in Kazakhstan's premier league.

5. The people: The top reason why I think Taldy is the best city in Kazakhstan is because of all the awesome people, both from Kazakhstan and America who live there, or who have lived there in the past. And there are also the great memories of the PCVs before (including myself) who called Taldy home. Every time I go, I meet someone new that is cool, find a new "place" or get to know someone better.

What's to not like about that!

Although this week was tough (see my last post,) I did celebrate a small success. My biggest win this week was learning how to send a letter from the post office. I had a couple of frustrating experiences at my old site, and due to language and confidence problems, I didn’t step foot in the Ecik post office until this week. After a lot of difficulties, some shouting, and 2 hours later, I was successful in sending something to a very special person! It seems that every volunteer has a “stress zone”; a place that causes them a lot of anxiety. For example, some volunteers find train stations a stress zone, because they are worried about missing their train or hopping on the wrong one. For others, it’s bus and taxi stations. My stress zone is the post office. It’s not a bad place, just a very confusing one. Every time I went inside, something would go wrong or I would do something incorrect, and then I couldn’t send or receive letters. Then I'd get really fustrated, and just leave in a huff.

Its not fun getting pwned by an inanimate object like a bike. Or a post office.

I realize this sounds silly. Any idiot should be able to send a letter, right? But sometimes it is the most routine things that are the hardest to accomplish.

Many volunteers don't even bother with snail mail. It's difficult, takes a lot of time, and can be very stressful. Modern technology is also cheaper: an hour of internet costs about the same as one letter to the US. But it's not as awesome as receiving stamps from a different continent.

So how did I do it? I'm still unclear about the "how", but I'll explain 6 things that I found different from the US side: 1. You can only buy envelopes at the post office. Last year, I wrote a letter and carried it in my pocket for a week searching every shop in Karabulak asking for envelopes. Finally someone told me that they are only sold at the post office. I felt like an idiot.2. You can only buy stamps at the post office. No getting a roll of stamps at the local store. I spent the same amount of time looking for stamps as I did envelopes and felt twice as dumb when I figured it out.3.

Between my freshman and sophomore years in college, I took a summer job as a sanitation cleaner at a major meat company. For the summer, the pay was great, the hours were awesome, and I grew to like using a fire hose and dangerous chemicals to clean off big machines that would take logs of ham the size of my leg and hack them into thin slice lunchmeat. Or my leg, if I wasn't careful.

Every night, before we started to work, I had a ritual with one of my co-workers, Sam. He would grab my shoulder and ask, "Kyle, what's our motivation?" I'd grab his shoulder in return, and say, "To make our pockets super phat". Part inside joke. 100% truth.

Although I left Oscar Meyer a long time ago, (and I refuse to eat their meat) I still find myself asking Sam's question at various points of my life, particularly when things aren't going well. Since I've been in Peace Corps, the short answer to the "What's my motivation question" is to help NGOs, learn about a new culture, and gain professional and personal experience. Its a bit more complicated than this, but that is the basic idea.

When things were at their worst, somewhere between midnight and dawn on Tuesday, I asked myself the usual question, and I didn't have an answer. I freaked out.

This has happened before, and will probably happen again. I've found that I go through cycles of feeling good and bad, and these feelings can switch pretty fast. It's part of the bumps and bruises of being in Peace Corps in Kazakhstan. Some days I rock Kazakhstan. Some days Kazakhstan rocks me

After I got a hold of myself, I took stock of things. Why was I feeling this way? Could it be burnout? My primary organization, the Local Community Foundation, works about 40-50 hours a week. I'm not talking about sitting around for 5 hours drinking tea and then working for 3 hours (although we did this one week), but 8-10 hours a day of real work such as typing documents, writing and reviewing grants, assisting other NGOs in the region, and stuff like this. Working 50 hours isn't a problem, but I get tired faster than I normally would in a work environment where I'm communicating and writing in two and sometimes three languages .

Events that happen in America also have an effect on me. It seems silly because I am so far away. Is it worth expressing dismay about situations that I can't control, or is it better to not worry about it, shrug it off and continue on? I still don't know the answer to this one. However, I do know that I'm only as strong as my base, and when the base is rattled I shake too.

There is also the future. I have started to think about my life after Peace Corps. However, this is an awkward time. With under 200 days remaining before I'm finished, I can see the end, but it's far enough that it is too early to start applying for jobs. And I don't know what exactly I want to do! As Yoda said, "Always in motion is the future."

So with my head full of work, worrying about loved ones in America, and worrying about my future, I didn't sleep, and watched the sun rise. I then trudged to work.

Besides babushkas, the only people in Kazakhstan who can take one look at me and know that something is wrong are my former counterpart and my current director. Babushkas, in addition to being always correct, also have mind reading powers. My director saw me first thing when I went to work. She asked me what was wrong, and we had a heart to heart.

I learned that I wasn't the only one that was feeling down and having a tough week. My director is also exhausted. The working hours also take a toll on her. In addition, the members of my organization have gone without pay for 2 months. They will get paid next month, when they receive another grant. (If they could operate without grant money, this would never happen. We think we've figured out a way to make this a reality. I'll write more about this later.) She looks for a new accountant, but nobody wants the job because they pay the minimum salary. We lost our grant manager. Nobody knows what an NGO is. Times are tough. Her back hurts. Then we sat together for awhile and wallowed in our respective miseries. Then my director said this:

"I could quit. I could go home. I could be a principal again. But that is easy. Other people do easy things. We do not. We have an open perspective. And I need to see with my eyes what will be our end result."

That resonated with me on so many levels, and was the answer to a great many questions and immediate problems at work, Peace Corps, and in my life. My director is a wise woman.

After that, she sent me home because I looked like a "zombie". She took Wednesday and Thursday off for rest, her first days off in over a year, according to our project manager. For me, the week got a bit better: on Wednesday, I finally figured out the post office. I'll write more about how this happened later. On Thursday, I went to nearby town to see a leadership seminar for youth that was done by some fellow volunteers. They did an awesome job. And Friday was a normal day in the office, and we even got out early! I'm looking forward to sleeping, cooking, and reading some old school James Bond thrillers and recharge myself to do it all again next Monday.

So while it was a very tough and draining mental week for me and everyone at the Local Community Foundation, we somehow got through it.

Like we always do.

This week I've watched all of the Star Wars movies in order in their entirety . Watching the Phantom Menace was painful, but I toughed it out. So while this post has a point and is important towards explaining my work in Kazakhstan, it is also full of nerdiness.

Warned you, I have.

A big problem for NGOs in Kazakhstan (and by extension, the PCVs whom partner with them) is raising money to pay for their employees and to finance their projects. This is hard because:

It is very difficult to organize fundraisers to gain community support, mainly because very few people know about what an NGO is or does.Because of the first sentence, many NGOs in Kazakhstan are dependent on grants to survive.

Notorious B.I.G was right when he said "Mo' Money Mo' Problems". Money alone will not solve the problems for NGO's in Kazakhstan. However, money pays for food, rent, and gas of the people who work in them. Many of the grants I have seen in Kazakhstan allow for a certain percentage to be allocated toward salaries. I think this is fair; even I can't (and don't want to) work for free forever.

However, grant money is not free money. To get the grant, you usually have to do something. For NGOs, this usually means organizing a social project. Many organizations that finance NGOs usually have a theme, like helping youth, the unemployed, and educating people about about AIDS/HIV. So if you write a grant proposal and win, you are expected to do something.

So on one hand, NGOs have employees that need money to feed their families. On the other side, there are only a finite number of organizations that give out money in Kazakhstan. The number of international organizations that fund NGOs in Kazakhstan are shrinking, and while there are domestic donor organizations, there aren't a lot of them. This is because of many reasons, both good and bad. The point is that there is not enough grant money to go around for all.

This can lead to grant chasing, which is an awful problem. By my definition, grant chasing is when NGOs start applying for grants just because they need the money, and don't pay attention to their mission, vision, or goals. In the short term life seems easy, because the NGO gets money.and everyone is happy.

In the long term, grant chasing can be devastating. Grants are contracts, and if the NGO doesn't fulfill it's end, or does a bad job doing it, then they can get blacklisted. In Kazakhstan, blacklisted NGOs become dead NGOs. Donor organizations talk, and blacklisted NGOs are avoided like the plague.

The danger starts when an organization gets in "over it's head". For example, I've heard of an NGO in Kazakhstan that focused on HIV/AIDS suddenly win an ecology grant, just for the money. Instant disaster. I don't think they are around anymore. Grant chasing is risky. As Yoda said, "Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny." A great NGO director Yoda would have been.

Gold Leader cat seys:

Plz rite grants only 4 projeks u noes how 2 do and r in akkordance with ur missen and goals.

K thx by!!!!1

So the question is: How can the Local Community Fund (LCF) begin to reduce it's dependency on grants? In theory, community funds gather money from the community to use to finance local projects. A good community foundation should be able to run without grant support. The LCF doesn't do this. But how to get to there? I don't know the answer to this. Neither does the LCF. But we know people who do.

So we wrote a proposal to an international organization to send my director, accountant, and program manager to Ukraine to learn fundraising skills for community organizations. They will get a 3 day personalized seminar focused on how to begin to raise money from the community.They leave tomorrow which is why I'll have a lot of time on my hands in the near future.

What will I do with my free time while they are gone? I need to stay busy. In Kazakhstan I'm sort of like a purpetual motion machine, because staying active makes the time go faster, and it takes my mind off of people back at home. So for the next 10 days, I'm going to do everything in my power to stay busy, beginning with hiking in the mountains near Almaty for squabbits so I can do this,

Life has slowed down significantly since I arrived back in Ecik. After the whirlwinds of Shymkent, Almaty, and Peace Corps seminars, adapting to life in Ecik again was a little bit disorienting. My counterpart and director were happy to see me after almost 3 weeks. In my absence, they have been extremely productive, collaborating with a local youth organization to start a summer camp, beginning the application for a new volunteer, and preparing to go to a personalized seminar on fundraising techniques in Ukraine. I'm really happy for their successes.

The only thing of interest this week is the weather. Since Sunday, it has rained or snowed every day in Ecik. Going multiple days without seeing the sun has made me miserable. With it expected to rain all the way through next Monday, I'm also facing a clothes drying crisis. After three weeks on the road, all of my clothes are dirty, and the highlight of my weekend was going to be washing all of them. That'll be the easy part, but I air dry my clothes, and rainy weather isn't good for that. I'm sure they exist somewhere, but I have yet to see a dryer in this country.

I don't think that the popular American phrase "April showers brings May flowers" doesn't translate properly into Russian. Or if it does, I'm not saying it correctly. I spent over 10 minutes trying to explain the phrase to my organization the other day, and failed.

With no other interesting developments in my life or work worth mentioning this week, I wanted to pass along a couple of links that are way more useful:

My pal Michael's blog. Recently he had a friend visit him in Kazakhstan from America, and his friend is currently guest blogging about the things they did while he was here. It's a good read. Kazakhstan is a very unique and interesting country, and it has been a point of frustration to me that no amount of pictures or stories can fully explain what this country is about. The only way to really understand what it's like to bathe in a banya, sit on a train for over 2 days straight and eat beshbarmak until you burst is to visit and actually do those things. If coming to Kazakhstan is out of the question for you, then reading his account may be the next best thing.

My friend Erica's post on the Peace Corps application process. About once a month I receive a question from a friend or acquaintance back home asking about the Peace Corps. Her description and tips about getting through it are pretty much right on, and I don't think I could describe the long Peace Corps application process better than her. For anyone considering the Peace Corps, or people who are curious about what it takes to join, I'd recommend to take a look.

This week, I helped organize and lead a 3 day seminar on Project Design Management (PDM). This training was designed to teach people about how to plan a project. All of the Kaz 21s, the newest Peace Corps volunteers, from two oblasts (oblasts = states) attended, along with their Kazakhstan counterparts. My Regional Manager ran the Russian side of the seminar, and a volunteer leader and I handled the English equivalent. I had a great time, and was happy to be a guide to the volunteers and their counterparts by helping them to realize and formulate their project goals. And, it was great to spend a week in Taldykorgan, my favorite city in Kazakhstan.

If done correctly, PDM helps volunteers and their counterparts to create a logical plan to organize and implement a project and avoid confusion like the sport of Calvinball

While the concepts of PDM were easily grasped by the volunteers, the seminar had other hidden benefits. First, the seminar was a great chance for volunteers and their counterparts to get to know each other better and to improve their personal and business relationships. Relationships are very important in Kazakhstan, and especially when it comes to implementing projects. I've seen volunteers fail with projects, not because their ideas weren't good, and not because they didn't learn Russian and Kazakh, but just because they didn't spend time building that personal rapport with their coworkers. It's amazing how much closer you can get to a person after 3 days of working on a singular project, even if you do not speak the same language very well.

Second, the seminar was powerful networking tool. It gave leaders of NGOs and school teachers as well as the volunteers the chance to see what other people in their fields are doing. Teachers from Zharkent swapped English games with teachers from Ust Kamegorsk. NGO directors in Taldykorgan learned about projects in nearby Tekeli. Even if nobody learned a thing from the sessions, the chance to network made PDM worth it to all who attended.

Themes that we worked on during the sessions.

At the end of the seminar, each volunteer with their counterparts had to present on the projects they worked on. All of them had great ideas, such as:

Starting a youth baseball leagueOrganizing a volleyball campCreating a resource center for English TeachersAdvocating for the installation of disabled ramps to public buildingsSaving an orchard that has rare apples found only in Kazakhstan

Organizing a Frisbee camp Summer camps to teach youth about new cultures and practice English

Behold the future of philanthopy in Kazakhstan! The woman on the right owns a buisness, but donates a portion of her profits to ecological issues in her area. She doesn't have a volunteer, so I worked with her a lot during the sessions. She wants to find a way to maintain the apple orchards in her area which produce a rare type of apple only found in Kazakhstan.

All in all, it was a great seminar, and I had a great time.

I love dogs. They are nice and cuddly, loyal friends and I never get tired of watching dogs chase things. However, since I've arrived in Kazakhstan, I've had the problem of dogs trying to eat me for lunch. Many volunteers in Kazakhstan at one point or another has some sort of alteration with a snarling angry dog. After comparing notes with friends, I believe that I have more dog problems than the average volunteer. This is something that I don't understand. I love dogs (and cats too), but I've never had problems with dogs until now.

The first couple of months were the worst. Dogs would chase me down the street, bark at me for no reason, or start snarling even before I was in their line of sight. Because of my problems, I started carrying a "doggie rock": a rock that fit in my palm well, but dense enough to cause some damage if it hit a maruading canine (Yes, this was my exact thought when I found this rock).

My doggie rock actually saved my life. On my first night in Karabulak, I slammed the rock on a dog's head. It’s not like I did this for fun. It tried to sneak attack me while I was doing my business in an outhouse. It lived, but I think I gave it brain damage because it didn't walk in a straight line after that and was a bit crosseyed. My host was really puzzled about the dog's actions, but just chalked it up to someone else throwing a rock at the dog. I never told her it was me.

When it comes to pitching rocks, I don’t have an arm like Randy Johnson, but I’m getting more accurate. And just to be clear, I don’t like throwing rocks at dogs. But I don't want to become lunch.

Aurora and Capt. Jack with my brother and I. These puppies are so cute, and actual proof that I love dogs! Perhaps when they are older I'll throw marshmellows at them, but never rocks. But on the other hand they wouldn't try to eat my soul.

After training, my relationship with canines in Kazakhstan got slightly better. My host family in Karabulak had a dog called “Omega”. I taught him how to play fetch, and he was really well behaved, although he would steal my shoes and bury them behind the banya. However, Omega was a rebel, and he eventually ran away to join the “dog fleet”: a mass of 20 wildish (or unchained dogs) that would go rampaging around the town at dusk eating chickens, other dogs, and anything else they could find. I saw Omega one day a couple months later, eating garbage. Although we had a good rapport when he was at my host families house, I steered clear of him after that. When I moved to Esik, I decided to take another strategy regarding dogs. For the first time, I was going to be nicer to them and not go flinging rocks every time one of them looked at me like I could be lunch. Esik doesn’t have a dog fleet, although there are 3-4 dogs that hang around my apartment. While they don’t belong to anyone, they have never barked at me or gave me any trouble, although I wouldn’t pet them. I did throw chicken scraps at them every once in awhile, to keep to the peace. The arrangement worked quite well.

Then Satan showed up.

Satan is a small black mutt with Death Star laser beams for eyes, a permanent scowl of a mouth, and can probably consume your soul faster than I can eat a fun pack of jellybeans. On a Friday I came home to find Satan camped out in front of my apartment door, snarling at me. I brandished my "doggie rock", and he backed off enough that I could sneak inside my door. Satan growled at my door for about another half an hour. The good news: I was safe. The bad news? I was under siege by an evil soul gnawer. It paced outside of my door for awhile, and eventually lay down on my doormat. With a good steel door between me and doom, I didn’t think much of the dog until the next day, when I opened my food cabinet and realized that with the exception of two eggs, the Ramen package was the last of my food.Satan. I took this picture by opening the door a crack and blindly snapping a photo while praying that Satan wouldn't wedge open the door, fly inside, and feast on my soul. I also took this picture so that if Satan ate me, people would know the truth.

This particular week, I worked more than 50 hours at the Local Community Foundation creating their first annual report, so I didn’t have any time to go shopping. I was planning on doing this on Saturday. I made a dinner of Ramen noodles (my last package), and went to bed. When I woke up the next day, Satan was still there. And still very angry.For the next 20 hours, Satan laid siege to my door. I couldn’t leave. Every time I opened the door, Satan was there, baring teeth. I wanted to go to the store, but with a snarling dog at my doorstep, I really couldn't go anywhere. I ran out of food at lunch. Satan stayed.Closer to dinner time, I heard my neighbors. They were returning home. Then there was some growling, a couple of swear words in Russian, and when I looked out again, Satan was gone. After over 20 hours of being locked in my apartment I was saved.

The Kazakh New Year, called Naruyz, was celebrated this year on March 22-24th. Combined with the weekend, everyone in Kazakhstan got a whopping 5 day holiday weekend. I spent my 5 days doing what I called my “southern tour”: traveling to Southern Kazakhstan, and specifically the city of Shymkent.

Shymkent is about 13 hours or about 700ish kilometers, to the southwest from Almaty, and was easily reached by a “sleeper bus” that left Almaty in the early evening and arrived in Shymkent at dawn the next day. I had images that the sleeper bus would be like the “knight bus” in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, but I was deceived and sorely disappointed. However, getting there was almost as fun because I traveled with several other cool volunteers.We arrived in Shymkent in the early morning. I was very impressed with the city. Word on the street is that it is the third most populated city in the country, although it gives off a small town vibe. Shymkent was more compact than I imagined, but very green because everything was already in bloom. Almaty and Esik are big mud pits, and winter still rages in the northern regions but Shymkent had grass, flowers, and it looked and felt like what Spring was supposed to be like. However, I believe that all of the nice weather comes at a price. If the weather was already averaging 70 degrees already, I’m will to bet that summers there must be literally hot as hell. This just reinforces my belief that there is no perfect spot in Kazakhstan when it comes to weather: it’s always either too cold in the winter, or too hot in the summer. I know what I will do if I have a bad day in August: I’ll call a volunteer in Shymkent and ask them about the weather! But all in all, I like Shymkent. It has amazing and cheap places to eat (if you are smart), doesn’t get too cold (but gets really hot in the summer), and people are very nice. My Russian skills were welcomed, and I even got the chance to work on my Kazakh language skills. I even had a babushka help me cross the street . Cars don’t really stop for pedestrians in Shymkent. Instead, they slow down. But, they will stop for babushkas, because in addition to babushkas be always right, they also always have the right of way. If you want to learn a bit more about the Shymkent and South Kazakhstan, go here.

While the food, warm weather, and getting to know new people better was great, I was disappointed for two reasons. First, I didn’t get to see a lot of my friend Becca. Second, I did not get to see the very popular Kazakh sport called kokpar. Basically, kokpar is the Central Asian equivalent of polo, except about 10,000 times more badass. Check this: Kokpar is so awesome the “ball” is a whole goat carcass. The goal of the game: throw the goat carcass into your goal while riding on horseback. There is usually a kokpar game during Naruyz in Shymkent, but for some reason it was cancelled this year. Going to a kokpar game is one of my top cultural priorities in my remaining time in Kazakhstan, and I’m considering going back to Shymkent just to see a game. Shymkent wasn’t the only place I went to on my southern tour. I also spent a couple of hours in Turkestan, a large town about 2 hours to the northwest of Shymkent. The one thing that stands out about Turkestan is that it contains the oldest mosque in Kazakhstan. Depending on your belief system, if you make a pilgrimage to Turkestan 3 times, it equals the same as a trip to Mecca. I could drop some knowledge about this place, but I’ll just give you a website link instead, so you can learn more if you want: Here are some pictures:One awesome thing about the mosque is that there is a huge defensive wall around it. This picture is taken from atop the wall.

A picture with a fellow volunteer and some schoolchildren who came to Turkestan on a field trip.

According to a tour guide that befriended me and gave me a free tour, the whole mosque is covered in writing. While this may look like lines and "reverse swastikas", they actually say, "God is Great and Muhammad is the Prophet". Scientists and mathematicians are still unsure about the tiles and colors on this dome were created. This dome is the largest in all of Central Asia

I'm smiling because I'm 33% holier than you.

Earlier this week, I decided to write down everything over the course of a day to give a view of what an average day is like. An average day usually consists of the following: Work1 interesting thing 1 bad thing that makes me angry/sad/annoyed1 good thing that makes me happy and cancels out the 1 bad thing Take this last Wednesday, for example: 7am: The sun wakes me up and I couldn’t go back to sleep. Daylight savings time is nonexistent in Kazakhstan, so the sun will rise earlier and earlier as the summer goes on, just making me a crankier person. I don’t do mornings. 8:30 am: After unsuccessfully trying to go back to sleep, I finally get up. It’s a nice day and very warm, so I open the windows and set my clothes out to dry. I have a washing machine, but not a dryer so I hang my clothes outside. 9:15 am – My landylady visits. I gave her the electric bill for the month, which has overcharged me 3000kzt. She’s angry, but not at me because after looking at the electric meter, she agrees with me that the electric company is incorrect. She leaves, saying she would take care of it. 9:20 am – I walk to work. Along the way I see two things that make me smile: a. My neighbors using a home made flame thrower to roast a chicken. It was a really simple device. One person flamethrows (is this a verb?), the other holds the chicken on a stick. It smelled good. I talked to them for a little while about their device, and then moved on. What shocked me out the whole encounter was that it didn’t shock me at all. b. Some random guys shoving a live sheep into a trunk of a car. With the warmer weather and the huge holiday coming up, I will see this more often. I don’t know why, but people stuffing live sheep into vehicles always makes me laugh, no matter my mood. Sheep in general make me laugh. It’s just one of my things, don’t ask me to explain it. 10:15 am – I get to work. It takes longer than I thought because I had to walk uphill. Usually I take the bus and get to work around 9-9:30, but I had to meet with my landlady about the electric problem. My director was ok with this, although she wasn’t around today. She left to go to Taldykorgan for the day to drop off a grant proposal for a summer camp on leadership for youth that we worked on, so it’s just the accountant, one local volunteer, and me holding down the fort. My work for today: to look and chart job listings from back listed newspapers to determine what the most popular jobs in Ecik are. It isn’t busy work, it’s for a future project we want to do. 10:20 am – The volunteer asks me to open the window. The accountant is totally against this, because there is a trash fire burning just outside our window. I agree with the accountant, but I do it anyway because she tested the wind and said that it was blowing away from the building. 10:25 am – The wind shifts, and the smoke blows into our office. I shut the window, and we decide to take a break until it clears out. I go to a local store and buy 2 kilograms of potatoes. (140 tenge..about 1 dollar) 11:00 am – We go back to work. 12:30 am – I Use skype to call another volunteer. This isn’t an average occurrence…I talk on Skype about once or twice a month. Its rare, but its free! 1:00-1:40 pm - Lunch. I had lagman: a dish with noodles, meat, potatoes, carrots in a spicy sauce. It’s good, and it is cheap: (150 tenge). Lagman: Lunch of Champions 2:15 pm – A lady comes by the office trying to sell perfume. The accountant sees my puzzled/dirty looks and asks me what’s the problem. I told her that people trying to formally sell things while at work is new to me. If we were in the US, the perfume lady could get into trouble (anti soliciting laws, anyone?). The dirty looks were for the perfume: it was making me sneeze. 2:30 pm – The perfume lady leaves.2:35 pm - Called my Regional Manager to tell her that I will come to Almaty tomorrow to help her organize a training on Project Design Management for Kaz 21's next month.

2:40 pm – Print out copies of my leave form so I can go to Shymkent for the holiday. I’ll write more about this later. 3:45 pm– The accountant receives a call from the local bank. In January, we won a grant to send my director, accountant, and project manager to Ukraine to research how local community foundations in Ukraine raise local money. This project was going to be awesome, because the knowledge we would get from the exchange would help us in the future. Except, its now March and we haven’t received the money yet. It seems that somewhere along the line, someone in the bank messed something up, and our money is on hold. 4:15 pm – I finish graphing all of the available jobs in Ecik. 4:30 pm – I write a letter to the director of the donor organization about why we haven’t received the funds yet in English. The reason why I’m writing the email in English is because our donor is based in South Africa, and it’s easier for me to serve as a translator between donor organization and my organization. Why I’m writing the letter escapes me, because we’ve never talked to donor organization’s director, and their project manager already knows about the situation and is working on it. I don’t see how it will help, though. 4:35 pm – Finish the letter and send it, but I’m still confused about why.* 4:40 pm – My organization wants another volunteer! Yesterday, my director said that since I won’t be staying for a third year they want to apply for another volunteer. I was happy about this, because I’ve only been here 7 months, and I know that if a Peace Corps volunteer spent 2 years here, they could do more than I have ever done! I won’t write the application for them (that’d be cheating, and it’s in Russian. While I can speak, 3 year olds type better than me), but we lost the application form, and need to find it. 5:30 pm – Found the application form, hidden in a folder 5:45 pm – While I’m lucky because my organization has internet, sometimes it leads to time wasting. Once a day someone will look up an obscure news story and share it. Today’s article: a successful surgery in India. This one wasn’t mine. 6:05 pm – Leave to go home. 6:20 pm – Flag down a taxi for 50 tenge. Taxi prices change in Ecik depending on the weather and time: · Daytime = 50 tenge (33 cents) · Dusk = 70 tenge (around 40 cents) · Night = 100 tenge (75 cents) · Bad weather = 70-100 tenge There was a guy in the taxi who tried talking to me in bad English. Normally I don’t mind, but he was being annoying, so I told him I was from Germany, and answered all of his questions in German until he lost interest. 7:00 pm – Get home. Make dinner, creamy potato soup from scratch. Yeah…I’m developing some cooking skills. 8:00-10:30 pm – Read a book, go over the Russian words that I missed during the day, finish Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure. This is my first time watching it. Perhaps K. Reeves best performance, better than the Matrix. 11:00 pm – Go to bed *Update: In the end, it didn’t matter. The next day, the problem with the bank was cleared!

Imagine what would happen if you forgot your girlfriend's birthday. And then you didn't get her a present for Christmas. And then for Valentine's Day, you sent cards to all of her friends except her.

Take a moment to think about how angry she would be. Take that anger, multiply it by two hundred thousand, and it still wouldn't equal half of the shame you would receive for forgetting Women's Day in Kazakhstan.

March 8, Women's day, is an official holiday in many countries (We did not work) but isn't celebrated in the United States. I think this is a bit weird because the idea of setting aside a day to honor women started in the United States. Yes, in the US we have Mother's day, also a good holiday, but Women's day is to honor all females, regardless of whether they are mothers or not.

Check out here for a short rundown and a short 2 min video (in English) about Women's Day.

Women's day is a big deal…You do not have to do a lot for the day, but you have to do something.

For the women at the Local Community Foundation, I bought a potted plant that will bloom every year around Woman's day. I also called my old director in Karabulak, who gave me a "Well done" in Russian (it is rare for my old director to say well done. Not that I did a bad job while I was working there…she only says it when she is really happy). For my friends at my old site, I bought small gifts, and will save them until I go back to visit. In the meanwhile, I called them to wish them a happy Woman's Day.

I tried to call my friend who tutored me in Taldykorgan, but I dialed the wrong number and got an angry man instead. I also called my host families, and got to talk with babushka, who yelled at me for my relationship problems. She also told me to eat more and to study my Russian. How she knows that I am thinner and took a break from studying Russian eludes me. She hasn't seen me since August. This just reinforces my belief that babushkas are always correct.

Now...a short two weeks before one of the biggest holidays in Kazakhstan!