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I got this update and probably one more left in me.

So, in August I hung out at home and went to Astana too and didn’t really do much for the first 2 weeks. I watched a lot of Battlestar Galactica instead and I went into Kokshetau once to hang out with Hannah. The last two weeks though, I did more productive things. I went to summer camp for the orphanage out in the forest. Everyday I was in charge of the activities until lunch time so I planned a variety of sports and games that they didn’t know (dodgeball, Frisbee, etc) and in turn, during the second half of the day they taught me a variety of games and songs that kids in America don’t learn. I gave them my camera during this time and forced them to share it so one kid would get it in the morning and another would get it in the evening so they can take photos of all the activities since I didn’t want to do it and they just took photos of each other in like trees and flower beds.

After the camp ended, school started. The first day was just the typical ceremony. The second day, the weather seemed to acknowledge that summer was over and started to get cold. By the end of the second week of school it had already snowed. Fortunately, I get to leave before the advent of winter. School is fine. I’m teaching less lessons, since I wont be there for much longer and I decided to choose all of my favorite classes (except one- class; 7v but that’s because I teach 7a and 7b so it makes sense that I teach them too cause everything would already be prepared). On Saturdays I go to Astana for lessons at the President’s school and afterwards I have my public English club and then is movie night.

One week I went to Almaty for our Close of Service conference and it was the last time our whole group was together. We had a bunch of parties/barbeques and there were camels and nintendo64s and jell-o shots. All was pretty good. The last night in Almaty I had an epic Chinese feast with Sagar and Tobin for my and Tobin’s b-day and then I got a beer and met with Mike Quinn and we went to a club and hung out with other foreigners from Nigeria and then more PCVs and then there were some strippers which is always good when they just show up so you don’t have to throw down money (this was a normal club, not a strip club so my extra patronage was not required). Later on we went dancing somewhere else, I invented the cement mixer for locals cause they were confused what I was concocting and then I went to bed and rode the train all day on my b-day. I received texts from all but 1 Indian person in Kazakhstan (this includes pcvs and not-pcvs). I guess India really loves me, which I approve of. Then I had more school and that’s about it.

That’s the bare bones. I hope my grammar is terrible and I spelled half these words wrong, I’m not checking it.

I get home November 4.

So blog access is still blocked so I haven’t been updating my blog. I can’t post any pictures on here through the proxy but you can click on this link to see some photographs from my recent trip to South Africa, Lesotho, and Swaziland:

copy and paste this to your browser

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2171315&id=2802786&l=a4200e1105

A lot has happened since my last real update which was way back in February. So in Feb there were only a few days of school. It was very cold. I went to Kostanai one weekend to hang out with Consin and we went bowling and hung out for a few hours before I had to take another train home to get to school. All of my local friends moved from the town at this time.

In March I worked a lot in other places besides my normal school. I started to work at the other school in town on a regular schedule and I was at the President’s School in Astana every Saturday too. I also started an English club in Astana after my lessons at the American Corner, which is a place sponsored by the US Embassy. A lot of people come to that and each meeting averages about 30 people. Since it started, I have had many guest speakers come from not only the US to speak but also from various other countries. It’s more of an international club that uses English as a common language. I hang out with the coordinator of the American Corner a lot, her name is Nurganym. At the end of March was Nauryz, an important Kazakh holiday. I went to Astana with Tobin, Jenny, Brendan, and Sagar to hang out and AC met up with us on our last day there. Then I got sick. But then the snow started to melt and was gone by April 15th! The first weekend in April, I hung out with Michael and his friend from America, Brad, that was visiting and we met with Berik and chilled in Astana. I saw Sholpan and Aigereem one day before they moved to Almaty. I went out with my colleagues from the Pres School one night for ice skating and then to a bar. Towards the end of April I hosted a conference at my school for English teachers in this state. About 30 came and it went well. I’ve also been working with the 5th graders more often at the orphanage.

May came and that brought the end of the school year. I did an activity in Astana with teenagers based around “Twilight”. I invented the chimana food and secret nachos which taste much better than regular nachos. The twist is that the real secret is the secret quesadilla that comes at the end. I was going to Astana about twice a week during May and then on the 25th school ended. My summer camp started the following week and was attended by Brendan, Sagar and AC. We taught about 15 girls how to play ultimate Frisbee and then we played it everyday for 2 weeks. However, 15 girls didn’t always come everyday. AC also didn’t come everyday. In our free time we watched a lot of TV shows and had ice cream sandwich parties when we made lots of cookies. I went to Astana to watch the USA-England game with David(he’s British). After camp ended I went down to Almaty on the train and saw Zhanna one day and then Mike Quinn another day. We went out clubbing and I came back and got my stuff for my trip to South Africa.

I got to SA on the 20th and me and Sagar met with Kristen and got to stay in her place for the first week we were there in Cape Town. We climbed Table Mountain, visited the Penguin Colony at Boulders, went to the Beach, went to the Netherlands-Cameroon game, watched a ton of soccer, met lots of people, went to museums and had a good time. After our first week there we went to Durban with Kristen where we witnessed America lose. It was heartbreaking, especially when you are in Africa at a beach party with 50,000 other people cheering against America and blowing vuvuzelas at you as your team loses. We decided to flee from that depressing place as the rains blew in that night and went up the Indian Ocean coast to the heart of Zululand. We met up with a PCV there and stayed with her in her village and then got to St Lucia where we hung out on the beach and went swimming in the ocean and relaxed. The next day we spent hitchhiking/walking to Swaziland. At one point, right after we crossed the border and didn’t really have a plan, a guy pulls up next to us and asks us where we are going and we respond that we aren’t sure and he tells us to get in the car because he’s going to the right place. He drops us off 50km later amid giraffes. It was indeed the correct place. Before nightfall we get to a hostel in Ezulwini Valley and we hang out. There we meet a girl named Jenna and her mother Katherine and they take us around on a tour for half a day in Swaziland the next day in their car (they are American but they used to live there and now the mother lives in Mozambique but the daughter just graduated from uni in the States). We visit a game reserve and see all sorts of wild animals and when it gets dark and we ask the guard how do we leave he tells us to drive out the road we came in on. Unfortunately, we don’t have a car and got a ride there. He tells us we should run because the hippos like to walk the roads at night and they are Africa’s deadliest animal. So we ran. All was good. We went back to SA and hung out til we got to Pretoria where Kristen left us. We met up with other PCVs there and hung out for a few days and celebrated the 4th. We left on the 5th and went to Lesotho where we stayed in a hut and trekked on horses across Mordor (the inspiration clearly, because Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein). We visited 27,000 year old cave man paintings and a waterfall and I hurt from riding the horse for so long. We eventually went back to Cape Town and couldn’t go shark cage diving due to bad weather. So we went to an Afrikaner cookout and then hang out with Danie and learned all about sames and opposites - that being fireballs and dishes. And off we went to Abu Dhabi where we couch surfed. It was about 120 degrees and humid so we hid in the A/C buildings. Before we knew it we were on a plane to Kaz. We were gone for 25 days. So more stuff happened but I’m making this short. The world cup was a lot of fun. The atmosphere was awesome and I met so many cool people from all over the world. South Africa is not only beautiful, it’s really nice too, and I did visit villages and stuff too so I got to see both sides of it and it was really a cool place. Lesotho was so rugged and had no roads and you can only travel by horse – very cool. Swaziland might be the most leisurely place in the world, it’s a shame so many people don’t stay there to experience it.

I took the bus right away to Taraz and then to Asa for baseball camp for 1 day and then the next day I left to go home. I sang Karaoke first and scored a 100 on a song in Russian. The bus was terrible and took forever and broke down once. They fixed it by throwing buckets of water on the overheated engine. I was in Astana for a few hours, went home, woke up , hung out with Aitugan and then went to language camp in Schuchinsk for a week where we watched movies in Russian and then I went to Astana with Michael and saw Berik and did English Club. Woke up, saw Nachalo, which is the Russian title of Inception, half understood it in Russian, and then met with Shinar before I went home and finally I’ve been home for a full 2 days now. After being all over for the past 6-7 weeks. Look at my pics, if you want to ask me about anything just send me an email. Laterssssssss.

so yesterday, i was walking home from my english club at the other school and the samsa stand (samsa is like an empanada with a shell thats flaky and only has cheese in the cheese one, usually with onions and meat) which has been closed all winter was finally open so i was like, ok, i'll have me a samsa. I go to it and talk to the guy who is different than the dude that I used to talk to there and he's like "youre a foreigner? so am i. i'm uzbek" i'm like "cool" and then he gives me 2 samsa (potato and chicken) for free to celebrate our foreigner-ness. it also rained. for the first time in my village since october.

Long time no write. I can explain this though. Most people may have assumed that I completely forgot about my blog or I didn’t want to write anymore. Others knew I had internet in my apartment and were probably just confused. Therefore I give you this theoretical situation that might be possible to explain this.

Well let’s just imagine in an alternate universe in a land called “Tazakhstan” there is no “sreedom of fpeech “. Are you still with me? Well that means the internet has some websites blocked and we can’t access them through the only telecom company in “Tazakhstan”. Thus I have an excuse to be lazy and not keep this updated even though I have been able the whole time to go around this in a longer complicated way. Because no one can really block the internet.

In other “sreedom of fpeech” news, look up a Kyrgyz journalist’s trip to Kazakhstan.

So. December: Hung out, chilled, taught English. Went to Schuchinsk one weekend with Myles, Scottconsin and Sagar. Another time I had Christmas dinner which was Mexican food and Arystan and Renat came over. I went to Jenny’s the day after to hang out. Then school ended and break started. Break was 2 whole weeks. I went to Petropavlovsk for New Years and hung out with the north crew and the Petro girls. There was a camp at Becky’s orphanage. It was like -40 everyday during that break. Which was lame. Me and Brendan chilled and drank vodka most the time and relaxed. Niall was constantly covered in flour for some reason. Jenny wore appalling clothes. That’s about it.

Then school “started” again. Which means it was canceled constantly because every day was -40. I got my H1N1 shot and missed the only days that weren’t too cold. I did my normal jobs. I went to Petropavlosk again for Kreschenya which in Russian means baptism, so technically I was baptized Russian orthodox so that’s all good. I got to swim in the river when it was -40. It was exhilarating. I felt both dead and alive at the same time. I couldn’t feel my lower half for a few hours. My body was completely numb, which is much different than the frostbite that I was expecting. Because when I get frostbite it starts as a terrible burning sensation. This was like the inverse of that. The water was warmer than the air but coming out was brutal. My feet froze to the icy river surface as I attempted to put clothes on. Hotard forgot to put his pants on before the shoes. Our brains didn’t work correctly after his. My response to Niall as I came out is “fuck, fucking fuck towel help fuck” [sic]. But I got banya later on. So not bad overall. Hotard was the only person from outside the region to come. We also had 2 teachers’ conferences. Sidd’s was about 100x better than Niall’s. Sorry Niall.

Then I went to Jenny’s birthday party. I cooked dinner for everyone because I’m becoming a more amazing cook by the minute. Seriously, it’s exponentially rising. I should just open a restaurant here and teach people how to eat good food. Unfortunately they wouldn’t appreciate it. If only there were a Peace Corps France where the locals would supply me with wines and cheese and delicious pastries. Alas, this does not exist. I get horse colon stuffed with horse liver and vodka to wash it down, or if I’m lucky I can have fermented camel’s milk to drink. Then it got late at night I ended up having to walk everyone home.

In February school was canceled a lot. Buses were shut down so I was basically stranded here in the cold. I went out a few times with a girl in Astana. Otherwise nothing else really happened. It was cold. I read ‘Infinite Jest’. Vsyo.

November - The month the monotony ended. The first quarter of this school year was not fun and my life was a combination of boredom, frustrations and unhappiness. So I left. I went to India. I came back. Celebrated Thanksgiving. Went to Almaty for MST. Saw old friends; made new friends. It was good. 

Let’s go back in time to my last update…oh yeah…OCTOBER 31st – Halloween. My cancelled Halloween party. That was a shitty day. So I dragged myself through the next three days of school and got on the train to Almaty. It wasn’t yet winter in the south and ice froze onto the tracks and it ended up arriving 5 hours late. I then took the city bus for 2 hours to get to KFC for dinner. Fried chicken is delicious – fact. I make it to Peace Corps HQ and then I met up with Hotard and Jacob for our trip to India. I took off my winter coat and placed it with nice signage so I would have it when I came back to the land of the cold. Well, Jacob still had to go work at KIMEP so me and Hotard decided to get Pizza Hut and wait it out. So we got some delicious pizza (delicious in the relative sense that pizza here is terrible and Pizza Hut can be considered gourmet). We finish eating our feast and go to KIMEP to find Jacob and he’s still a little busy (and still drunk from the night before and we’re like ‘it’s okay at least you didn’t lose your bag and camera for India when you got drunk’ and he was like ‘oh, but that’s exactly what happened’. Uh oh! But he got them back, the sober people from his adventure salvaged his things. So he then told us that he wasn’t ready yet to go to the airport. Me and Hotard decided to go find a beer. We are walking in Almaty and it’s only filled with expensive restaurants and what we want is a hole-in-the-wall type of place. So as we’re walking, these old guys yell at us and we stop and decide to join them. It ends up being a club. Not a club as in the forms of night, strip, or dancing; but, in fact, a clubhouse. These old dudes meet every Saturday for drinks. They work in a variety of ministries in the government and also as professors at universities. Most spoke English. We chatted, they gave us beer. Success. Then we got Jacob and went to the airport. We sat around. Some other volunteers that were COSing were there. The plane was ready and we took off. They played a Sandra Bullock movie on the plane. The Proposal. We ate some food. The flight was only 3.5 hours and the time zone change was only 30 minutes. Not bad. We get to India and apparently I don’t look like the photographs on any of my IDs so they don’t want to let me in but they do eventually.

The cab takes about 45 minutes to get to South Extension Part-2 of Delhi. The land of the Wetherbys. There is a new girl volunteer who I have not met and her parents live in Delhi. They are white, not Indian. They said we can stay there. We said ‘okay’. We arrive and their servant makes us chilli which is one of my favorites so the trip starts out fine. It’s late though and we eventually get to bed. We wake up and explore Delhi. Go to Red Fort, the mosque, Qutub Minar. We take photographs, goof around, etc. At night we went to McDonald’s where there is no beef or pork. Bummer. I had the Chicken Maharaja Mac. We wake up and go off to Agra. It’s a dirty city with a bunch of asses that try to take your money and overcharge you. We find our guest house and then go and explore. We walk to Agra Fort and then go in and check it out. There are monkeys there. That’s cool. From the windows I see this big building in the distance; apparently it’s the Taj Mahal. Since it’s in the same town we decide to go there too. We get there eventually and it’s expensive so we have to think hard about going in. We decide we probably should, since it is the Taj Mahal. We go in. Lots of people. We take it in. There is an old American couple there ruining America’s rep. “Where do I take my shoes off? WHAT, I’m desecrating the Taj Mahal?!” “You take sleeper trains?! I heard its infested with rats.” That sums them up. The sun sets. We take photos and chill out. Then they tell us we must leave, the sun is down. So we walk around get dinner and then bed. I wake up at like 3 am and vomit for 5 minutes and then go back to bed. No one heard it, so that means it didn’t happen, right? I feel better by the next night so no big deal. That full day we spend on the train. 26 hours to Mumbai. We meet people. They tell us the fun things to do: “ride the train in rush hour”… “go to the water park” …lots of great advice. Then they tell us that the number one threat to global peace is China and that GW Bush created swine flu and controls the Tamiflu company to make lots of money.

Mumbai! It’s big. More people live there than in Kazakhstan. For some strange reason it’s raining when we arrive. But it’s after monsoon season. What’s the deal? Oh, cyclone! We should’ve checked the weather or just assumed that hurricane like storms go to cities on plan on going to. Well, everything gets closed, schools get cancelled, etc. We walk around, split up, the wind isn’t too bad and I got to check some things out in the city and then the storm just missed us and everything was still closed so we didn’t know what to do. We walked some more and made it to a Jazz café that played grunge/thrash metal with a lead singer that looked like Indian Jesus. The next day we woke up and went around and decided to go on a slum tour. We went to Dharavi, the largest slum in India. In an area of 1.75 sq km, a total of 1 million people live and work. We got to check it out and saw how it was set up, how houses were, how sanitation was done, water supply, electricity, etc. The government actually helps out. It seems to be a lot worse to be out on the streets than in the slum. I don’t really think there was much crime in the slum, the people all had jobs that were set up for them to do various things. A recycling plant was in the slum. We couldn’t take pictures though so I got none for you. We visited a school there too. After this we went to the big ghat where the washing is done and walked to the beach. Watched the sunset. Got some bhel puri and snowballs. There was a manually powered ferris wheel on the beach that we decided to go on. It was by no means safe but it was by all means fun. We eventually make our way back more and go to the movies to see a Bollywood flick called London Dreams that portrayed England as the land of drug users, alcoholics, and sluts. Not bad. Next day, we went to Elephanta Island. The boat ride was an hour each way and both ways we met interesting people. To there we met 2 women from Spain. From there we met this dude from America that was in the Peace Corps in the Marshall Islands in 68-69 to escape from Vietnam and ran a coconut farm. The island had old Hindu rock caves with carvings in them. They were pretty tite. Lots of monkeys roamed the island. We came back and got our bus ticket for the next day and went to a modern mall, got some food in downtown Mumbai and walked around another district. That was our night for Mumbai clubbing. We got to club Redlight too early and this guy outside wanted us to go to his club that had an ‘orchestra’, whatever that means. I’m pretty sure it was a brothel because I said strippers wouldn’t be bad, but he was like ‘they aren’t strippers – they’re thai – you know’ and meh we weren’t in the mood for prostitutes so we decided against it. If there were Indian strippers then this would be a different story. So we chill then go in the club. It’s very expensive. It gets packed with people too. We dance big though and it’s all good. Indians don’t dance anywhere near as big as me and Jacob so that was a letdown and Hotard only does Bollywood dancing so that balanced it out at least. In case none of you know, Jacob is a professional dancer. He looks good on the dance floor. We left late and went to bed, woke up and made our way to the bus station. Our ride finally left around noon and it took like 3 hours to get out of the city because it went forever. The bus arrived the next morning in Udaipur at like 5am. The bus ride involved us eating peanut butter and oreos, playing lots of rummy 10,000, and sitting inside a small compartment on the second level that flung our bodies around every turn and threatened to throw us out the window to our deaths. But it was efficient. We got to Udaipur, cheaply.

Udaipur! Apparently it’s one of the most romantic cities in India. Perfect for three guys to go to together. We get there at 5am, like I mentioned in the previous paragraph. We decide to walk to the center of town and it’s quiet and not crazy. Eventually we decide to meet this guy Jai who Hotard met on the internet at his abandoned hotel where his family has lived since they were the official astrologers for the Raja here for hundreds of years. The hotel is abandoned because he married down in caste and his family wouldn’t let him continue to run it. But we were able to stay there. Eventually the sun rises and I get some banana bread at the local German bakery and we go off to the city palace to explore it and check out things there. We spend some time there and go to a Hindu temple where this guy tells us a make believe story about the temple and then told us that James Bond worshipped there when he filmed Octopussy which is completely untrue. This is just one of many people in India that we caught lying to us. Well, we go to the real temple down the street and see a ceremony and then chill after lunch time and go to the mountain and climb it. At the top is the monsoon palace which overlooks the town and the lake, etc. We get to the top and we’re all sweaty and wondering why everyone else isn’t. It’s because we were the only people to climb the mountain because we are too cheap to pay for a ride up (which also needed permission to enter the park, thus more money). We explore it and then the sunset comes and we watch it from the top of the mountain at the palace. We meet a group of Canadians that are doing a 2 week volunteer stint nearby and they offer to give us a ride back to the town so we don’t have to walk in the dark and that’s cool. So we go with them and get back to the abandoned hotel and get ready for dinner. We go to the first place that offers to play Octopussy for us. In case you don’t know, Udaipur is where the infamous Lake Palace is located and the site of Octopussy’s base. They still pride themselves on this fact, 30 years later, and we get tandoori chicken and watch the movie. I go out to take some photos at night of the Lake Palace and then we go to bed. The Lake Palace is now a hotel and we couldn’t go unless we felt like spending hundreds of dollars for the night or like only 100 for a meal. It’s a palace floating on a lake. We wake up and the next morning we walk around, visit a Hindu tank, the park, watch kids play cricket and then get a picnic basket. We find a guy to drive us to the country to Tiger Lake where we heard we can go swimming. We are the only people there when we do make it there and apparently the lake is filled with crocodiles. This does not stop me or Hotard, but it does stop Jacob from swimming. We meet a local dude that jumps into the water with us a few times and chills and then we meet some foreigners right before we leave. Our picnic is delicious and we spend the afternoon here in the peaceful countryside. We drive back through the small villages of India to Udaipur and pack our stuff up when we go to meet Vikram, another dude that Hotard met on the internet that planned on hanging out with us. This dude is basically the complete opposite of the previous, that being not sketchy and instead very welcoming. He supplies us with amazing chicken dinners and takes us to his house in the suburbs that was really nice and we hung out then we went to the train station and took the overnight to Jaipur.

Jaipur! It’s like 6am time to wake up. We get off and walk around and there’s a hostel that is supposed to be okay so we walk there but everyone that works there is a total assface so we leave and go to the place next door which was a thousand times better because we met a Russian couple that ended up feeding us one night and giving us Scotch. But I’m jumping ahead. So we get our room and then go to the old city, which claims to be pink but is more of a burnt sienna in real life. We walk around, shop, see the observatory that claims to have the largest sundial. We go to Monkey Temple and see monkeys battle and hang out and eat food and then saw another movie at Asia’s nicest movie theater according to everyone in India. A guy there tried to recruit us to smuggle gems to America and I tried explaining that I don’t live in America but he didn’t believe me. The movie had a great scene in which the guy goes undercover to save his secret girlfriend by disguising himself in a burka and everyone thinks he’s a girl. The next morning we went to Amber and went to the fort, Jacob and Hotard rode the elephant to it. We explored it without a guide and then some dude that I called out on being a liar said I couldn’t go into the section I wanted to go into so I lost him in the maze of tunnels in the fortress and then I explored it anyway. In retrospect I think he wasn’t lying but it’s not like I saw anything like the temple of doom type shit with Thuggee priests ripping out hearts in the back rooms. We got lunch for 3 cents and then Jacob left to go shopping and to McDonald’s and me and Hotard decided to see the other fortress, Jaigarh, that we didn’t know how to enter. So we thought the only obvious way to get to it was by climbing the mountain it was on. We climbed the mountain and got to the big outer walls and skirted them to a gate that showed where the real gate and road was that everyone else took. But the mountain was more of an adventure. Then we took a wrong turn, climbed the outer walls and had to skirt the inner walls and cliffs because we were too stubborn to go back down and around. We eventually made it inside to where the world’s largest cannon on wheels is located. It was fired once for a practice shot and hit something 22 miles away. We met a Polish/British dude that was lost(he was going to Thailand by plane from England and ended up in Nepal and climbed mountains and is now in India, almost in Thailand –at least it’s Asia). We chilled and made our way down and onto the bus with the locals. We met local university students that wanted to teach us curse words in Rajasthani and Hindi. After the ride we split up from them and met the Russians. The next day we left back to Delhi.

Delhi, the sequel! We went to some markets then met another person Hotard knows because he’s secretly Indian and Rusty met up with us too. We went to a “coffee house” which was just a very fancy restaurant we would never be able to afford if it wasn’t for the kindness of strangers. It’s been 3 months since I last saw Rusty in Kazakhstan and now he was hairy and poor and leaving back to America the next day. So he got to eat and he survived to America. He made it overland from Kaz to India, but the long way through all of Asia, it was cool we got to meet up again. We had amazing food and beer and wine and beetle leaves and other things. The good doctor that treated us then invited us to his nephew’s bachelor party-esque family get together that night. Of course we decided to go. So we go and get more food and got henna and we danced with the family and had no idea what was happening but it was all good. We got back late and slept and then woke up and visited the Gandhi memorial and it was calm and peaceful, a good way to end the trip. We walked to the Tibetan market and then made our way back by conquering the Delhi city bus system and eating curry chicken and leaving the Wetherbys for the airport. Fsyo. We got back to Kaz at like 330 and got a ride from Jacob’s friend to the office. We planned on going right to sleep but I noticed my coat wasn’t there. I mentioned my jacket earlier. Well, it’s cold in Kaz so I needed it. After sleuthing all morning I learned that a dumb RM donated it to charity. It had my keys in it which sucked. Well I was cold but Kevin quit PC that day and gave me his coat and he went to America and I travelled back to the cold northern steppe. (the jacket story was longer and more popular but I just got annoyed telling it so much, I heard such rumors as me wearing women’s clothes to various other things that made it better too)

I take the 24 hour train home and have to go to work. I get a call from Val, who I haven’t seen for 3 weeks and she says she’s not gonna be at school and hangs up before I can ask her a question. WTF. I do the school thing without her and one day I get a text from Tobin who is at a conference with her saying she’s sleeping through Jenny’s session. I responded with “she’ s in kokshetau with you?i had no idea”. On that Thursday I cook lots of cookies and cakes and get everything ready for Thanksgiving weekend. On Friday I get on the elektrichka with Jessie, AC, Audrey and Scott and we make our way to Kokshetau, from there we meet Niall, local girls(sveta,sholpan,aigerim), and new team petro. We go to Zerenda. There are 24 of us there altogether. Our group is now only 8 because Megan quit too. But the new group has a bunch of people. (team akmola is down to 4 L) We vaguely attempted to socialize. We had a male bonding banya session. Which was good. I showed the new volunteers that its necessary to jump and roll in the snow naked between boiling hot death room sessions. Sagar taught them the benefits of pouring beer into the pechka to make it smell like bread. Brendan didn’t join because he’s a never nude. But that’s okay because there are dozens of those types. My dance party got cancelled the first night. There was the Great Grilled Cheese Controversy that ended with me serving delicious grilled cheese to myself and Katie in bed. We had turkey and food and stuff. I got a massage from aigerim because Kazakh girls don’t seem to know the rule that Americans force on each other that if I want a massage I must give someone else one too. We left on Sunday. Went to schuchinsk and then home. Nancy called here. Next day – I got on the train to Almaty for MST.

Almaty – revisited. Highlights - Kaz 20s got together. Our first time since March. Everyone was grumpy and antisocial. North Crew had a big team hug with Natalia to show our love for each other. Tobin didn’t quit. Pizza Hut Pizza Parties. Ramstore shopping sprees. Chinese food departures with Andy, Drew and Sagar. Everything else was not a complete waste of time and taxpayer dollars, don’t worry. I learned a few new things.

Back to school. All this week. Val is not there again. I saw her on Monday though, so I saw her 1 day in the past month.

Most of this information is complete and correct.

Oh, my world cup tickets are Netherlands-Cameroon.

And it was -38 yesterday.  I felt my tears freeze in my tear ducts.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2148369&id=2802786&l=0ea24cc860photos will eventually be here, its difficult and slow to upload them

there are some in the post below this

here are some photos from india, the lady at the internet cafe is closing at 1:10 today so i gotta go, strange it closes so early

i found rusty

infested with crocodiles

destroyer of worlds

October.

Wake up. Clothes. Walk. School. Lunch. Orphanage. Walk. Dinner. Read/watch something. Sleep. Repeat.

Wake up. Train. Kokshetau. Meet 6 other people. Tacos. Cafй. Apartment. Everyone gets wasted. Except me and Sagar and Arboos. We watch soccer and football on TV into the middle of the night. Sleep. Pizza. Goodbye forever 19’s. Train home.

Wake up. Clothes. Walk. School. Lunch. Orphanage. Walk. Dinner. Read/watch something. Sleep. Repeat.

Wake up. Meet 5 children. Chaperone. Astana. Testing. Lose 5 children. Don’t tell their parents. Lunch. Find 5 children. Chaperone attempt #2. Testing. No dinner. Testing. Bus. Bed at 3am. School at 8am.

Wake up. Clothes. Walk. School. Lunch. Orphanage. Walk. Dinner. Read/watch something. Sleep. Repeat.

Wake up. Astana. President’s School. Lunch. English Clubs. Late dinner with Zhanna. Bus? No buses go to Akkol that late. Walk 6.5 miles home at 1:30 at night. (Note for future: bring taxi money in winter) Bed at 3am.

Wake up. Clothes. Walk. School. Lunch. Orphanage. Walk. Dinner. Read/watch something. Sleep. Repeat.

Wake up. Train. Shchuchinsk. Beer o’clock at Sagar’s. Meet Jenny. No Andrew. He went back to America forever. Banya. Cook. Eat. Go to bed. Wake up. Snow everywhere and coming down as hard as possible. What? It’s only October. Bazaar. Train. Home.

Snow is expected in November, not in autumn. Autumn was about two days long. On day one the leaves turned brown. On day two the leaves fell off. On day three the snow started.

Wake up. Clothes. Walk. School. The sun came out for the first time in days. I was leaving school and the snow had finally stopped falling. I was hit by a snowball. I turned to find the person that threw it at me and was pelted by many more. After a brief battle in the street everyone dispersed. And I started running. The wind burned my face. It’s brutal in winter. I slipped on the ice and I didn’t care. I was happy. For one flashing moment the only thing I felt was happiness. I just laughed and got up from the ground. I brushed the snow off my pants. For that instant I wasn’t an automaton. Lunch. Orphanage. Walk. Dinner. Read/watch something. Sleep. Wake up. Clothes. Walk. School. Lunch. Orphanage. Walk. Dinner. Read/watch something. Sleep. Repeat forever.

I work on weekends. I put in twenty hour days. I spend about four of those just on the commute. But I feel appreciated.

Warriors come out and play. That was my Halloween plan. Director took out the cancelled stamp. Apparently Halloween isn’t educational. I failed celebrating cool American holidays that involve evil spirits and candy.

The other English teacher disappeared for a few days. With me in charge, all her classes were given perfect grades and candy. She wasn’t very pleased when she returned. Valentina also disappeared. My classes received perfect grades and fun and candy and lost a considerable amount of yelling in the classroom. Who would’ve thought that these things were indirectly proportional?

The woman I worked with at the orphanage was fired. I now work with a different, newer and improved woman there. Here ability to communicate in English is worse but her ability to consistently allow fun activities has greatly improved which is the more important of the two.

There is exactly one year left starting tomorrow.

Summer is officially over and has been for about a month already. The last week of summer had the Astana’s teachers’ conference that was attended by myself and Chrisconsin and we presented for the 120something English teachers in Astana. We hung out with Tuganai and Zhanna and then we were off to home. We split up long enough for me to head back to Astana to pick up Rusty and his friend Mike. They are traveling throughout Asia for a few months and decided to trek to Kazakhstan to see me. That involved a two day train ride across China, a 30something hour bus ride from Urumqi to Almaty and then another 20 hour bus ride to meet me and then a 3 hour bus ride to the middle of nowhere to eat some beshbarmak. We had a banya, drank vodka, ate horse colon and heart and then celebrated constitution day in my town square with more vodka with a side trip to the lake. The next morning we went on a nature hike and to Astana. They left on September 1, the first day of school for me. They do a better job describing a foreigner’s experience in Kazakhstan than I can possibly ever could. (losviajeroshuevones.blogspot.com - should be the proper spelling)

Then it was school. I started teaching classes like usual. It is going alright at the moment. I am working at both school #1 and the orphanage school (but the woman i worked with was fired so now my work there is in limbo). However, there are some scheduling conflicts because it took the full first month of school for a finalized schedule to be ready. At first, I was teaching a lot more classes than usual but then they decided to hire another teacher to cover the extra classes because teachers aren’t allowed to teach more than 27 hours a week according to some rule. (there are only 33 hours of English each week though –so 27 is almost every single class in the school) I played parts of the Terminator with my 11th formers because I was supposed to teach about robots in English. I just made it as extreme as possible. We also have a student teacher at the moment teaching some classes in English. She did work and travel in USA and it happened to be Manahawkin, NJ. That’s kinda weird.

One week I went mid-week to Kokshetau with Sagar and Tobin to present with the Akmola Oblast AIDS Center to help Andrew’s project while he was on vacation in Europe. We also celebrated the combined birthday of me and Tobin and we devoured a lot of chili. Chrisconsin left to Kostanai, Dante left Kazakhstan and the oblast is losing all its volunteers. There will be new ones in November. My birthday involved me teaching a bunch of classes, then I went home, drank a beer, ate gross horse entrails, and then I went to my town’s café/club place for the first and most likely the last time. I went with Aitugan, Arystan and Renat. The place had only about 10 patrons on a weekend night and when I asked if more people would come to the club, they said it was still early, even though the place closed an hour after that. I guess the lack of people in my town of club going age hurts the one club in my town. Why it’s here is the part that confuses me the most. Well I went home and passed out and woke up a few hours later and went to Astana in the early morning to see Final Destination 4 in 3-d for my birthday and then I got lunch with this girl Aliya that I am helping with writing essays in English for grad school in America. I went home and was back by 3 in the afternoon and chilled. And i got a kindle from dennis and will so i read that.  

I met AC (who returned to Kazakhstan in the non-PC version, the one that pays you tons of money to teach English), Jessie and Sagar in Astana for a while then I went out to dinner on a maybe-date thing with a girl here(I never know if it’s a date or not, when I think it is they don’t and have like tons of boyfriends or husbands or something like that already and when I think it isn’t they usually do, oh woe is me) and saw Berik one Saturday. Then it was back home, another Sunday chillin out and then more school. We had the teachers' day celebration and I had to fill out some survey from the students.  Of course i had all of the strangest answers to it.The next day I went apartment hunting (I had been for the whole month) and was successful. Valentina’s sister-in-law had one for me to rent and after the process of paperwork for Peace Corps and checking things to see if it’s good allowed me to finally move into my own place. I now live alone which is much better for prospective visitors and I cook normal food. It’s pretty big and has furniture and things like that. It even has satellite TV so I can watch Russian pop music videos while I eat breakfast every day. So if anyone wants to come from America, I have a couch for you to sleep on now. Unfortunately I don’t have any extra blankets.I'm making a carrot cake now.  That's all.

here are some photos of jacob's backyard for where we went camping

I last left off at the end of May. There was a snowstorm and then school ended in a flash. I went home and was like “that’s it?”*shrugs shoulders* and started my summer. It started by me spending that last week of May at home relaxing. The next week, the first of June, was going to be my first adventure off in another part of Kazakhstan for the summer. I went to Astana and inquired about the bus times to Ust-Kamenogorsk so I could head out there to see Dave (Whitsett) and attend his Frisbee camp. Well, as I waited patiently at the bus station, Dave calls me and tells me that he has kidney stones and must go to the hospital. Camp was cancelled and now I had no plans; woe is me. Kidding, about me, I felt bad for Dave, he said it felt like the worst pain ever, especially when he had to go through it in the old Soviet hospitals. In the nephrology department, where he was situated, he described his roommate to me over the phone and how the old equipment basically turned the patient next to him into Doctor Octopus from Spider Man. However, he’s perfectly healthy now and everything worked out for him. This all means that I spent another week at home. I chilled and relaxed and played with children at the orphanage in my free time. I explored the forests and the steppe near my village. Sagar appeared at one point so we could chillax. After these two brief weeks of resting I was called upon to take up the cause of my real work once again.

It’s now June, the second week to be exact. The first week of Camp Mr Ken Fun English Time (I just made this name up). I had 10 days to entertain, teach and amuse a group of children at my school. I was told that I would receive the help from a praktikant, student teacher. She stopped coming after the first day and decided not to help and went off to do something else, but it was my school that still gave her credit which I was annoyed with. But whatever, camp still went fine. The attendance of the children, between the ages of 9 and 12, crescendo-ed and then decrescendo-ed. Few in the beginning, then it built up to many, then back down to a few at the end. Every day we did different activities from doing origami to playing football, going on picnics and watching Disney cartoons. On the weekend between the weeks of camp I headed to Astana and met Jessie, Drew, and Jamie at TGI Fridays, Astana’s finest restaurant. It tasted like America and was good enough to warrant American prices. I returned to my village for camp part two. The favorite activity was probably MASH, little girls love that game. On the last two days, Chrisconsin appeared. He was eaten by every bug on our nature walk then destroyed in football by the children at the orphanage. There was a soccer tournament in the village at this time and we checked it out and befriended the Yerementau team. Yerementau is famous in this area for being where the elektrichka ends. There was a thunderstorm at this point too. Consin was scared of the lightning. The rain came until August.

On the 20th of June I boarded the train to Taraz for my first part of summer there. I spent two weeks in the village of Assa, home to Dave Hannon. We played baseball, capture the flag, gave all the children awesome nicknames, went to banya, cooked lots of delicious food and danced. There was a large group of volunteers there over the two weeks and one day we had an excellent slip and slide. We all learned that ‘truth or dare jenga’ is a game designed for both boys and girls, not just boys. On the Saturday in the middle, a group of us went to Taraz to go swimming, sing Karaoke, dance, and then the following morning we went to the water park and spent the day there. We went to a river and I befriended dragonflies. We had a few English clubs at Michael’s organization. One day Hotard showed me the restaurant that serves dog (it’s Korean) and we ate it (it tasted like I’m on top of the food chain=good). Another evening we went to a club and the volunteers of Taraz know the owner and he showered us with foods and drinks. And on the last day I got on the train home with Arboos and Hanman. We got to my house and spent the day showering, doing laundry, and playing Frisbee. We made banana pancakes, went to bed and left at 6 in the morning to Astana for the 4th of July.

The 4th of July…was on a weekend. This weekend coincided with Astana’s holiday of “day of the city” which also happens to be Nazarbayev’s birthday. We decided to do the most American things possible, and that was go see Transformers 2. Nothing is more American than robots from space fighting on pyramids. On the way to the theatre we saw Nazarbayev making a speech near a memorial in the city. It was crazy, the president was like only a 100 meters from us. However, instead of watching the whole speech we deemed the fate of the world as controlled by robots and Michael Bay more important. After the film, we went over to the embassy. The embassy complex consists of many buildings, one is the marine barracks. They hosted the 4th party. Their barracks has a batting cage, pool table, basketball court, and a fully stocked American bar. We ate grilled foods and peanut butter cups and had whiskey. About 15 volunteers went and we met US diplomats and the marines here. We had a water balloon fight at the embassy. It was a lot of fun and when it got late we decided to go clubbing with the marines. They got us in with no cover because I guess they probably go to this place a lot. It’s called A8. It was fun and we danced the night away. I met a girl named Madlen I went out with a few weeks later. In the morning, I got on the train to Atbassar for Camp Into the Wild.

Camp Into the Wild…was not in the wild. It was on the side of a highway at a lake that was clean enough for swimming. I mentioned earlier about the rain, right? Well it rained a lot, and Arboos had a big grant for his camp so we had tents and generators and computers and dance parties and all these other things to make camping as simple as possible. Which isn’t bad, but it rained. Well Sagar and I went on a vision quest in a boat. Hanman and I went on a vision quest in a forest. We slack-lined the steppe. And then when the kids finally showed up a few days later, Sagar and I had to leave for Russian Language Camp Schuchinsk. So we walked on the highway and the post office man gave us a ride to a town where we got a ride to a train station to take the train to Schuchinsk, for less than five dollars between the two of us. Oops, I forgot a part that happened in Atbassar, it involves a love triangle featuring three of our funniest volunteers, a bathroom being destroyed due to a water pipe bursting, poop everywhere, double dates at train stations, a girl from America that’s not in Peace Corps, tears, laughs, a ton of shashlik, a dance party with Kimmy, old Russian woman (now Arboos’ s girlfriend), babies, and me managing this situation. The term “manage the situation” is now a huge joke because I said one wrong thing to start this spiral of events (however, I’m not involved in any of these dramas except for dancing and laughing and eating shashlik, which was cramp inducing). I guess I’m the responsible one and that’s why it was up to me to manage it. I learned a lesson from all of this though, I shouldn’t be a manager. Anywho, camp was fun for those few days. I got to befriend the grasshoppers. When a girl left, she cried because she had such a good time with us and didn't want to go.

And then I was in Schuchinsk. Home to both 100% of Wyoming’s volunteers in Kazakhstan and the ‘rock where no arrows can reach.’ Also, known as the gateway to Borovoe, ‘Kazakhstan’s Switzerland’. Russian Language Camp was school for 4 hours a day. Learning advanced Russian grammar. Pull trigger here. Kidding. I forgot my pants in the wild though but Sasser was in town (the director of PC) and he got them for me and brought them back. That was good. He also got a large group of us dinner. We went to Borovoe. Swimming and fun times were had by many. It rained a lot. I spent too much money. There were many dance parties at night featuring me, Tobin, Susie and Shannon. Drew and Man and Girl Jamie were there too. So were the Hubers. And a guy name Chris Chaplin that went to W and L and knows people I know back home, small world! It was like PST all over again! The Risk board was taken out, so there were many friendship ending games of Risk. I went out for Quinn’s final hurrah (he early terminated his service in favor of a job in Almaty – now he’s like that dude that’s gonna live in Kaz forever). It was me, Quinn, red bull, vodka and a lot of fun. We got home in time for Russian class at 9am. Then it was time to go. I got home, did my laundry, went to Astana and hung out with Drew for the afternoon and from there I took the train to Almaty.

Back on the other side of the country there was no rain. Except that first night, the night we went camping in the mountains. Our plan was to go to Jacob’s house. Success. Meet Hotard, Jacob, Kevin and Christina. Success. Start walking into the wilderness. Success. Vodka, fire, sleep. Success. It went well. Back in Almaty, I went to Mai’s organization and hung out with her because I hadn’t talked to her since March. I saw HP6 in Russian. We watched Point Break at PC HQ and then I had my medical appointment. On the morning of my medical appointment, Sagar and I decided to watch the 90s movies that are in HQ so we watched Varsity Blues, Empire Records and Clueless while waiting to visit the dentist. The dentist’s was nice, except for the part when I got my first cavity ever. But it was okay because the dentist had the most beautiful eyes. I couldn’t see the rest of her face for she was wearing a mask, but her eyes were wonderful. It helped me get over the fact that once my medical and dental care became controlled by the government is the moment when my health went bad. Yay America. The best part was how afterwards, me and Sagar got in a marshrutka to Camp Farm Friends Girl Jamie in Merke. The ride was long, uncomfortable, and seated next to me was the most annoying Imam I have ever met. He started talking to me by asking if I was a Muslim because I have an awesome beard. My response was almost “are you a Russian orthodox priest because you have a beard?” but I held back my insult. I said ‘I’m American, we all have beards.’ He continued by trying to convert me to Islam for a long time, when I finally got fed up I asked him if he knew Arabic because the Koran can only truly be read in Arabic. He said no and shut up. He could’ve lied and said yes, I only know the words habibi and allah akbar in Arabic and that means like cute girl and god is great? Whatever. So the ride was annoying. His ignorance in not knowing that all men can grow beards, not just Muslims was the worst part. We got to Merke late at night and slept and then got up for camp.  

And then I got swine flu.  

I wasn’t feeling well. Sagar wasn’t either. We had different symptoms, but we were together and both of us started not to feel well. But, you know, 100%, I still went to camp and played with children. I couldn’t talk anymore and could barely breathe and my fever was staying at a solid 103/104 temp so I decided to leave and go to Taraz and get better. So I moved in with Hotard and slept at his place for a while. I go over to Susannah’s for lunch and Drew gets a text from the Hubers saying that they were traveling to Pavlodar with Sagar. The train stopped in Astana and the medical hazmat team quarantined Sagar for swine flu and delayed the trains and basically it was a recreation of that part from ET when they get ET and it’s like super scary especially when you are like 7 years old because ET is a friendly alien and of course our untrustworthy government that already knows about the aliens is trying to still hide them from us and you don’t know if you are scared for ET or for ourselves because we have to live with a government like that. So he’s quarantined and the doctors are in those crazy suits and I’m at Susannah’s on the other side of the country and she’s like that means you have it too and you have to leave my apartment. But eventually she let me back in and let me sit in the corner and somehow mentioned how I dance funny (which I took as bad) and at that moment was my worst moment in Peace Corps. I was sitting there with swine flu and dying and I was okay. But hearing the part about my dancing almost brought me to tears. I found out a few minutes later that I don’t have swine flu and she took me to get my haircut (apparently my hair was bad too) and then she got me a melon and we watched a movie together. So it wasn’t that bad. When you look better, you feel better. I don’t have swine flu, Sagar is alright (it was so sad because that was the day after we separated after traveling together for so long), I ate a melon, and my sickness eventually went away after another week. It was like something wrong with my lungs like pneumonia or bronchitis.  

So I was in Taraz. I worked at Hotard’s organization and did English club and Theatre club and helped Hanman before he moved out of Assa to Almaty for PST. I got healthy. We watched a lot of Dexter. Baked chocolate chip cookies(which is amazing, brown sugar is unfindable and many ovens don’t work because people here don’t bake)! And I got my train ticket home. I went home when August started.  

Home, sweet, home. I was there for 2 days in the past month and a half. I stayed for a few days and hung out with Olya and then she left and she moved to Boston to be an Au Pair. So, yeah if you’re in Boston, I know a Russian girl from my village that lives there now to hang out with. I never mentioned how I met Olya. She approached me and said ‘I heard you have no friends, want to go swimming?’ I was like ‘did she just neg me?’ I decide the best possible course of action is to get in her car.  Then I asked her name.  I should've done it the other way in retrospect.  We went swimming and were friends ever since. I went to Astana and did a pre-departure orientation for people going to study in America and English club and met Jenny’s parents and they visited from the States. At American Councils I met two girls that did high school in America so they confuse me a lot. They speak exactly like American girls but they aren’t. One is named Zhanna and we went out a few times in the past few weeks. Valentina’s son got married during this time. Weddings in Kazakhstan are huge multi-day celebrations with tons of people. Everyone I know in the village was invited it seemed like – other teachers, neighbors, my host family. Except me, oh well, I went on a sweet nature hike that day.  

On the 16th I got on the overnight bus to Kostanai. We were supposed to film a zombie movie but it turned into something else. I still got to film a short film in which I play a woman’s lover and then her husband brutally murders me and her. It was fun. I met a few more volunteers (I met a lot this summer that I hadn’t known earlier). I stayed with Jim there and it was fun. I took the train home after being there for a week and got off in Kokshetau, met with Andrew, Sagar, and Dante and celebrated our 1 year anniversary of being in Kazakhstan. There was chechil, vodka, Dante changing the definitions of words in English for non-native speakers, and fun. The next morning I went to Jenny’s and stayed with her all day and she cooked me dinner and we watched movies and then I went home on the elektrichka.  

Summer was a lot of fun. Rusty gets here this week for the last big thing. I also have a teacher conference on Wednesday this week. I got a raise in money and it’s still not enough. (the currency devalued 25% but then we got a 17% raise but like we are still less than before and now there’s more inflation and things) I met like a billion people all over the country, local and volunteer and other random foreigners like 2 cyclists from France (www.onetwotree.fr is their site) or random Americans or whatnot. I went to places all over the country and did camps and made children happy and now school starts again next week. Future plans involve teaching and a vacation to India in November for 2 weeks between the 7th and 21st because I need a vacay outside the country and India is cheap.

borovoe

borovoe

slackline-ing

camping

the cover to my christian rock album

summer is great, i'm always on the road though and never with a pc so i'm gonna throw a few pictures up for yall

Here’s a little present to welcome the onslaught of summer.

It’s seriously been forever and a day since I updated this and I would apologize but I won’t because if you really wanted some info you would’ve called me. (this is implying that no one calls me) 

The first set of news. The softball team finally made it to the top! The year I’m not there, they go all the way to win the Reilly cup. Congrats!

March:

This month kinda sucked at first.  

Apparently this past winter was ‘mild’. That being not cold. An average of -30 is pretty damned cold. Anywho, the first day of March was the first day in the positive temperatures this year which seemed like a good sign. It wasn’t. Everything resolidified as wonderful ice and that lasted until April. Also the entire world became a gray/brown mud ice combination which in David Remnick’s ‘Lenin’s Tomb’ is described “euphemistically as spring. The melting snow, the dun-colored landscape, the buses so caked in mud that you could not see out the windows, the sudden appearance of defeated-looking weeds, all reminded one Russian friend of ‘an old whore disrobing.’“ During this period my boots started to fall apart. With the falling apart of my boots also came the unraveling of my socks. 

 

Work wasn’t that great in March either. I discovered the reason easily enough but there was nothing I could do to fix the problem. In the Kazakh school year, each of the four quarters consists of two months. Except the 3rd quarter. It is three months. In the last month the children can’t seem to calm down and are basically out of control. But it ended soon enough. We should tell all the big drug companies to send over adderall and focalin and they’ll make a ton. I was able to teach ‘Mean Girls’ to my 11th graders. That was pretty successful. I explained how American high school is exactly like that.

A few of my friends in town and I went to the pizzeria one day to eat some pizza. We arrive at the pizzeria and are like, ‘yes, I would like to order a pizza.’ They responded with, ‘we don’t have pizza today, you need to order it 1 day in advance.’ I was even annoyed by it, it was so Kazakhstan. My boy Arystan went to Texas A and M and loves ‘How I Met Your Mother’ which is pretty awesome for someone in Akkol … and totally unexpected. He works with satellite communications and does some crazy science stuff I can’t really explain nor understand completely.

One day was Women’s Day (March 8th). This is the day women are respected in Kazakhstan. I wonder how the government will spin the news when they learn that their precious ‘Golden Man’ remains from the Saka is going to be confirmed by archaeologists as a female in the near-future. (queue brains exploding) ‘Hold on, our famous leader-ancestor was a woman?!?’ (brains explode)

I participated in the ritualistic slaughter of a sheep in my backyard on the day also. This sheep was a total bastard so it’s cool that his blood stained the snow red. He was a boy and always tried to ram his fucking horns at me when I fed him. Now he’s feeding me. First, the feet were tied together and it was placed in the snow. Within a second, that big artery in its throat was spilling blood into the snow. Its life lasted less than a minute after that. Can I use the term ‘hissed’ as the way a liquid flows? If I can that’s how I’ll describe it, if you have never seen a mammal with its throat slit. The blood was so warm that it melted the snow and caused red steam to evaporate into the atmosphere. When it snowed later that day, I wondered if some of the flakes were red. Speaking of the snow, there goes the mud and ice – it’s all snow again. Within five minutes the skin was all gone and then within another ten it was chopped into different chops that look like they were sitting in a glass case in the supermarket. The skin and most of the internal organs were trashed for some reason. (like half the time I eat ridiculous organs like tongues and hearts and stomachs filled with ground liver) It seemed rather inefficient. I felt like I could have made gloves or a rope or something from its wool. Isn’t that wool is used for anyway?? Anywho, I have some videos but they are rather graphic. One involves Kairbek going at the sheep’s head with a torch and his grandson asks when we will do this to the dog and he had to explain that we don’t eat dogs. I thought it was funny because I’d eat the dog in a heartbeat. Some Korean restaurants have dog on the menu here but there are none in my town, I’m gonna have to search for one. I hate the dogs in Kazakhstan, every single one of them. They’re everywhere. I also now know how to peel the skin off a mammal. You roll your fists in a mock imitation of Popeye punching someone sort of like kneading dough for bread. There’s also like no blood when you do it. The only blood from the whole experience was when the animal was first killed. They thought I’d be disturbed by the whole experience but I responded with a “klassno!” (cool!)

I went to Astana with Mike, Chris, Sagar, and Jessie at the beginning of that month to spend the night and have a club at the law/economic college. After the club we got a place to stay and went out to a bar that brewed its on beer. It was delicious. And it was in the Radisson so that means it cost bank so I don’t plan on going there every time I’m in Astana. Afterwards, we headed over to a club – ‘Seoul’. They had a pretty big line and it was right next to where we were staying (literally, I think it’s the same building) so it was very convenient. A bunch of people were inside and they had a DJ/Emcee having a variety of activities in addition to the music. Good Times. There were dancers in bikinis at one point. Then there was a danceoff between 3 guys and each guy had 2 girls with them to dance with. Now I should have been a judge because I have an excellent eye for dancing. So each guy danced with 2 girls. And one guy was clearly a superior dancer than the other two. But when it was just down to 2 guys the one girl with the not as good dancing guy decided to strip, probably because she is the skankiest girl this side of the Ishim River, and that guy ended up winning. Sure everyone got to see the chick get naked but that doesn’t mean that the dude should win. They should just have given a conciliation prize to this girl on the side. Total bullshit. Plus she had on a push-up bra so when she took her shirt off the package looked nice but inside it was filled with nothing. Then a guy came out with two flaming sticks and then started blowing fireballs for some reason. I went back to the apartment. I woke up the next day got doners and headed home. It was the 48th anniversary of Peace Corps.  

On St Patrick’s Day I visited every store in my town to try to find a Guinness. I found Bailey’s for 30$ a bottle. I got an MGD instead.  

 

There’s a frozen dog standing upright in the i-spy game from last time. It’s rotting on its side in a ditch now. The face was eaten by maggots and now you can see the skull. (update: it’s gone, I think buried)

On March 19 I got on a train to Shymkent. This is when my joss turned good. It was about 24 hours long. I was in a wagon with a bunch of young college students. It was pretty cool. I got to Shymkent at night on the 20th. Fun started then. Many of my friends had congregated to this city in the Deep South for the holiday of Nauryz. This is the traditional Kazakh New Year celebration. It aligns with the equinox and comes from the time before God was born. It was sunny and hot. On the 21st we got on a bus and headed to Otrar and Turkistan. Otrar is famous because they refused to pay tribute to a Jengis Khan. When Khan heard this, he jumped on the next horse outta Mongolia and proceeded to conquer the entire Central Asian Steppe and when his bloodlust was not sated he turned on Russia and Ukraine. Now it’s just foundations and ruins. We didn’t know if we could go in the park place so we went over the fence, but it was okay because our CD was with us and said if something happened that “they can’t arrest us all.” Turkistan has this badass mausoleum. Apparently if you visit it three times it’s the equivalent of one trip to Mecca. I don’t believe that though, mainly because I’m not a Muslim and that’s like saying the Catholic Church in TR is like St Peter’s in Rome. It just doesn’t work like that. However, it was badass. Had this cool mosaic work all over it and a big cauldron in it. Turkistan is also located near the Syr-Darya River. Which is pretty important not only for the water it brings through here now but also in history as being an important stop along the Silk Road. (Funny story, due to the excellent Soviet administration it is now almost completely dry and that highly contributes to the drying of the Aral Sea and turning southern Kaz into a desert. Oh wait, that’s not funny at all) Me and Hotard went to the museum and made some little kids’ days by talking with them in English. The next day was actual Nauryz. We had some of the food and it rained. Then we all trekked to the Hippodrome for the games:

Kokpar –the Kazakh national sport of 2 teams of 7 men riding on horse back and using a decapitated goat carcass as a ball and attempting to battle each other to throw the ‘ball’ in the goal.  

Kyz-kuu – the game in which a man chases a girl. both are on horses, if the man catches the girl before the finish he gets to kiss her, if he doesn’t she takes out her whip and asserts herself as an independent female in a highly patriarchal society – what a beautiful game when the women win

Audaryspak – two men are each on horses and take off their shirts. they approach each other and then start to fight. first one off his horse loses

It was a pretty sweet day overall. It rained so much though that most people left but me and Hotard stuck it out and then we went to the Shymkent zoo. Imagine a zoo in a capital city of a developing country. Now picture what a zoo in a non-capital city in a developing city. I took one picture there, it’s this one. The world’s saddest bear. You should’ve seen the tigers and wolves. Such a shame. Little locks cover the doors but I think I would be arrested and deported if I cut them off and I can wait for the end of my service for that.

That night I got horse pizza and it was good. Then there was an Olympic competition between the north and the south, I showed up late because I was busy getting horse pizza but the second half was pretty fun. team north is pretty solid.

The next day I wandered Shymkent alone and met with Britt and she bought me the most delicious food in Kazakhstan, a chocolate cake with a molten core that is covered in ice cream. That is like unheard of here. It was so good. Later was a bus overnight to Almaty for IST seminar and PDM seminar with volunteers.

Those days passed pretty fast and they were alright, some meetings were a hit some were a miss the PDM was good because it helped me out a lot, I don’t know if it helped everyone that much though. One night we wanted to sing karaoke because it’s basically my favorite thing but it was way expensive so we went to a different place and then it was Jenn’s bday and we all went out for that and everyone had fun and was safe and incredibly responsible. I also was inducted as honorary ocap even though I’m edu. what what… 

April:

I came back on the train to Akkol. The snow was gone. I taught and started Frisbee club which is more popular than English club. I’ve been to Astana a few times(med university, American councils, law/econ college). The snow came back. There’s an American dude that comes to my town 2x a week to do something like help at school #3.

  

I’m friends with this girl in Astana named Asem that I met on a train randomly and we did the phone number exchange thing and actually contacted each other again. This is shocking because every volunteer probably knows that half of Kazakhstan has their phone numbers. She lived in San Francisco for like 2 years so she’s pretty awesome and another year in North Carolina for study abroad. We went to the Independence Palace and saw this sweet future map model city of Astana which I don’t think can possibly be finished due to the combination of krisis and they need 2 mil people in Astana for it to work. That’s kinda stretching it. And then there was the 4-d video.

So I’m sitting there watching it and wind is blowing in my face and I got 3-d glasses on and the chair is shaking and then a snake is coming to eat an egg and this eagle comes down to kill the snake but the eagle is actually the Kazakh people and Nursultan Nazarbayev pops up in 4-d. Life changing moment for me. I almost joined the NurOtan Party.

Speaking of NurOtan, I asked my friend Aitugan if he was a member. He responded with “I would never be associated with those fucking retards.” (This is me being non-political right? I didn’t say that – and no offense to any members of the party that read this) I had a balanced pro-NurOtan quote along with this but I wouldn’t want to inadvertently refer to that person as a ‘fucking retard’.  

Carolyn is super awesome. Well I mean I have to hate her because she’s a banker and the whole crisis is entirely her fault but with the sweet payout she’s making from making the little man even poorer she sent me a new Star Wars t-shirt. That’s the nicest thing ever.

The second half of April had teaching and nice weather. I did English clubs at Med University some more and Economic/Law College and a meeting at American Councils over some Saturdays. School went pretty well. Days seemed to be cancelled for various reasons I didn’t understand. Except one, we got off for Lenin’s Birthday and when I asked if we still celebrate Lenin’s Birthday they mostly said no (not 100% of people asked said no) and it was a coincidence that on a random Wednesday we got out of school.  

May:

Friendship/National Unity Day was the 1st of May and I went to Kokshetau with Jenny and Brendan and hung out there and tried to go to the English Textbook store but it was a holiday and closed and that sucked, I gotta go up there again soon then. Then another week of school went by and one day was like Soldier’s Day and I was given a mug and then came Victory Day so we got to cheer that we defeated the Nazis. There was a parade and celebration in the town square and afterwards I went on a quest to find the local river with Aitugan and that involved driving out into the steppe and getting basically lost in the middle of nowhere. We never found the river. Maybe it dried up.

May 5th was Cinco de Mayo so I had to bring the holiday here. I celebrated by cooking a Mexican fiesta of enchiladas. They were the 2nd worst enchiladas I ever ate, the worst I ever made. Mainly because I had to create the ingredients by myself and substitute everything. I think the consensus of professional enchilada eaters of TR has to agree that the best ever were consumed in Chile in the sunny hamlet of Arica. The worst, I think that’s a secret between me and my mom, but we both know whose those are.  

One day I decided to walk to this tower on a hill in the distance because the weather was great. Little did I know that there was a dirt road through the forest to it which makes sense. So instead I went straight through the forest and tried to see the tower whenever there was a clearing. I made it eventually. I saw a hare, some lizards, and a bunch of birds which was pretty cool. There was a guy near the tower planting flowers and he asked me questions about if I was a spy. I responded with “why would an American spy come to this solitary tower in the middle of the forest in Kazakhstan?” actually I didn’t, I explained that I was a teacher in Akkol and he was like “you’re not from Astana?” as if an American in Akkol is blasphemous to the town’s existence.  

The next day a bunch of guests came over. We entertained them by having 4 men drink a few liters of vodka. At our finest moment we punched a horse’s leg. Why? Because its tradition. And yes it broke. There was marrow everywhere!

Oh I got World Cup Tickets, so I’ll be in Africa next summer. The game is the 24th of June in Capetown, 2010. I will be there with Sagar. We welcome all that would like to join us for great fun.  

Then it was Sagar’s birthday. His special talent is that he cleans his ears like 10 times a day every day. I went up to Shchuchinsk and Mike cooked beef bourginon and we drank some whiskey(the greatest luxury in Kazakhstan, so luxurious that it was imported from the states) and wine and it was pretty chill. The next day was a teacher’s conference. Being hungover at a teacher’s conference is awful, especially when it’s me presenting. On the good side, at least I wasn’t drunk. It ended when I started to feel better and I went home and the next morning I woke up early to go to Asem’s. We spent the day in Astana but it was all rainy and we saw the Wolverine movie (terrible – I was like ‘I think I understood all the Russian in the film but in understanding it I learned that it can’t be understood’ - her reply ‘correct’.) and the oceanarium (amazing). She also showed me where to find the best pizza in Astana.  

Then was the last week of school. It was short and days were shortened and classes were cancelled and I had other classes at orphanage and I planned summer camp and summer plans and things. And it was the first week in which I didn’t read a single thing. Because I just got Entourage seasons 1-5 and watched them all instead. I’m trying to go on vacation in August. I was planning India but due to monsoon season and my travel partner’s parents maybe coming to Kazakhstan we are probably gonna try to go in November after monsoons and when there is a school break so it still doesn’t disrupt many things.  Then it snowed again, the fruit crop might be ruined. this was on may 23

here is lake akkol

this is akkol why its hyperlinked ill never know

worlds saddest bear

kokpar

audryspak or however its speleld

kyz kuu, shes whipping him

turkistan

kazakhstan

that head is about to be lit on fire

I shaved my beard. It was huge and always out of control. Probably because I did nothing to tame it besides washing it. In my upcoming beard expedition which either starts this summer or when the next school year starts, I might invest in a clipped to keep it not officially out of control.  

Have been unavoidably detained by the world.

Expect me when you see me.

News: A boy in my 5th grade class had a sweatshirt on that had the ‘Puma’ symbol on it. Instead of saying that it said ‘Black Panthers’ and it was unintentionally hilarious.

Huge news: Neil informed me that Blink-182 is getting back together.

Huger news: A-Rod made doing steroids cool. I can’t hate that guy, he’s the man. At first I was crushed but here in Kazakhstan there is only me to comment on baseball because no one else knows what it is so I’m gonna say that it’s totally legit. (In reality, I’m crying as I type this because I can’t lie to myself)

Hugest News! – I learned why I can’t fish or swim in the lake. First of all, Akkol is Kazakh for ‘white lake’. Ak is white, Kol is lake; simple. I can’t fish in it because there are no fish. Okay that makes sense. The reason for the lack of fish and the advice not to swim is because the hospital illegally dumps their medical waste in the lake. GRRRRREAT!

Included in this edition are ***2 Special Inserts*** (RECIPES because I cook more and more here) and a fun little game I like to call “I-Spy!” I posted a picture and I would like comments on the comment page of “I-Spy…Akkol Kazakhstan still life photo” or whatever it is that you see in it. It’s a goodie!

The week after my last post was pretty sweet. School was cancelled almost every day so I didn’t really have to work. This was due to the weather being extremely cold. yay. The best was on Wednesday when my host mom was like “I called the school and only first through fifth is cancelled today”. So I was like still asleep because it was before my alarm and was like “grumble mumble I don’t teach those classes today I gotta go”. So off I go to school. I stop to look at the temp and it says minus 35 and I’m like ‘hmm it’s colder than before, that’s weird there’s school’. So I’m almost there and I catch up to Svetlana and Valentina because I walk super fast and Valentina falls on the ice like 10 meters ahead of me and then instead of being shocked due to her fall she sees me and is like ‘ I told you not to come it’s too cold!!’. And I go ‘Nah, it’s cool Galina said I’m on today.’ She says, “I tried to call you but then I talked to Galina and said it was cancelled through 9th and you don’t have 11th or 10th today so you should stay in bed then I texted you too.” I go, “I can’t hear my texts when I’m listening to Blink this loud on my pod, you hear they’re back?!” So I sat in the school until the sun rose so it’d be warmer and stuff but it wasn’t. The 11th and 10th graders that actually showed up did a practice ENT (it’s like that test kids in America take so they can graduate). FACT: Beards keep your face warm. My beard is so thick now that I don’t have to wear a face mask at minus 35. But it freezes from the condensation of my breath and turns frosty white. It actually looks pretty cool. Moral of the story: I can’t understand the difference between the numbers 5 and 9 in Russian when I am asleep. The week ended with classes being changed and/or cancelled so I barely worked at all at school that week.

My host mom went off to Karaganda for a thing in which her nephew and the family meets his future wife’s family because they just got engaged and I had to stay at home and care for the livestock. I’m all domestic now feeding sheep and checking for eggs in the chicken coop. It was a pretty exciting Valentine ’s Day overall. Besides working with the animals and teaching I met up with these dudes Aitugan and Renat and went skating and then got some food. They build and program satellites for the Kazsat (the Kazakhstan space center place that’s located in the forest). The one dude plays World of Warcraft and was really excited to find out that I too played it at one point back in the day. He showed me his level 80 mage. It was pretty tite. Anywho, that night I headed home and decided to watch the most romantic of James Bond films, ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’. It’s so badass. I also saw a chickflick called ‘Definitely, Maybe’ recently and I have to admit that it’s awesome (for a chickflick). After telling other male volunteers how much I liked it they were like ‘lame’ and then they all watched it after I said that and then they were like ‘you were right, it was pretty good’.

***SPECIAL INSERT***

Ok, here’s a little recipe I whipped up for a soup using some things I had at my disposable in addition to the vegetable god blessing my village with some peppers in one of the stores.

½ kilo of red kidney beans – soak them overnight in water

1250 ml water – about 5 cups

500 ml orange juice

some bouillon – a lil’ bit (I didn’t actually use any, I used pelmini seasonings cause we had none at home for the broth)

olive oil

a bunch of onions – about 5 of them ranging from small to medium size – maybe 3 cups in English units?

half a head of garlic

lil’ salt

black pepper – 1 tbsp

paprika – 1 tbsp

2 big sweet peppers – like red or yellow or whatnot, use multiple colors for presentation (it’ll be like half a kilo)

about 5 small-medium sized carrots

1 orange

some curry powder/paste – I used yellow curry

1. Soak beans for 24 hours then put them in a pot with a liter of water and the bouillon and bring to a boil, add curry powder and then grind the orange peel (I don’t know the official term for getting the goods out of it) into the water and cover and simmer on low for an hour. Stir occasionally like once or twice to get the curry to dissolve all nice and good throughout.

2. While the beans cook, chop the onions, carrots, peppers and smash the garlic. Put some oil in a pan and throw in the onions, carrots, salt and some of the garlic. When the carrots are starting to get soft (just poke them with a fork) throw in a little more oil and put in the peppers and the rest of the garlic. Let them all get cooked up.

3. When the hour is up, you add the vegetables into the beans and stir. Dump in the orange juice and the black pepper and red pepper. Smash up your orange and throw it in too (not like slices for eating, like smashed to smithereens). Then go back to the fridge and take the orange juice back out and put a little more in just for good measure and the rest of the water if it’s necessary. Stir it all up and bring it to a boil. Drop the heat, cover and let it simmer for like 30 minutes.

4. Pour into a bowl, allow to slightly cool and then you eat.

5. And I’m like “that’s it” as I shrug my shoulders.

It’s both hot from the curry, black and red pepper and sweet. But it’s a dry heat – not a spicy heat like Cajun or Mexican, just pure heat. That’s why it’s a good combination with the fresh peppers, the orange and orange juice. It adds a nice sweet layer to the soup. It’s vegetarian and healthy. Enjoy!

***End***

Then came smyoter week. It was like school concerts and stuff. I got to watch the kiddies dance and sing and not work. All the classes were shortened for practicing. I went to the concerts and stuff. I got some vids. I missed the taping of the cutest segment ever, but I got ones almost equally as cute. Then my student that speaks English had to do a thing in Kazakh to praise the health care and hospital or something and I was like “dude this is your chance to light the town of fire (figuratively) make a stand on stage and cause a disturbance in protest to the hospital in front of all the town officials” but he didn’t. Official PC policy tells me not to do it so I tried to convince him to do my dirty work. Instead the pollution and death of the village will continue. I heard that if I make a “recommendation” about the safety not being up to “international standards” Kazakhstan might heed my words.

On the weekend I got out of work to go work in Makinka with Chrisconsin, Sagar and Mike Quinn. I talked about nature and videos with Sagar. I mentioned Chris last time so this time I’ll describe my friend Mike Quinn. He’s a cowboy from Wyoming. He’s been here for a year already and teaches college in Shchuchinsk (that is spelled correctly). He went to high school with Sagar but he’s two years older than us (that’s why they are put in the same town). He was a small town cowboy from Cheyenne when he went off to Yale. He’s a really smart dude and writes and edits the PCV newspaper here. He studied Russian so he can speak like super good. He’s always chasing after the Kazakh babes. I think he’s as successful with them as the rest of us, which is not at all. He’s really entertaining. Anywho, after chillin’ I headed home on the elektrichka to my village. On the train I met this cute girl and we talked for a while then she decided to talk in English. As my brain exploded because she totally dropped a huge bomb on me by being able to communicate in my native tongue I forgot to get her phone number because she lives not far away in Astana. As I was exiting the train I was like ‘oh shit’ and took out my sharpie and ripped a paper from notebook and wrote mine on it. I don’t know if she’ll call me though. I barely made it off the train in time; it was a risky maneuver for most likely naught. Oh I forgot to mention that the train had no heat. And it was minus 35. Yay Kazakhstan.

School happened again. Some nights I hang out with Aitugan and chill. He’s tite. At school I was like “can I start a cooking a club and use the kitchens with the kids?” They told me no cause like what if they get sick or something and I tried to reassure them that no one has ever gotten sick from my cooking. The answer was still no. Bummer. In other news, I’m the Akkol School Number 1 And-1 Team Streetballers number one fan. They’re in one of my classes and love basketball so I taught them awesome slang like ‘ups’ and ‘boomshakalaka’(from the glory days of nba jam t.e.). Oh I speak some more Kazakh now, so when I whip it out people are all like “damn boy – that’s fine!!” or at least I pretend that because 99% of the time I don’t understand their answers in Kazakh.

***SPECIAL INSERT 2 (PCV EDITION)****

This lil’ recipe is all stored up in my brain and adapted for Kazakhstan

what you need:

half a kilo of FARSH (ground beef)

sukhariki, I recommend the cheese flavored ones

basil

garlic – a bunch of cloves

tomato paste – 500ml bottle

onions

1 egg

water

spaghetti

olive oil

salt

sugar

paprika

1. Smash the sukhariki into a fine powder. Mix it into the farsh. Add basil, some garlic, the egg and mix for like 3 minutes – not too long. Form small balls.

2. Put olive oil in a pot. Heat and add onions, garlic and some basil (if you can score like oregano or something – more power to you) saute until the onions are translucent then dump in the tomato paste. Fill the jar with water and dump that in. If you think you need more water, dump it in! There’s no rules in Kaz, do what you want. Add basil, some paprika and stir. Let it heat for a while and get good. Taste it. Add sugar and salt until it tastes better. Heat for a while, keep simmering.

3. Throw the meat balls in the pot of sauce, bring to a boil then simmer for like an hour stirring occasionally. Let the meatballs cook in the sauce, don’t precook the balls in a pan, not my style. After an hour check if they are cooked by cutting one open.

4. Make the pasta

5. Combine everything on a plate and eat.

****End Special Insert 2****

That’s about everything. That has happened recently. I’m gonna see if I can ever get some of these vids I made up in here. This is like shortest post ever. Here’s the picture for the game… its at the top because if i move it in the blog it doesnt blow up

pa-ka!

yo yo, heres some photo

thats the forest i go to trek in

burning the snow

the park in my village

endless apartments in karaganda

me with a V.I. Lenin

karaganda statue, power to the coalminers,the men with enough courage to be ironic and start strikes that eventually broke apart the soviet union

those are some of my friends - mike, christina, katy, megan, jessica, and jamie (l to r)

thats some of my family - aigul, gulmira, galina, their friend natasha, and iskander (l to r)

that's astana from the fam's penthouse

thats my village looking artsy, all teh fences here are homemade

thats my school

This post has been a long time coming. The school is really good at not letting me use the internet. After blocking me from it for a while the modem decided to die; therefore there is no longer internet in my village and I doubt there will be anytime in the near future.

The word “lenivets” is the word for sloth in Russian.

Here are some facts about the Russian Language: 1 – you can never be outside because there is no word for “outside”, you are always hanging out in the street if you are not in a building; the term is “na ulitsa” or “in the street”; literal is “on the street” because we stand on it and are not actually in it. 2 – if you go to another country and express it in Russian you use the Russian preposition “v” which is “to”. Except for Ukraine, you use “na” which means “on”. It’s the Russian’s way of saying they go “on the Ukraine”… as in poop.

The past months have been rather quiet. Village life is generally pretty quiet. I guess I never really wondered where the snow goes when it keeps snowing and never melts until the other day. I was shoveling the driveway and path through the garden when the walls of snow around me were becoming too high for me to shovel onto. I finished my task and didn’t really worry about it. A few days later a “mini-blizzard” hit. It was windy and it snowed for like 3 days straight but like it was like intense downpour of snow so I only refer to it as mini. Well the freshly cleaned pathways needed to be shoveled yet again and I found out that I had to put them onto a sled and move the snow away to a new spot. And there’s still a few months of winter left. Sleds are used here as a normal tool/form of transport. I see like ten every day in the streets. People move things on sleds like it’s a car or something. [UPDATE 1 DAY LATER – we burnt the snow, as in we took wood put it on the snow, then proceeded to light the wood on fire – melting the snow. I assume the yard will be covered in ice tomorrow – 1 DAY AFTER – I don’t think we were melting the snow, cause it wasn’t a big pile melted, I think he was attempting to destroy something instead, there’s still a plethora of snow – 1 WEEK LATER – no we were seriously melting the snow and burning it, it was just done incredibly inefficiently at first, now it’s better, of course it was typical inefficient kaz at first]

I think my counterpart has a Valker like craziness in how she speaks. Only two other people I know and a mysterious Australian of whom I know nothing about will truly understand this. Sometimes when she talks it makes no sense and then it’s like in the wrong language or just totally ridiculous comments. I commented on it with a person I know here that knows her. She said that it’s the same amount of nonsense in Russian too. It’s not just her speaking in English. Besides the confusion that happens sometimes working with her is really laid back and fine. It’s good because there are others that do not have coworkers that are so easily to work with.

I spent a weekend in Astana with my friend Tatyana back in December. It was interesting. While I was taking the train to the city, I received a text message from her about someone she knows that wants to go out with us but she’s a little older. I was like “yeah! the more the merrier!” So I get there and I think “oh shit, will it be my counterpart? now that would be weird…” Then I started to dread it. But it wasn’t. It’s not that I don’t want to hang out with Valentina outside of work but I see her all the time because when I’m not at work she lives across the street and we see each other all the time. It was a Kazakh lady and she was a 36 year old surgeon that recently moved to Astana from Almaty. She kept talking about how great Almaty is and by the end of the night I just wanted to respond with “O RLY?! go back there you obviously want to,” but I didn’t. I can be extraordinarily polite here in just about every situation. Well we went to grab some dinner and then another girl met with us, one that was my age. And then this lady is like “so this guy might be stalking me and coming to meet us.” I’m now I’m like “yeah! the more the merrier!” So after dinner this dude (he’s 26) is all like, “I know this sweet club we can go to!” so off we go. We arrive there around 11 and it’s pretty quiet. He seems to know all the people working there. It’s pretty flashy, that being both expensive and also because the waitress comes up to us without a shirt. My friend turns to me and says “I don’t like the look of the waitress.” I respond with “Pochemu? She seems nice.” (Why in Russian) They inform us that in order to stay each person has to buy 4000 tenge worth of stuff. BOUNCE. So off we go to find a new place. This dude yet again has another sweet place to go to. So off we go into a cab across the city to a new district where many new skyscrapers are being built. In the midst of the construction is one finished building containing a restaurant. We enter it and head into it. It’s a nice restaurant that one would use for a wedding probably. I ordered a MGD which was pretty cool. They had a dance floor and a DJ (it wasn’t a wedding). So we’re hanging out and stuff and this dude then asks me if I have ever seen a Kazakh yurt. I act ignorant to what a yurt is to please the intoxicated Kazakh man even though my previous family had a rather nice yurt where people could dine at their restaurant near Almaty. He tells me to follow him so we leave the girls and out we go to another restaurant hidden in the same building. Inside this room, the ceilings are decorated like those of a yurt and he tries to explain to me that this is an authentic yurt. Not only is it the worst designed yurt I have ever seen, it wasn’t a yurt. It was a ceiling with some decorations on it. He was like “it’s beautiful, right?”and proceeded to slur something in Kazakh which was probably his confession of his love for yurts or something. All I said was “wow, never have I seen anything this nice.” (that was a lie) He seemed pleased. We returned to the other place and went to dance and before I know it this Kazakh girl is asking me to dance, in English, and then I realize that of like the 5 people that I know in the whole city, she is one of them. Confused and surprised, I agree to the dance. Everyone said I dance well, which in fact I don’t, it’s just this past summer I had a dancing revelation thanks to the influence of two girls (Ali and Martha) that changed what I think of the whole concept of dancing in general. Or maybe I am an awesome dancer. Compared to most people here I am at least. That night I go back to my friend’s apartment but she actually rents a room from a family and they won’t allow her to let someone stay there but its late and like I had to sneak through the apartment in which their son was awake when I entered but facing the other direction and wearing head phones so he couldn’t hear me as I tiptoed behind him across the room literally a foot from his back. It was pretty sketchy. There was white noise on the television just sort of keeping the room dimly lit and all the rooms had windows in them that opened on each other, not to the outside. It was strange, but I’m used to that because my bedroom here has a big window on my door. Which at first was strange because then there is no sense of privacy due to the window on my door and I’m like wtf. But then it got replaced with frosted glass, so there’s still a window on the door but now when I’m naked in my room (which is usually the entire time I’m in there) I’m just a blur of humans limbs and flesh. I went to sleep, woke up and headed to the Medical School to conduct a few lectures in English in the morning. I was happy I wasn’t hung over (due to the fact that I didn’t drink anything) so at least I had my wits with me when I awoke in a strange place. I don’t think this really conveys the whole experience as well as I would like to describe it but whatevs. It was really strange. The strangest part being that dude and the yurt. The whole scenario lasted like 45 minutes. After it I just wanted to sleep.

Oh there are always like a million commercials on TV and I asked what the deal was during the USSR and back then there was never commercials. There’s this one for Nestle NUTS – a candy from Nestle. And the candies are in the shape of a scrotum and there are these babes saying in Russian “I want your NUTS” but nuts is in English so no one will understand. I laugh every time. Welcome to capitalism.

I went to Makinka to Chrisconsin’s for Christmas dinner. Chrisconsin is this dude Chris from Wisconsin. He’s a Kaz-19 and a character. We ate a goose and drank eggnog that we made and it was delicious. Yelena Yurievna was there, who was previously mentioned in my wallet incident. I’m way past that and I believe her about not seeing anything. She’s his counterpart. I left at 430 to take the train to work though, I was hoping it would be cancelled to coldness but it wasn’t.

The following weekend I went to Astana again, to the Medical Academy for their New Year’s party. It was like dancing and food and games and stuff. It was fun. I asked Talgat why he wouldn’t dance with all the babes (as a joke – he’s works in the English department; he’s like the head of the faculty for English) and he said “if I went to your school and danced with the girls there it would be fine, but here I can’t because I’m their teacher” or something along those lines. And all I could think was “if you came to my school and danced with the girls you’d probably be the creepiest person ever because I teach small children.” So I had to dance with all the girls for the two of us. The next night I had my own school’s dance for the holiday. It was actually three separate dances interspersed throughout the day. The earliest for the youngest, the middle day one for the middle grades and the night one for the ninth through the eleventh grades. I got to chaperone which involved me dancing with my students which isn’t as creepy as I portrayed it like three sentences ago and I am not a hypocrite. For me it’s cool because I’m the hip American dude and I work here and everyone insisted I must. For the seniors and stuff the other teachers forced me too. I tried to get this one teacher to come with me because she seems young and nice but she was all like no. I have no idea what her name is, her age, or what she teaches. However, I see her every day and I don’t want to be like “hey what’s your name, it’s weird now because I’ve been here for 3 months but I can point out about 150 kids in the school by name but not you.” Here everyone kind of dances like Dennis when he was in his prime of dancing, back when we choreographed our own dance to “sandstorm”.

Then was Novy God (New Years – it’s like the big holiday here, Santa Claus even comes for it and brings the children presents underneath the New Year’s tree). I went to my host sisters’ place in Astana. It is a penthouse apartment right next to the culture museum, downtown, with 3 balconies (3 sides of the building) and a great view of the city. I was kind of shocked by how posh the place was. Then we ate kiwi and salmon and like curry lamb with pomegranates and so many other delicious things. Best meal yet here. Interspersed was wine, vodka, and champagne. Nazarbayev talked for the countdown; he looks similar to Dick Clark – I also didn’t realize how old he is. Ridiculous shows played on TV and then we went out into the street and launched fireworks into the sky. Actually everyone in Astana did this and sometimes fireworks would hit buildings. It was actually similar to total chaos with a city of 500,000 drunken people launching fireworks and drinking vodka in the streets. The grandson – Iskander – got like tons of ridiculous toys, like a PSP and this robot cat that walked around and meowed and stuff. They forgot to turn it off at night and in the morning I heard it meowing and it woke me up and I was like wtf, I forgot all about the robot cat. A lot of fun though. I woke up the next day and headed down to Karaganda for more fun.

Karaganda is a large city in the center of Kazakhstan. It is known for its coal mining industry, gulag, and mass graves located outside the city where Stalin liked to hide millions of victims that died building all the Soviet apartment complexes that the city consists of.

There were like eleven of us there in an apartment. The first day we all showed up throughout the night. I got to see some of the city Jessie K and Christina(OCAP volunteers in Karaganda Oblast) then came back to find everyone either a) passed out or b) about to pass out from their breakfast of vodka and cognac. We proceeded to make arts and crafts while some of them slept or mumbled inanely about things no one could understand. Craft time was very rewarding; it consisted of Christmas reindeer made from our limbs (I learned how to make those from Dani and Ocho) and origami hearts and cranes. Someone was hilarious (due to their breakfast of cognac) but I wouldn’t want to embarrass anyone on the internet, you never know which of my fellow Peace Corps volunteers’ parents read my blog. One person slept soundly enough for me to draw a Gitler (that’s Hitler in Russian; Harry Potter is Garry Potter and Ernest Gemingway is a popular American author here) mustache on them as they slept under the influence of cognac. (I used a Crayola not a Sharpie so it was easy to clean – I’m not a monster) Later we went for dinner and me and Hotard and Christina went to a place and got food while everyone else was too indecisive and ate ramen in the end. They missed out, the hole in the wall looking place we ended up at actually was really nice and had Hoegaarden on tap which is like serious business for Kaz. It was probably the only beer I actually enjoyed the flavor of since I have been in the country. Unfortunately it’s even more expensive here than it is in the States. The next day was the best day of the year. Woke up, the sun was shining. It was also really windy. We went around the city, took some pictures with statues of our heroes, like the coal mining working man that represents the power behind socialism and another with Lenin. We took pictures with cutouts and went to the Ramstore(that’s the imported goods super market in a few major cities) and got Juicy juice which is the best juice in Kazakhstan and maybe the world. It’s not “Juicy Juice” only “Juicy” but it’s better than the former (maybe not, my taste buds just need to have flavor that is not boiled horse entrails for them to think something is the best ever). Only one store in my village sells it so I always go there to buy it and the ladies working there know it’s the number one juice preferred by Americans in Akkol. They have like every fruit juice for sale – single flavors though, no sweet mixtures like V8 Splash or Tropicana Twister. They even have a black currant juice. I now know why it isn’t marketed in the US and A. It tells you how much fruit is required to make one box of juice and whether it has preservatives or added sugar and whatnot. It also won some award in Italy which is legit. Some have little flags on them to represent where the fruit originally came from. For instance, the Orange Juice shows a little Brazilian flag in the corner. I’m using the juice to make my Brazilian Black Bean Soup this week. (with red beans – I couldn’t find any black beans in the village; furthermore I traveled two hours to buy one fresh pepper and two fresh tomatoes at incredibly inflated prices because there are no fresh vegetables in my town for sale) All of this is in Russian and Kazakh but then the most important facts are in English. FACT: 0.5 kg of black currants is in 1 liter of black currant juice. FACT: there are 10 apples in 1 liter of apple juice. FACT: there are 7 oranges in the orange juice FACT: it’s delicious. FACT: there are 50 vitamin tablets in 1 liter of the multivitamin juice (KIDDING, there are 11 fruits though) It’s probably the only juice here that is real juice too, the rest I think is just like flavored water or like 5% fruit drink. We went ice skating on the pond in the park. We got dinner. We sang karaoke at a karaoke bar place. Karaoke was tons of fun. I sang Wham’s Last Christmas first because it was our Christmas celebration and that was the only Christmas song I could find on the thing. Later we went home and made bloody marys and ate all the food because the four people that didn’t want to socialize with the rest of the group were there and passed out already. It was fun. The best part was probably at the end of karaoke when we met these girls and were deciding to go dancing and they tell us this place and then we realize they aren’t coming with us so it’s me and Hotard and we were like “so, yeah, let’s go dancing anyway”. We decided not to because it was getting late and would’ve been a money drain and it would be easier to just go home with the rest of the group. The next day I left back to Akkol and have been there for a few weeks now without leaving. I went x-country skiing; it’s really expensive here which sucks. I can’t really afford to do it more than once a month. I took some videos recently but the internet is too bad to upload them. It’s just normal situations here but from an outsider’s perspective they are funny.

Oh goody, how did I leave out the part when my family butchered a horse! I came home and there were just a lot of horse parts strewn about. They are still there, the uneaten ones. We leave them on the veranda because its cold like outside. Some days it’s so cold that school is cancelled. That’s fun. Yeah but the horse is like pretty delicious. We had the extended family over one day. Lots of people and tons of horse meat and vodka. I have like a host cousin babe that speaks English decently which is pretty cool; she studied international relations at university and graduated like a year or two ago. She also speaks Kazakh, Russian and Arabic which is pretty impressive. After talking for like five minutes she introduced me to her husband and child (1 year old). She’s now a stay at home mom. When I asked about her job because she has all these skills and such she explained that after university she got married then had a baby and now she won’t work. And I was like, but what about like in the future, what will you do when the baby is older, you can do a lot with a degree and being able to speak three of the most widespread languages on earth. She said she would be a mother. The way she said it made me confused, and I didn’t know whether I should be happy for her or pity her. Maybe something was lost in translation or the culture gap. The only way I could get a straight answer is if I went into the future to find out. But yeah, when they kill the horse, they tie all four legs together so it can’t move and then they slit its throat. Blood is everywhere. There are still ribs sitting out in the veranda, each like a meter long. Jessie P came over one weekend and I just had to show her because she’s a vegetarian. She did not approve.

On one day I went to work, came home and my host dad – I know his name now (Kairgeldy – first time I heard that one here UPDATE IT MAY BE KERIMBEK or something along that line even though I read it off the card my host mom does not say that when she talks to him, she says something different, it’s so aggravating – I think I’ll stick to like K-bone or something like that – so strange I think it could be a nickname cause I read it off a legal document)– was all like stoked about something and I’m like what? and he’s like something about his license and it now lasts til 2019, another ten years. So he’s stoked cause its renewed. I asked if he had to take a new test, the answer is no, I don’t really understand what the big deal was, but anyway we had to celebrate 10 more years of him on the roads! So pre-lunch consisted of three shots of vodka and baursaki (super awesome bread). At lunch we had like 2 more and he went to take a nap which resulted in my late banya but not bad cause I got to like pass out afterwards that night. But yeah, it was a reason to celebrate, therefore vodka.

After an entire month without leaving my village once, I went to a seminar about grant writing and raising money for books and things for my school. It was informative. At night we made pizza and went dancing at two clubs in Kokshetau. That part I would rate as halfway between meh and okay. The pizza was the highlight I guess. The partying thing here isn’t really my thing when it’s a bunch of drunken Americans and just a waste of time– I would’ve preferred to hang out and watch “The Dark Knight” because the copy was there at the time but due to some unfortunate circumstances I did not get to watch it and went to the club instead with the team. Fortunately, I didn’t really spend much money which is good and everyone made it home in one piece (which apparently doesn’t happen much over here when you’re a foreigner). Anywho, soon I will be able to ask my readership to directly help Kazakh people at the grassroots level. However, these plans are nowhere near finalized or decided upon yet so I won’t mention anything definite. Instead I give you passages from my text books so everyone can see the quality of the text books over here that I need to teach from the Ministry of Education’s curriculum:

Here’s a reading from my 9th grade text book:

BOLAT: “I live in a small flat with my parents and a sister. My father is a teacher. He doesn’t earn much. My mother is a housewife. She can’t find a job. I have a granny who looks after us. My sister and I go to ordinary school. We usually get there by bus. At school we wear a uniform. At home we have a small cat “Blacky”. My life is boring.”

HIS DREAM: “If my father were a millionaire we would live in a big house. My father would earn much money. My mother would have an interesting job. My sister and I wouldn’t go to ordinary school. We would go to private school, where we wouldn’t wear a uniform. We would wear fashionable clothes. My granny would travel all over the world. We would have “gold fish” at home. My life would be interesting.”

Okay so what are the problems with this passage? First of all, this is probably the most grammatically correct thing in the book and it uses the second conditional better than my rating of “absolutely terrible” (that entire thing on the 2nd conditional for only 1 sentence in the beginning, they could’ve made the rest of the sentences in the same way so students can see what the structure is) plus there aren’t really any spelling mistakes in it (for the first time ever). But the content? Seriously? I just laughed in class as the kids read it. I think they think gold fish are actual gold and they don’t realize that they would wear uniforms in private school and just because his mom is a millionaire it wouldn’t entitle her to an interesting job. Who would watch the kids if granny was traveling all over the world? Why is the cat named ‘Blacky’? I can just go on and on.

Next year they will all be wearing uniforms in my school district. I got to break the news to the 9th grade, it was satisfying, they weren’t too happy.

In the 11th grade I had to teach Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics as fact to the students according to the book. So I did.

THIS IS NOT FROM A BOOK: I had one class make brochures for a travel themed class… this one is for the Black Sea coast.

“We invite you to visit coast of Black sea!!! kound-the clock cafes, shops and clubs here work. On a beach you can get without problems, at any time. Having a rest on a beach you receive good sunburn. We suggest you to wisit a underwater empire with its inhabitants. This travel becomes unforgettable for you!!!” – I loved it. I don’t know where he got the ideas of the underwater empires in the Black Sea but that is gold. I gave him the second highest score for originality – which is something that lacks in the classroom here.

Then in another class the students had to act out a doctor visit and the boy asked the girl to “strip to the waist” not knowing what it meant and I started laughing and my counterpart is still trying to get them to continue with the dialogue and have them act it and I’m waving my arms telling everyone to stop and sit down, we’ll do something else. Strange that a vocabulary word for the section was ‘strip to the waist’. Especially when the word strip tease is a cognate in Russian. Should’ve used undress.

I also found an excellent (sarcasm) text in the 8th grade book about Husky Yellowhair, a Native American, that can’t visit a doctor because he is poor and his family doesn’t own a car and they live on a reservation in Arizona.

Most of the books’ passages are taken from other books I think. Most of these one’s I wrote here are probably under some copyright so I want to give a shout out to the Ministry of Education publishing and Ayapova the editor of the books.

One of the three English teachers at my school is seven months pregnant and expecting twins. She left at the end of January. I aksed her how long she would be gone and she said for 3 years! I was like, uh what? and yeah not next Fall. That’s an old Soviet policy, in those days they’d pay for all three years too; now I don’t think so but I know it’s a long time. Maybe half of it. Now I teach her 11th and 10th grade classes by myself and it is okay. Galina asked if it was “a horror” and I said no way because it could’ve been worse. Tenth is pretty good because the class is real small and they listen and aren’t rude and they work with me and my poor Russian skills and I with their English skills. They wait for me to translate things in the dictionary and stuff so it goes smoothly. The 11th grade though, that’s a different story. I think because it was just the first few classes but I introduced a different grading scale that they have never seen before. I call it my “no bullshit” grading scale. I taught them the beauty of grading based not on the old system they are used to but one based on performance and their behavior in class. So it should work out better now. I taught about politics to both 11th grade classes and had this one activity in which they had a list of 10 qualities of a political candidate and they had to work as separate groups to number them in order from best to worst. Many said honesty, party membership and ideas weren’t important and instead chose to list family background as the most important and then said the most important quality to add is whether that person is Nursultan Nazarbayev. I directed the class towards the recent American election soon afterwards. I needed to stop there or I’d break some PC policies about not talking about Kazakhstani politics because my first amendment rights don’t work when I’m not in the country even though I am still subject to the laws of the United States while I am living in Kazakhstan and also subject to Kazakhstani laws simultaneously.

So the family had another get together yesterday and this time they had a horse’s head with the beshbarmak. FACT: horse brains are slightly not as terrible as sheep brains. FACT: they didn’t realize that since I come from such a guido infested area that a horse’s head is in fact an omen of death, at least according to the godfather FACT: it was still not good, and the liver was even worse. Then Aigul was all like do you want some juice and I was like “no, only vodka can wash down the taste of brains in the afternoon” but in actuality my Russian was more like “not tasty, I need vodka, brains was that? yes? yeah only vodka”.

Yeah, that’s about it. I only recounted like a few things because most of the time I just like work, sleep, eat, shiver, read (David Remnick’s “Lenin’s Tomb” is an excellent oral history on the last years of the CCCP, it’s not dry or slow and it’s occasionally funny)etc. On Feb 6th, hurricane Katrina force winds decimated my walk to school. It was terrifying. And then once I got there no students came and I had to walk back home another 30 minutes in it after waiting around. I can’t afford to ski and ice skating in my village is also expensive but not as expensive, I can afford to do that like twice a month in addition to the one skiing trip in a month. My computer is basically dead so that’s a bummer. MS Word works though so I use it to write this and read ebooks that are .rtf format. foobar works too but iTunes isn’t cutting it anymore along with VLC that likes to die. Teaching is fine. It’s not hard; I think I do it pretty well. The eleventh graders (team teach class not alone class) actually pay attention and do their work when I teach compared to when my counterpart is in front of the class. I found out about baseball camp for the summer. I’m pretty stoked. 2 weeks of teaching Kazakhstani children to play baseball is now officially a part of my job. My Russian is getting better, I changed my learning style to just memorizing words in bulk, however it’s not helping me with some tricky things like modal verbs and gerunds, bummer. And I usually need to reword my sentences in my head so I don’t have to use tricky grammar like passive voice or anything like that ever. Yeah that’s the end. If you’re still bored read other PC blogs which can be reached through here apparently if you just like click buttons or something; I dunno they all say they read this and so do their parents so I guess they just clicked things so you can too if you’re so inclined. But yeah then most of the time its cold, there’s snow, I teach, my boss visited a few weeks ago to watch my magic. I’m a ballin’ teacher apparently. Other things she informed me was that I should like do more and told my supervisor to use me as much as possible “he is a free worker, make him do whatever you want” is basically what she told her. It’s good to know that I’m needed. That day I taught the second conditional grammar. I played Pink Floyd’s “If” in class cause it does the grammar very well and slow and clear for all to understand. My boss thought it would be “if I had a million dollars…” by Barenaked Ladies and asked why I didn’t do that one, all volunteers do. I told her I’m not all volunteers.

BOUNCE

and the school computer doesn't work well so i couldnt get pictures off my flash drive which sucks cause i have some, furthermore if someone in america can take a picture of the ocean and send it to me that would be great, along with a list of how much disposable cameras cost and whether or not theyll be fried in the xrays through overseas shipping, gracias

Кеннет Балла

А/Я № 2

Акколь, Акмол. обп.

Казахстан (Kazakhstan)

020100

That’s my address if anyone wants it. It’ll be that for the next few years so… My PO Box is number two. There are only 20 boxes in my town.

Anywho, here’s a new update because I know everyone is jonesing real hard for one. I don’t really get any reliable internet access here so I haven’t been able to post anything. I wrote something once. Then another thing after Thanksgiving, than another thing. Then deleted those and wrote something else. And then I ended up with nothing and was like meh whatever but then I heard complaints about me not updating so here it comes. This is all newly written for conciseness and I don’t include all of the nitty gritty details.

Things are good.

Okay here’s the real update: The biggest news in my life is that the Mets got rid of Aaron Heilman. That man has been a plight against the team for about 5 years now. Besides me commenting on the Mets, because I’m sure that is the thing you came to read on this site, I will now update things about my life in Kazakhstan. I took a different approach to writing this time, mostly due to an excess of free time that I entertain on Friday afternoons. I hope you like it.

I left off last time with a sense of uncertainty; a foreboding ending that mentioned a trip across the boundless Central Asian Steppe to a small village named Akkol in northern Kazakhstan. Situated in the heart of Akmola Oblast and located ninety minutes from the shining star of Kazakhstan, Astana, and only four hours from the oblast center of Kokshetau, this small village pleaded to their government for help. They needed a savior from America to assist their children with learning English, so they too could one day live the American dream. I, along with the Peace Corps, heeded their call and was on my merry way to this quaint village. Everything seemed to be going well as I anxiously awaited my stop along the rail line that stretches across the entire range of former Soviet latitudes. I sat there contemplating my final week of training….

That final week in Kaskelen finished with my Russian language exam; an awkward, VERY HOT EDIT-like banya experience between the boys of Kaskelen training group and a wonderfully appalling swearing-in ceremony. Just when everything seemed to climax to the point of unbridled ecstasy due to fun fornicating with chaos, we learned that one of our beloved friends, A.C., had some bad news for us. He was bound for his hometown in Georgia. Not exactly shocked (he informed us before hand it may come to this) and slightly sad, we said our goodbyes and he left us for probably forever. However, he deferred his entrance into Medical School for Peace Corps so he’ll be able to start that soon. I responded to my emotional upheaval like a woman. I went shopping. I bought a wonderful pair of fur-lined boots to keep my feet toasty in the winter and afterwards I trekked across the town to the Casa de Drew. Along the way I stopped at Sagar’s to see what was up. He responded with an invite to his banya and I indulged myself to his request. Others were there. We all piled into the small room and stripped off our clothes. It was hot. I sat in the antechamber staring into the inner room through slats in the wooden door. The heat radiated across my body and I started to sweat. I felt my skin melting and soon the lights broke due to the immense heat. We were sitting there in the wooden shack baking as in an oven. As I bore my burden of pain and heat which in turn cleansed me, I was able to listen to the inner room to hear the faint cries and moans of Drew as his body boiled beneath his fair skin and he cried out to us to open the door for the handle was too hot on his side to open. We left soon afterwards and Sagar’s mom forced food upon us. I had to politely refuse. After banya it’s too hard to eat. Я хотил толко спать. I only wanted to sleep.

I fought the exhaustion and trekked to Drew’s house. Upon reaching the front door his host mom bombarded me with a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. She then started to prepare a feast for us. She was wishing us all farewell with an exquisite dinner of plov and vodka. Drew, Sagar, Tobin, A.C. and myself each made a toast, to health and peace and friendship, and drank a plethora of vodka. We didn’t want any more when Drew’s host mother called us and our party lame for not keeping up with her and drinking more. She stared us down with loving scorn and then proceeded to leave to visit a better, more exciting party. We couldn’t keep up with her so she had to pass us by; it was probably for the best. I may have been living in the land where vodka flows where the rivers do not but I cannot drink it like a fish. We celebrated the rest of the evening by cheering about Obama’s victory and playing poker while listening to rap music thinking we were in the USA. Late that night I attempted to get home but late in the evening there were no cabs so eventually I had to call for one. As the driver picked me up in his sketchy Lada from the Soviet era, I thought to myself that this may be our last time having an evening like that even though we have two years left. It was true, A.C. left two days later.

I came home to a locked gate and had to hop the fence and dodge the malevolent Russian wolfhound which is chained near the easiest part of the fence to climb over. It was great that my family noticed that I wasn’t at home and kept the gate unlocked, oh wait, they never noticed when I was there, why would they note the opposite? I spent my final full day packing and finishing my last Russian language class with Anya and going over in my head what I had experienced and accomplished throughout training. I didn’t feel like much. But apparently I can speak Russian now, introduce myself and name animals and vegetables in Kazakh, and am a qualified teacher, at least up to the standards of the Peace Corps mission which states that they would only send qualified workers overseas to help those countries in need. The next day I awoke before dawn to get a taxi to the pickup point. I joined the rest of my group with my luggage and awaited the bus to our ceremony. We eventually arrived there and were greeted by our Peace Corps superiors and sat through the speeches that were given to us. That is when there was a sound of thunder off in the distance and we knew something terrible was imminent. Our new US Ambassador came to the stage and started to speak about the US Government’s role in Kazakhstan. Point by point he would refute myths of the government’s role there to the host country diplomats and officials. His speech turned a corner that created the Peace Corps into a political entity and then attempted to reassure the diplomats and government officials of Kazakhstan that we are not spies and they should not watch us because our main motive is to teach English and is not to teach anti-Russian/Chinese sentiments while stealing all their precious oil, uranium and caviar. Now my confused mind can’t comprehend what I’m doing here, if only someone would tell the truth! (ASIDE - I’m just pointing this out so I don’t get owned by anyone; the dude’s speech was uncalled for and he exploited our ceremony for his own goals because he is insecure in his position due to the fact that he was recently appointed to it and has not been able to make a significant speech to many of the host country’s officials until this moment, we aren’t spies, there would be nothing for me to possibly spy on except children in school and how much better they are at walking on sheets of ice than I am). He ignored us in his speech and then fled directly after he finished. Half the volunteers refused to shake his hand when we received our pins and I’m surprised that no one stood up and walked out midway through his speech. Well after that, we had some delicious cake! And it was good. I said peace out to Shynar (not to the rest of that host family, they just kind of ignored me and didn’t even say goodbye) with a hug and a wave. I wished her good luck on her journey down the road of life. As soon as the reception was finished I got on that train….

…It took about 24 hours. Along the train line I saw a lot of nothing and the coming of snow. The mountains and warmth were gone for the last time. The next morning I woke up and looked out my compartment window again but this time I did not get lost in thought. I saw snow flurrying down across Karaganda. It was beautiful. It created a startling winter wonderland of snow covered land for as far as the eye could see. As I stared out across that sea of snow with its snow drifts roaring in the distance like waves on the ocean, I realized that this would be the next two years of my life. The train screeched to a halting stop. We were in a city – Karaganda. I helped Jessie with her bags and said goodbye; she was the first one of us to start her new life. Working my way back to the train I made a snowball, it woke Jenny up from her peaceful sleep. I warned her not to slap me awake while I slept on the train however she did not heed it. She wasn’t even upset with me, it was too good. Half a day later I helped the other Jessie off in Shortandy and told her I’d see her soon. She refers to me as her site mate even though we live an hour away from each other and there is no public transportation to each other’s village. I guess it’s because we’re the only two people near our little sector of the world that can speak English. I waited patiently for the next stop, mine, and was told by the conductor that the train was running late so I would only have one minute at my stop because the village isn’t significant enough for the usual two minutes that are allowed at my stop. I replied with “ok, let’s rock and roll” and placed my luggage near the door as she stared blankly at me wondering what I muttered in a foreign tongue. As the train pulled in I said goodbye to my last six friends that were still on their journey and threw my bags into the snow banks along the tracks and jumped off as the train started rumbling down the iron highway, out of my site for the last time. Standing there for a few moments as the snow accumulated around me, I came to the realization that I really didn’t have any idea of what I was supposed to do at this point. I made it through training and then I proceeded across the country and knew I was like 95% done so I stopped worrying. Now I needed to finish the last 5% – make it home. It was cold. Through the falling snow I saw a figure. Valentina. I should have known she would be there. In the recesses of my mind, though, I didn’t think she would come. She never answered my calls. She must’ve got the message from someone else. She had her son’s car and drove me to my new home. I reached my new home and carried in my luggage. Galina welcomed me inside with plenty of food, ranging from a variety of dried fruits to beshbarmak and a banya which was sahara-like in its heat output, or should I say it boils like the magmatic seas of Venus with its one hundred plus degrees of centigrade searing throughout the room. There’s no steam though, so it’s bearable. And feels great. With the -10 degree weather outside, I was able to run out from the banya into the snow to shock my system into life. Feeling alive, for maybe the first time in my life, I used the snow like a sponge to deftly scrub away the dirt from the train…and my past. Then I rested.

There was no school that first week until Thursday. I did my paperwork and met police chiefs and mayors and the head of the education board and got all of those small details worked out. When I was bored on my days off I spent time in the forest that borders my village on its northern and westernmost borders. I explored a park that has an abandoned playground with a Ferris wheel. The way the icicles hung from the carriages with the background of a frozen forest is stunning in the sunlight. The whole park twinkled like all the stars in heaven. Everything else was frozen and the streets were covered in ice which made it difficult to walk. One Sunday I was returning from the bus station after a trip outside the village. I fell really hard. As I lay on the ground looking up I saw all the stars in the sky. Here in the midst of nowhere, where two continents collide, the earth is serene and at peace. No pollution taints its splendid air. I can taste the freshness that surrounds me and with its energy I rise from my prone position to continue my hike home.

How was that? More or less entertaining than usual? leave feedback. I had more but it was seriously like almost twenty pages in word so I’m just gonna cut it there. heh

I teach about twenty classes every week. 5th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th grades. The 5th graders get class four times a week and their level of English is actually not that bad for their age. I have a 9th grader that may be doing the FLEX program for his 10th grade (America 11th grade – only 11 grades in KZ) so he could be in America next fall. He speaks English and the program is free but very hard to get accepted into but he passed the first three rounds and is in the final round now. Disciplinary problems are my major problems when I’m teaching a class by myself. I introduced giving poor grades to misbehaving and disrupting students which they don’t appreciate but it keeps them in line better than usual. Normally, they’ll spend the class fighting or yelling or doing something troublesome. I let them fight in the hallway between classes and don’t care if they do as long as they aren’t doing it in my classroom. Plus, I’m not very effective at yelling in Russian. It’s actually not a big deal, that’s just what kids do here. Most of the time they aren’t serious fights. Only once, recently, I had a student come in with a black eye and I was like, well I guess he got his ass kicked fo’ sho’. I just want to point out that teaching is an easy job but time consuming. Not knocking teachers though, they have the patience of angels to deal with this many rambunctious children six days a week. Most of my students are well behaved and are interesting; they all attempt to talk to me about various things that include American music, games, relationships, English, my likes and dislikes, Kazakhstan, America and traveling.

I read, study Russian, and play the piano at home in my free time. Sometimes I watch Russian television but it is still hard to understand. Most of the time, when I do watch TV, I will either watch sports or music videos (only 1 sports channel but up to 5 music video channels can be on at once). My Russian tutor quit so my host mom is attempting to teach me Russian grammar and syntax and those sorts of things. In general, my life is pretty quiet and laid back. I do my work and some extra and it takes up a lot of my time.

Thanksgiving was fun. I went to Zerenda with eighteen Peace Corps volunteers. We had an epic feast of turkeys and stuffing and pumpkin pies. We talked in English and partied and cooked and hung out and played football. It was great. We all did this big banya together in which I actually got injured – burns from boiling steam because too many of us were there and it was too hot for a Russian banya (it was like sunburn on my knees). I’m healed now though, so no harm no foul. I met the volunteers that have been around here for the past year which was good. (Here’s a clip of what was in the narrative account of this part of my month: I sat in the antechamber and listened to Dante. I looked at him with his cigarette sitting limply in his hand as the pungent smell of tobacco filled the air. The empty bottle of vodka was sitting on its side on the bench nearest the door. He was talking about nothing and everything all at once. As he was connecting his seemingly nonsensical topics together to form a thought provoking idea, Tim barged into the room bringing the conversation to a jarring halt. He wanted to make a toast. In Russian, of course. We accepted his request knowing what we were talking about was gone and in the past and in our semi-intoxicated state we would never be able to return to that moment and continue. We patiently listened deciphering his meaning behind the complicated tongue and realized it was a Thanksgiving toast. Dedicated to us, the volunteer…) I went to Kokshetau one weekend too with Sagar, Jessie, Jenny, Aaron and Andrew. We danced and stuff it was fun.

Two Sundays a month I spend in Astana at the Kazakh Medical Academy, which is run by the Ministries of Health and Education. I have an English club and give lectures with Jessie but she didn’t come to the latest meeting and I did them on my own. There are about fifty people in the club but at the last meeting only thirty were there due to it being a holiday weekend and it was me with twenty seven college girls which is good. The guy that runs it is very interesting. His name is Talgat, speaks almost perfect English and has never been to an English speaking country in his life. He drives a sweet Lexus, is on the board for the English Faculty at the university and is only twenty eight. He buys me lunch and things like that for going to help out. He wants me to join the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Club/MMA Club with him but it’s on Saturdays and I have work so I can’t. I’m pretty sure I would be a huge hit there too, like who wouldn’t want to wail on an American for fun. One visit in Astana involved me doing a little sightseeing. I went to the Baiterek – the big monument that is a golden egg atop the white stick thing. At the top inside is an impression of President Nazarbaev’s hand and you can put yours next to his to see the size of his. From that position you can look down across all of Kazakhstan from the center of the nation. Apparently, you are supposed to make a wish but I didn't know that until after I went there. The architecture in the city is pretty cool, it doesn’t make a lot of sense with a theme because the building designs are chosen from contests so the only plan to the city is what is going where and how it will be laid out but the actual designs of the buildings are all very eclectic with such influences from Kazakhstan, Russia, Samarkand, Islam, Christianity, Persian empires, Scythian empires, extraterrestrials, etc. The city itself feels empty though. It’s big and spread out and I was there on Sundays but it felt like there was no one there. But it is a relatively new city and being built into what it will become so in the future it should be bigger. But it can’t really be that big anyway. Kazakhstan is the size of four Texases and there are only fifteen million people there and two live directly around Almaty. The entire population of Mexico City is twice the size of Kazakhstan’s entire population.

There is a shed in my backyard, more of a garage, or now as I call it, the barn. Inside ten sheep and nine chickens live. I think in the spring we may slaughter one for food. I was hoping for this past week but we didn’t for Ait (a Muslim holiday that just occurred). Traditionally, there were supposed to but they did not. But then again they only head over to the mosque on holidays so I doubt they’ll take holidays so seriously as to butcher animals in their yards according to 1400 year old traditions. How I didn’t know about this until a few weeks ago amazes me. I guess it is because the door is locked unless someone is going in but when I found out I was like WHAT! It’s pretty cool.

I’ve met more of my extended host family. Galina’s husband – whose name I still don’t know even though I see him naked every week in the banya, comes home from Astana on weekends. It’s been a month so now I can’t awkwardly ask his name; I’ll just look around for a sheet of paper with it on it. Her grandson – my host nephew? was here for a week once. His name is Iskander and always wants to play. That never gets old. She has two daughters and one spent a weekend here and they are both in their thirties and live in work in Astana and Galina’s husband stays with one of them I think during the week when he’s at work, I think. They’re nice. They invited me to their apartment for Novy Goad (New Years – it’s like the biggest holiday here), I’ll probably go. Their brothers and sisters live in neighboring villages and they came by during the course of Ait so I met them all too.

I saw the movie “In Bruges” which is probably the best movie of the year that I’ve seen in. I recommend it to everyone. I also saw the new Bond movie on bootleg but the quality was awful so the fight scenes had a low frame rate if anyone can find a screener version… I think I put my mailing address up there at the top of this page. I’ve read a bunch of books since I last posted. “Pillars of the Earth””Franny and Zooey””Much Ado About Nothing””Guns, Germs, and Steel””800 Leagues on the Amazon” and now I’m reading “Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism” by Chongyam Trungpa. Oh, we got a copy of “Chinese Democracy” here too. I spent a day just listening to it on repeat. I didn’t think it was real and like because I’m in Kazakhstan like someone cold totally just pull this joke off on me and I wouldn’t know any better. Will and Dennis should listen to it. I’ve been getting into Russian pop music. I just want to inform the world that tATu is just the tip of the ice berg. First of all one is married and they aren’t lesbians. Second, there music is so catchy in Russian. (yes – I’m defending myself for listening to tATu) There are so many entertaining Russian music stars. I also watch one TV show with Galina which translates to “Stars on Ice.” It is “Dancing with the Stars” but turned into a figure skating show. It is so good. Every week is a different theme and stars from the Russian speaking world figure skate/ice dance with a professional skater. My favorite team is Maria Petrova and Kostye Tszyu, mostly because I actually knew who they were before I watched the show but they are actually good too. And I’m pretty sure Petrova has a gold medal which is why they’re good, plus Tszyu can just kick anyone’s ass that doesn’t like his routines.

Here is the part when I inform you to ask me questions or whatnot and feedback if you’d like to or for real Peace Corps information, not just the dramatized form of my life - just send an email my way at kenneth.balla@gmail.com. Oh and if there are things that may be offensive or whatnot tell me to cut them because I didn't really edit this post.

This is me and Tobin with vladimir gashouta and a pie he fed us and a lot of other ridiculous things going on. This is from september,now i have a beard (cause i talked it over with my villages people and beards are acceptable,and my hair is getting longer)

New update day! Happy Halloween! This month had many things happen. A bunch of classes. I taught Planet Earth, The Great Plains episode to my class. They loved it. After my last class at Kerimbekov School I got a bunch of gifts from my class which included a mini dombra and a mini yurta so that’s pretty cool. Furthermore, I got more gifts than everyone else so whattup. I was allowed to use all the technology stuff in the school, probably because I’m an American, I never see anyone else being allowed to use it. After teaching week was done here and that went all well I had a week of meeting with my counterpart and conferences which were kind of boring, typical Peace Corps work. And they made me get a flu shot, my first ever, so when I get the flu for the first time ever we know who to blame, our PC doctor (who was the soviet military’s finest apparently back in the day and he’s filled with wonderful stories of the soviet union, Chernobyl, fighting in the Angolan war we know nothing about cause US media only talked about them invading Afghanistan, etc) The worst part was that it was optional but they had a list of everyone that needed to take it and for the rest was optional and the optional were like 2 people for some bizarre reasons. We also got to go to the Baraholka bazaar which is like a mile long and just filled with tons of things to buy. Seriously, it’s a mile long. Then at the conference I met my counterpart, Valentina Alekseevna Taradanova who has been teaching English for 27 years so hers is good. I’ll be working with her for the next 2 years at her school which is Akkol School Number 1. There are 4 schools in my village and 1 is at the orphanage. At the sanatorium (where the meetings were held) we had a party one night that was pretty fun and had some of the EDU volunteers at it. The next day I saw this sweet billboard in Almaty for some company called KUAT and underneath that in smaller letters Industries or something like that and I wanted to graffiti it into KUATO and cross out the other word to write LIVES, but it was like on a skyscraper so I can’t. It would be the best graffiti ever though. I explained to the two girls I was with how cool Total Recall is and they were like, yeah ok. So I don’t think they were that excited about it but they are probably super stoked. On that Saturday I boarded the 24 hour train to Akkol. I had a room with Sagar and both our counterparts and there were a total of 7 volunteers on my train and we’re all within 8 hours of each other along the same train line. I’m second to get off once we pass Astana. The train was fun and each stop sells some different product that everyone has to buy, especially Sagar’s colleague, so by the time I got to my stop the compartment was filled with all these things she bought, including a ton of smoked fish which infected the entire train, but everyone bought that at 1030 at the Balkash fish stop. We arrived the next day and I moved in right away with my new host family, her name is Galina and she has a husband and 2 daughters and a grandson but she lives by herself basically. Her husband works in the capital so stays there during the week with one of the daughters I think and then he comes home on weekends so the commute isn’t terrible. She is retired, used to be a principal(zavuch) and math teacher and tutors kids at home. The house is smaller than my present one but it’s nice and they have all the modern amenities that I can ask for like a washing machine and shower so I don’t care (and I think a banya in the backyard which is tite, hopefully their banya schedule is normal unlike my current situation so I can banya more). My bedroom is nice and I have a piano and a dombra to play in it, so I want to learn to play the dombra if possible. I just need to find someone to give me lessons once I learn enough Russian. At my school my students don’t wear uniforms so that’s cool and I have my own classroom with fancy desks with built in cassette players and headsets so I can do listening exercises on the new technology known as a tape cassette over here. I met most of my classes and most of the school staff. They have DSL that I can use. My Russian tutor is a Russian teacher and zavuch there and she’s real nice, named Svetlana, and doesn’t speak English. The best part was that in my classes with her is that I can’t use English as a crutch to talk to her so everything is in Russian and I was able to hold a conversation with her for an hour in each class. My Russian will get a lot better with her. I met a girl named Tatyana at site too; she’s 20 and studying English at university in Astana so it’s easy to talk with her. She showed me around town and we went to the Day of the Republic celebration that was in the town the week I was there. She knew my predecessor so I guess that’s how she found out I was coming, and I heard from my counterpart that there are other people around my age that want to meet me when I come back next week. It was cold everyday in the village. It’s a small village but really spread out. There’s a sweet forest on one side and then the other direction is just flat steppe forever. On the train I got to see the entire steppe, it’s really really flat. At least I have trees and like 1 hill in my town. There’s a lake to ice skate on and like a quarry to swim in during the summertime. It seems a lot better than Kaskelen so I’m excited, and my region is a good group of people to hang out with even though some are far away, there is a Thanksgiving party planned already and some other things. I came back here on the train and that was an adventure. Typical Peace Corps bullshit means that of course they bought the ticket for me and Jessie in the next town over (she described it as “it’s fucking cold Africa” but her town is a lot smaller than mine and a lot more rural and from the train just looked like a lot of frozen mud; we’re like the only people close to each other everyone else is a few hours away) a ticket from Astana but like early morning and we can’t afford to get a hotel in Astana for the night before and the train goes through our towns so why didn’t peace corps just buy us those tickets? Cause they suck or this was some secret test for us to pass. We had to sneak on and each bribe the conductor a 1000 tenge to let us on early and sit quietly in the dark until we got to Astana. It was annoying but an adventure and I learned how to join the excellent system of corruption that is in place in Kazakhstan.(this is typical PC bs, first they make us read a book about corruption and how to be legit in a corrupt society, then they like force us to be a part of it, gg US government, we love you) On the train ride back this dude was with us and he was pretty awesome. He’s Kazakh and has 2 PhDs (math and economics) and works for World Bank. His kids go to boarding schools in Europe and his main house is in Paris. We talked to him for a few hours about a bunch of things like politics, Borat, Kazakhstan, the US, and a variety of other topics. It was pretty sweet. Other people on the trains thought we were spies and we were like “why would America send spies to spy on all the children in school and teach them English? And why would we spy on Kazakhstan anyway?” so that was exciting. We got back to Kaskelen the next day and had a little get together at the local bar then bed. Grandpa was still here when I woke up and was getting ready for school so I hung out with him at breakfast so that was kinda cool, he’s always up for talking in Russian and Kazakh then he went back to his home. I had more lessons and a teacher training seminar I taught teachers at, I think they tried to marry me to one of them but I did a spin move and everyone became confused and their plan failed – btw I think I just successfully introduced the spin move to Kazakhstan. I made KZ’s best jack-o-lantern during the week and when the power went out I was able to use it to light the house, so it was practical too. It was KZ’s only jack-o-lantern I think and everyone that saw it at my house was like WHOA WHATS THIS! Cause we Americans are weird. I taught some English this week too. We made spaghetti with real tomato sauce the one night and watched the Goonies and tonight a bunch of us from both EDU and OCAP are going into Almaty for the weekend because it’s our last weekend before we all split up.

Ok we went to Almaty, 11(of 38) from EDU went and 13(of 17-I think) from OCAP. That’s the best part because I haven’t seen OCAP since like September and they’re all awesome. We rented 2 apartments, went to a bar and hung out there and it only ended up costing me like 1000 tenge, which is like 8 bucks to stay the night in the city which is generally expensive. We had a lot of fun but most of the EDU didn’t hang out with the OCAP group which was just kind of weird and stuff but whatever, I got to see all the other people which was great for me, not like the same other 3 people I see every day. Hotard was the MVP (I know he reads this so I had to give him a shout out) because we basically just hung out together and goofed off until he passed out on the table and had to stumble home. We played some quarters but with a 50 tenge piece and found out the truth behind OCAP gossip stories and them the truth about EDU gossip stories. Swearing in ceremony is on Friday and Monday is my language test to see my level (nailed it) and on FridayI have a 1 way ticket to Siberia.

I’ll need someone to call me as soon as the results of the election are in. Oh, I heard the Phillies won, which is like the worst news ever because I hate them. I would’ve preferred if the Sox won again. That was pretty heartbreaking news, probably the worst news I’ve heard all year, like any other team could’ve won and I wouldn’t care, but the Phillies? Seriously, what’s wrong with American baseball these days. Funny things happened but this update I didn’t have my laptop with me, like at site, to keep all the info for good stories so bummerton. Oh I learned how to say my bad and bummer in Russian, so that’s cool. Oh the train I was on was like Goldeneye, it was so cool, and the engine looked like it was freshly painted green with a bright red star on the front, good to know the CCCP is still kicking strong here. Send questions and I’ll answer them, next time I’ll try to write about how the Soviet Union was awesome and how my town is so soviet-like, if that’s an adjective. Oh and there was the BBC on in Almaty and they had a great video clip for both Obama and McCain and it shows Obama making a speech and very professional and poised and then McCain is kind of jerking awkwardly and spazzing out on stage and seemed to have no control of his body movements, it looked hilarious. I heard Obama is killing in Jersey by like 20 points or something. Oh I’ve been watching the KXL (continental hockey league) over here and its awesome, Jagr plays for Ohmsk and Astana has a team in the league.

Oh and I saw all the billboards in Almaty for the new James Bond movie but its in Russian here and that sucks, I might just go see it anyway and try to understand it, when I get to site, I can visit Astana on a weekend and hit the movie theater if its not too expensive, or attempt to find a bootleg copy. Bond is like super popular here and I’m like “did u all see the ones when he fought the soviets? And they’re all like what? So they don’t really know most of the really old ones when the soviet union was our evil archenemy, but then again the spy that loved me was from the CCCP so its not anti-soviet propaganda in bond, only just a few references but it usually ended up being a rogue soviet person working with terrorists so no big deal, they should play those over here. Just about all of the bootlegs are overdubbed so like u can kinda hear the English and its just distracting, not like the quality bootlegs of southeast asia. Astana could be better though because that city is more popular with foreigners due to it being the new capital and business center, etc. Oh and did anyone see the oliver stone movie about bush? And is it funny or just stupid?

Oh peace corps Bolivia was shut down, we had 3 more people quit for a total of 8 now, but that’s still less than last years group, and we got news from other groups and like pc Nigeria I think it was lost like 50% of their volunteers for this years group already. Oh theres a flat Stanley program thing some girl in PC palau or something is doing with her students over here to Kazakhstan and other countries, which is awesome, and seriously how do u get into pc palau? I’m in Siberia and they live on the most beautiful beaches in the world, I met 2 former Tanzania pc volunteers that teach at an international school in almaty and they wondered how we did it, our training is like twice as long as everyone elses and it’s the worst part and terrible and then like its October and freezing and like winter comes until may and it gets to -40 at site, that’s like when Fahrenheit is equal to Centigrade, but I do get school closed for excess cold which is cool, if its too dangerous to send the kids to walk to school they’ll cancel it, last year satpaev had an entire month cancelled apparently due to the conditions, and other pc groups don’t really do the homestay program like ours so they can live on their own, and I’m like, oh I live with a babushka in Siberia, but after 6months, I can move out if possible, but im not in a city so theres really nowhere to go, and I wouldn’t even know how to like get coal furnaces to work and stuff so I don’t freeze to death, plus the added bonus of having all my meals prepared for me does make life easier, even though the food is all the same, like its winter now that means we’ll be eating borscht. Never in my life have I eaten this much cabbage and beets, I don’t think I even ate those before I came to Siberia, and I’m pretty sure borscht and other Russian and Kazakh foods have no nutritional value but pc hooked me up with vitamins so that’s good at least to prevent from all other illnesses sans the flu, cause I know I’ll end up getting that now.

Music video to check for on YouTube, rumadai – arsenium (its like I choreographed the dances to marcs greatest song ever into the best possible video), and then there is one insane one featuring a group called fast food and some DJ, you’ll know what it is if you can find it, these are mainly for marc, I know he’ll love them oh and he should also try to find this sweet ice dancing video I saw choreographed to tatu’s theyre not gonna get us, but whatever it’s called in Russian, that was pretty tite if its online somewhere

Privyet straight outta KZ. It’s been a while and a ton of things have happened an I've been trying to post this forever, the internet is just terrible though. This issue will cover my site placement which was just announced on Thursday. I have some information on it even though I haven’t been there. It also includes how I have grown an affinity for both Kumis (that’s fermented horses’ milk for those not in the know) and Vodka. Furthermore I had some brushes with the shadier side of Kazakhstan and I will include a small expose on Kazakh women.

I’ll start back on the weekend right after my b-day. It seems like ages ago. It was Saturday and that means half day of school for us volunteers which is always good. Afterwards I taught with Shynar (for free in case PC officials are reading this) and no one showed up to learn from a genuine American. Anywho, that meant I got to meet up with the crew at the local café. There we had some beers, the volunteers from other towns marshrutka-ed it home(local transport vehicle) and Drew, Sagar, and I hiked off to my house for a delicious dinner of Jambalaya that I made. And by delicious, I mean it was seriously the best food I think I have ever had. After weeks of boiled chunks of fat mixed with soup broth, a taste of America was like the kiss of an angel. Afterwards we skipped out on the local discoteka cause it’s pretty shady and no one goes there. The weekend finished on Sunday with a trip to the next village over to hang out and smoke some hookah with their crew and trekked on home that night. The week started off on a decent note with my lame class being cancelled cause I don’t really like that class. We had a ceremony and kids sang and danced at it like usual. I got to make an awkward speech that basically sucked but no one understood it so no big deal. The interpreter made it sound really good though cause I was able to pick up her Russian and knew that she changed it to be better. Tuesday involved my lame class rescheduled and it crashed and burned. My counterpart here that I teach with does not know English and tried to like take control of what I was teaching and then translated it wrong to them in Russian and I understood and was like "no, you are wrong" and told the class not to listen to her, she would’ve been better explaining it to them in Kazakh because then I never would have understood her. My boss (who was watching the class) said what I did was right and she’s glad I don’t take shit from anyone even if what I did disrupted the entire sense of order, peace, deference that is instilled in the school towards teachers. When I got home and was kind of bummed about it my host dad was actually home for once and said "well than we will drink alcohol and we will be happy" (kumis and the baltika number 9) so that was a pretty good outcome. The rest of the week classes went fine and English club was decent. Friday was good that week because we got out of lessons early and actually had like an afternoon to rest and do nothing. Saturday involved Kazakh lessons and cross culture trivia contest which I won (of course I did, everyone knows I’m a trivia master and I knew it was coming up so I had to overachieve and defend my title – from trivial pursuit victory a few weeks earlier-- and researched as much about Kaz history as possible in such a short time and with no materials really). I won candy btw. It was delicious. Afterwards I did the Shynar English teach thing for real and people came and were wow-ed. Every girl asked why I wasn’t married and that’s always flattering (I’ll get into this topic soon enough). Afterwards I went to my friend Jenny’s in the next village for a while to hang out with her cause she was sick and then I met everyone at their café for the typical weekend get together. Made it home late with Drew and then passed out to wake up on my Sunday morning day off at 6 to head off to Medeo with a few people. Medeo is like this real famous ice skating rink in the mountains here in Kaz. We got there in the morning after many bus rides. As we arrive we learn that on this particular day there was an annual race up this dam in the mountains that is used to stop mudslides and avalanches when it’s either wet or snowy and our group signed up. However, of the 11 of us, only 3 of us actually did the race: me, Tobin and Nora; which was our greatest choice possible. We got to meet Vladimir Gashouta himself, holder of 14 Guinness Book of World Record records (which I think involve him running in a human sized hamster wheel). We had a press junket because everyone was confused why Americans were there and then we got to run in our own special race up the mountain in thin air that made me feel like I was going to pass out. However, the next day we were mentioned in the newspapers and then appeared on the national TV channel on the news. My glorious clip involved me in front of a Russian chorus being fed apple pie by Vladimir Gashouta. So now my status has evolved from local Kaz celebrity to national Kaz celebrity (not really but for a moment I was). Afterwards, we went home and I had to clean and stuff cause it was Sunday and on Sundays I like wash the floors and things like that in my house. Monday started the school week off again and I taught and learned and then had tutoring and went home late and then came Tuesday and the rest of the week. Same things all the time. I was told that with my goatache I look like Lenin which I think is a compliment. My one instructor explained to me today that she loves the great Lenin. Wednesday’s English club consisted of some game time and some new girls came and bombarded me with more questions about my wife that I don’t have and had to explain to them I’m single which is both the right and the wrong answer. [my friend Drew will be teaching in a college and was told by one of our Russian trainers something incredibly complicated about how he would have to fight off all the girls while at the same time accepting their advances (they’ll be 18 though so that fulfills the PC policy)]

Then came Thursday: tech session day - these days are generally brutal to get through but on this particular Thursday was also site announcement. As soon as tech session finished we were off to Shemolgan for the big moment of training – site announcement. We get there and they put on a Kazakh show and then some volunteers from Shemolgan did a joke skit about life in PC. Then we got sheets with our names in specific colors so we know what section of the country we were in and ripped open our sheets to learn our new home for the next 2 years. Akkol. It’s a village of about 15,000 people 100 km north of Astana. My friend Jessie will be about 30mins away. Besides her, I’ll basically be isolated in sub-Siberian Kazakhstan. The closest city is Astana at 1 hour. Kokshetau will be about 3 hours away (with some PC volunteers right past it so actually by isolated I mean 3 hours away from 3 other people). I live along a major train route which is good for transport. The environment is supposedly pristine with no pollution which I’m very excited for. It’s steppe with a forest nearby so it’s not only just flat. It gets to about -40 in the winter and some snow has already fallen. It gets a ton of snow apparently which I like. It’s a really popular destination for cross-country skiing so I may get into that but that’s like harder than running but maybe I can do that to school in the 7 months of winter that is there every year. Oh and the wind gets up to like 100mph in the Astana area in the fall so that kinda sucks, but hey PC says be flexible and to be honest the location, the type of town, and other things about I couldn’t have wanted to more, I’m glad that on paper PC found a good site for me while some other people didn’t get such a good fit but who knows they’ll probably love their site anyway. The town’s economy is agricultural and its 50% Russian and 50% Kazakh. It does have an internet café but no hot water. Apparently it’s a really great site, PC has been there for a while and I will be replacing a volunteer that is finishing his service in 2 weeks. Furthermore, I heard that I have some pretty big shoes to fill so I gotta do my best. I should be teaching high school English(grades 8-11) and the students get 5 hours of language a week which is like unheard of in Kazakhstan so that’s good for them. Supposedly its beautiful area and I’m really close to 2 big cities if I want to get out ,and in my region I’m friends with most of the people so that’s really good too and I’m excited about that. I’ll visit it in 2 weeks. Afterwards we all went out to drink some vodka then home to sleep for more school. Oh and then today I met the volunteer that’s leaving who was there before me, he said it’s a pretty awesome place and gave me more information and showed a bunch of pics. He also said I may get 3 day weekends because he did but then the 4 days he worked he worked like forever hours and nowadays 12 hours is pretty exhausting. Oh and as a kid he lived in Lakewood, weird right?

Then Friday, with all good things bad things must happen. On the whole the day was really strange. I get to school, it’s teacher’s day, a holiday. I have to dance with students at some thing and they all sing songs and it was kind of entertaining and then I had tickets to the Ballet in Almaty. It’s called "Juno and Avos" in English and it’s a tragedy I guess, it was hard to understand, but very interpretive and I got an info sheet in English. I actually thought the scenes and production were really cool even though I didn’t really understand it at the moment. It was pretty trippy. That’s the good. The bad is that on the way to the theater I was robbed which is a huge bummer. I lost my wallet, US ID which is useless so whatevs, all my money which I don’t really care about wasn’t a big deal, my ATM card I cancelled right away, and my ISIC card will expire soon anyway. It was with my iPod at the time and that’s safe so no big deal right? At first I was like "blah shit happens" but then when one of the PC employees, a Russian lady, mentioned it to me when I didn’t even tell her about it and then said something along the lines of she saw it is when I got pissed. Like wtf, why wouldn’t you tell me this happened so I could’ve done something about it. After I talked to our safety officer at HQ to report the theft she said "ok no big deal" because I wasn’t too upset about it but then when I told her the other part of the story she called that person and asked her about it and was like "oh no I didn’t see anything." So I called bullshit on her but it’s too late to get my wallet back and I don’t care about that I’m just pissed she straight up lied or is just stupid and then told me that she was recounting a story that she knows of other people that got robbed before and I was like "you’re fucking ridiculous, never talk to me ever again." But the ballet was great. I recommend it highly to anyone that likes trippy things.

I got home, slept went to school, etc the next day. I taught with Shynar after school again. Different people there this time and now I will make a short mention of Kazakhstani women. First, there are the Russian girls. Everyone knows what Russian girls look like. They’re like any county with a large population so the percentages of beautiful girls to normal girls, etc is about the same with USA, China, India, UK, etc. Then there are Kazakh girls. Like 30% are unbelievable, 30% are stunning, 20% are hot and the last 20% are normal. At first I thought it was just where I lived. This anecdote should explain it the best and let the cat out of the bag. Two of my friends were coming over and I was like "oh yeah before you meet my sister I’ll warn you, she’s gorgeous." They were like "cool." So my one sister came in and they were like whoa she is beautiful. And I’m like "yeah I know but I meant the other one." When she came in the room’s collective jaw dropped. On Sunday she was in the Miss Almaty/Kazakhstan Competition. For a city of more than 1 million people and a region of about 2mil she was one of 15 finalists. She would like to be a professional model one day so I think that means I’m supposed to help her because I’m an American and supposedly have connections is the general stereotype. Oh, she lost btw, which is a bummer, the girl that one was busted too (relatively compared to the other 14 girls) which I call bullshit on, there were a few that were like unbelievable and didn’t get shit either and then the winning one didn’t even smile or was excited about it and then one of the locals here told me that she probably bought her victory cause that’s how Kaz is, everything’s super corrupt but oh well. The next day she seemed alright though, I bought her a bunch of flowers to cheer her up and showed her all the great pictures and videos I took of the competition, the best being the moment when they announced the winner and like you hear it then me in the background "oh shit this isn’t gonna be good" as the video cuts out. But seriously it’s kind of strange for me living here because when my host family said to PC they wanted a boy to live with them, the one official was like "you know you have 2 beautiful daughters?" They’re really cool too though and great cooks. The whole package basically. Other girls though, I see them all the time. They walk around all dressed up in their stilettos and prance around. At school (class, English club, etc) I get bombarded with questions of if I’m not married and then the follow up: if I’m interested in being married. The other day I met this one girl though, that was a dead ringer for Princess Jasmine (from Aladdin) and in university, so my range, amirite? And she didn’t even ask me either of those questions, she was more interested in learning English. But seriously, PC had a session with us on relationships in Kazakhstan that was kind of hilarious. The Russians told us never to hook up with a Kazakh girl ever or we will be forced to marry them and Russian girls are easy and you will not have to marry them. But seriously this country is like a secret paradise of single beautiful women everywhere trying to find people to marry them, I’ve never experienced anything like it ever. Oh and PC might just be a giant trap to get us married. I have so much more to write about them but I said I’d keep it short. If you have any questions just ask.

Oh and apparently I’ll be in an article in the Atlantic City newspaper with Tommy Sunchuck about PC and 2 others from TR that are in it because that’s like a ridiculous amount of people from 1 town in PC.

Oh and I haven’t been able to keep up on the presidential race but I heard some of the international news about Sarah Palin and apparently she’s a crazy. Yeah but no one can vote for McCain cause he’s like a terrible in addition to him being a 1000 and when he dies from being 1000 and she becomes our devil president and calls for a crusade against everyone different than us, at least I’ll (presumably) be okay halfway around the world. Or not cause I live in a predominantly Muslim country and that means evil according to the ignorant American populace. Oh and I heard about the economy exploding, bummertron. At least your level is living is more than the pocket change I lived on daily until I was robbed. And that’s what grinds my gears.

If someone responds can you please keep me updated (by email is easiest, BTW MARC I TRIED TO TEXT YOU, this is in caps so you can read it, kinda cause you have the only number I have memorized and also because HAI MARC!, so if you got it try to respond to see if my texts to America work, or someone else gimme you’re number and I’ll try to send you one its like 10cents for me to text America which is cool and I get incoming free but may be hella expensive for y’all) with news of politics or other things important to America because all I hear about here is like how Putin is the man and Russia’s economy is crashing and then just Kaz news which is good but like I’d like to know about the rest of the world once in a while. Oh and I finished "Watchmen." Read it, it will rock your world. Oh and my portable HD had the unfortunate event of surging and wiping all of my videos from it, so if someone like Marc feels like burning a few DVDs with either TV shows or some videos or some music (something funny to watch and maybe the Wire or something cause I just started that and lost it all) that I may enjoy so I’m not bored to death in the long, cold lonely winter that is quickly approaching when I am not allowed to leave my village until like February, I’d appreciate it. There are a ton of blank DVDs at my house to use and just give the discs to my parents because they need to send a package soon to me anyway with important items like a new ATM card and stuff so I’m not incredibly impoverished.

Yo yo. Here's the second edition of my life. I know that Dennis, Marc and Christine read this so I'm pretty excited that some people know about it. (not excited about reddit knowing it though) I'll try to bullet some things that happened. After I got to hang out in Almaty I've done some good things. I'll start with the bad first because that's what most people find interesting anyway and then you can just stop reading after that. So at one point I got all moody and it wasn't too fun. But then my birthday happened so it's all good. Onto the good stuff... I taught peoples, they learned (maybe). Maybe because most of my class used to study German but now that was taken out of the curriculum so they were thrown into English 6 basically and don't understand anything and during training I can not stray from my curriculum to help them learn so basically it's a lost cause. Only half the class knows some English so that is kind of annoying that I got thrown into that situation and can not do anything to change it. The upside is that I let them have fun in school and they like that and like to take pictures with me. All the bureaucracy and corruption is pretty annoying too but I just have to suck all that up but Peace Corps is all like be flexible, so I am. Anywho, I got past all that, I travel to other villages now and that's good to see different faces. The Peace Corps staff is pretty much amazing and does a lot for us. (Except for my boss's boss's boss and his crew, i.e. Bush and congress, they're all like "let's cut the budget some more and spend more on bullshit that's wasting tax payer dollars instead of programs that people actually approve of")

In other news (the real good stuff), we have an English Club at school and it involves me teaching Kazakh teenagers how to say "what up dude" instead of always saying "hello" so that's a lot of fun too. We had a meeting at headquarters that let us all see most of our group so that was fun and stuff. The topics they had to teach us was kind of not fun: you know, the rape and the muggings, etc, but it’s necessary so we are safe. My Russian is slowly improving. I got to go to the philharmonic in Almaty one evening to see a nice concert because I'm all classy. On my birthday I had dinner at the country director's house which was ballin' and delicious. He had guacamole, the only guac in all of Kaz. And in the past 2 nights I've gone to 3 different parties. One I mentioned, one for breaking the fast for Ramadan in a mansion in Almaty with a friend's family, and one for a birthday on my birthday but not for me but there ended up being three us of there with the same birthday so it was all cool and we did toasts and chilled etc and the one guy whos birthday it was too is the trainer for the Uzbekistan Olympic wrestling team apparently. That's pretty badass. At the Ramadan feast I ate sheep brains, sheep head, its tongue and horse. The horse was delicious and the rest was not delicious. As I was about to bite into the brains, my first flaw was smelling it. It smelled not good. I was all like "whatever, im in kazakhstan" so I bit in and as I did I realized it did not actually taste that bad, it was mostly bland and had a consistency on gnocchi so I was like nice. As I bit down further into the gray matter I noticed that it was filled with bones and was like "dammit" so I was like I don't want some cranium I need to get these pieces out but all 30 people at the dinner table were looking in my direction. So I smoothly use my fork to get rid of the pieces of the skull but failed and ended up just using my fingers. Bad call, now I was so flustered I was like sitting there with brains in my mouth and my fingers poking towards my throat when I was like "shit, I hope I don't throw up now, I'm in full bulimia mode." I recovered from this moment well and continued with my dinner. After I was finished my friend next to me was like "it totally looked like you were gonna vomit all over the feast, it would've been hilarious" so contrary to my thoughts I was actually very noticeable and probably insulted everyone there. I got to meet a bunch of people there and today I met some more on the street and we all traded phone numbers so we can do things (which mostly involve them practicing their English). It got all hot again and then cold, well basically every day is different. My Russian teacher said it's snowing in her hometown already. I told PC I want to go north for my site if possible (they try to accommodate us). This past week has been pretty good. On my bday - my host aunt Shynar, who is absolutely amazing, totally hooked me up with a cake and a chicken (an entire chicken) for lunch to share with the group. On Saturday, I'm having some people over for a joint birthday-America fun time celebration if one of the other birthday peoples makes their way here otherwise it's an only me birthday-America celebration. That’s about all of the new big things that has happened. There has been other stuff but I can’t really think of it right now and I have to stop procrastinating and do my lesson plan for tomorrow’s class. I promise next time's update will be funnier and I'll write things down as the week goes on so it's more hilarious.

I wrote this a while ago and just haven’t been able to post so there’s like updates in it along the way…..

Ok, so this is like the first real post for all of my loyal readers. So I had orientation in Philly which was fun and I got to meet the whole group and have a fun time. We got 160$ to spend for the 2 days there as our allowance so we all had a good time.(My daily allowance now is about $3.50) Then after a few days I was on a plane to Kazakhstan that was delayed all day in Frankfurt so I actually got there a day late along with the rest of the volunteers. We arrived at dawn in Almaty and met with the Peace Corps and they took us off to our second orientation in the city that was a day and a half long with the country director, staff and the ambassador. Then they separated our group into many tiny groups and my group was off to a small village outside Almaty to learn the Russian language and learn to teach in a school. At the village they just dropped us off at the school and there our host families met us to take us to our new homes. Two boys met me with a handwritten sign in Russian with what I assumed was my name. They took me home and showed me my room so I could unpack my stuff and then gave me tons of food and tea. I got a phone call eventually from my host mom (Indira) who informed me that those were her nephews and that she and her family were at a wedding. The weddings in Kazakhstan last three days, so for the next three days I barely saw the family. The family owns a restaurant slightly outside the village off the highway from Almaty and a horse farm with about 20 horses which just confuses me cause like I don’t know if they actually own it or not but apparently I can ride there for free if I want to.

I live in the backyard, kinda. They have a separate "summer house" in the back that has my bedroom, a bathroom, a sauna/Russian banya and the main living room and kitchen. There's a gazebo between the two houses that we ate at like once and sometimes they take me to the restaurant to eat there, which is mostly a normal restaurant/cafй (its outdoors) and there are three yurtas where people can eat and I end up just usually sleeping in one of them cause I’m incredibly exhausted by 10pm every night. They are rather wealthy and have a bunch of luxuries I wasn't expecting like 2 cars, an empty pool (that has like bones at the bottom and I assume that is where animals go to die), a 40inch widescreen plasma TV (that’s hooked up with Russian MTV and other channels with quality shows like when some girls shirts fall off out of nowhere and they see how guys react, it’s like candid camera with boobs), A/C in the living room that's never turned on, a piano, occasional internet access, a nice dog (Dinka) and cat (Gera) and then a mean dog that's chained up that they told me to never go near or apparently it will eat my soul. The father is named Dunyes and he generally works a lot and may or may not be a professional volleyball player in addition to a restaurant owner and maybe some other job he may do during the day that I don’t know about. I got to fully meet him the second day I was here though, by banya-ing with him. Wiki a Russian banya for a lengthy description, but it's basically three rooms, one is like 10million degrees and burns you and then at one point you get beaten by a bundle of birch sticks from a naked man you just met as you cower there in the scalding heat naked. Oh and the people are Kazakhstani if they are a citizen but Kazakhs look Asian and Russians look like Russians. People separate themselves by their ethnicity, my family is Kazakh. They have two daughters, Zhamilya is 16 and Aigyerim is 19 and studied abroad for a year in Malaysia to learn English and hers is pretty good. The grandparents showed up here for a few days. My village had 12 volunteers at first, in 2 classes of 6 but now it’s 10 and my class has only 4 people because two girls quit already (update its now 9, a guy left too; it only seems to be our group, which has it the best off in living arrangements that seems to be leaving but PC said KZ has like a 12% early termination rate so they’re just filling the status quo, better now during training than after). I have Russian lessons for hours every day and when it's over I just want to not use my brain but I still have to try hard to communicate. The family has told me that Russian is impossible to learn and native speakers don’t even know it perfectly, which means for me not to worry about my level. It has a bunch of letters and sounds that are like a ton of consonants in a row and like it just doesn’t have some sounds and letters like “w””j”. It's pretty exhausting. My teacher is ethnically Russian and from the way north. Her name is Anya and she's 21. She’s a tough teacher but that enables us to learn many things so it’s all good, plus she’s pretty cool, she lived in Michigan for a summer doing the work thing similar to the people in Sleazeside. Her class is pretty intense but she taught us to cook borscht so that makes it worth it.

The village is a decent size and has a bazaar and the equivalent of a mall(update: the mall burnt down like 2 days ago) and an internet cafe. If you look to the north, east or west, the landscape is basically flat until you reach the Arctic Ocean on the other side of Russia, but when you look south; gigantic 20,000 foot mountains tower over the land. There’s all like snow on some of them (more snow everyday) even though it’s like a billion degrees here in the summertime. The food has been pretty good so far (shashlyk is like kebabs and plov is just rice and meat delicious and then their naan is like really good), except for a few things including the shocking taste of horse's milk, dried milk balls and what they call "pizza" because it is definitely not pizza and I'm pretty sure that's what made me sick, which I was. Here’s a hilarious description for those that want to read. So I wake up in the middle of the night and the regular house has Western toilets but by me it's a squat toilet (porcelain and stuff, not an outhouse) so I just use that because it's closer and sometimes the house door is locked and the hidden key is always moved so I’m always trying to find it and just don’t really care anymore. I take some Imodium to make myself feel better but like whatever is in me wants to get out no matter what so now I'm vomiting which is unpleasant and it's like impossible to vomit into a squat toilet but I don't have enough time to get inside so I just use the one by me and the toilet creates a splash zone. So I puked and it ended up just bouncing back at me and soaking me with vomit. In retrospect, I believe it is the most memorable way to start my life here so that makes it totally worth it.

In other news, I have to walk to school every day for about 40 minutes because I live the furthest away, but it’s also a new development so I get all the nice amenities that I mentioned before. I get to wear fancy dress clothes like suits and ties every day. (Peace Corps? More like Posh Corps) The only bad part about the walk is when I don't get to the one main crossing before the herd of cattle and donkeys cross because then I have to wait and it's annoying. And when it’s like 100 degrees out every day I sweat up a storm and most of my clothes are soaked when I get to school so that is annoying too. The best part is how we’re all like “woot, I cant wait for the cold weather” but I know once it’s -40 I’m gonna be like “shit man, why can’t it be like a 100 again.” (update: in the past week the weather has changed from 100 degrees to 60 degrees and at night it’s a solid 35 degrees) What I've seen so far of Kazakhstan was nothing that I ever expected but I think that that reaction is exactly what I expected so I did expect this then (that make any sense?). There are a lot of contradictions among things and archaic practices but then like modern things and stuff, too much to actually write about cause this is getting long enough already. The president’s name is Nazarbaev and he does a lot of good for the country and a lot of other stuff. The goal is to have a trilingual populace by 2030 which is pretty ambitious (Russian, Kazakh, and English: now 97% knows Russian, 60% knows Kazakh and a small minority knows English fluently; everyone is forced to learn all 3 in school and they took other foreign languages like German out of the curriculum). Google/Wiki him for more information which is just easier for everyone to find out more. The people have a high approval rate of America in general and extremely high of the Peace Corps, but the approval rate of the Russian Fed. and China are higher, mostly because those are their neighbors and they are able to effectively have diplomatic relations with both nations. So I hope that’s a decent description of things and stuff. Just ask questions or whatnot and I'll try to respond to them as soon as possible.

Ok that’s all old stuff, here’s an update like a week and a half later; it’s just been aggravating trying to figure out how to log into this blog in Russian cause I haven’t learned the term “sign-in” yet. (update: it’s the one that starts with a B which happens to be a V in Cyrillic) Um from last time things and stuff happened. I have tons of work. I do lessons for a million hours then teach children (kinda, I got to help in gym class this week but I do real things this upcoming week in English class, gym class was fun though) and like I leave home at 7am and get back at like 7pm. The first day of school was on Monday and there was this big ceremony called the first bell ceremony and like there were singers and stuff then we got introduced in front of everyone and I had to pin on a pin to the director and he all like kissed me in front of everyone which was unexpected. Then I got all these bouquets of flowers which was pretty baller. After that I sat in on some classes and in the one this little girl sang a song to me and then gave me more flowers. On the whole it was a ridiculous experience along with everything else that has been happening here. I’m like the coolest person in school (reminds me of my high school days).

I got to go horseback riding at the horse farm on [last] Sunday. That was pretty cool. In no time I expect to be all like Jengiz Khan and pillaging stuff from horseback. And yes he is Jengiz Khan not Genghis cause that’s some bastardized translation the West forces the rest of the world to accept because the western civs wrote the history books. (I mentioned the lack of the letter “j” in the alphabet but that’s like Russian alphabet not like Mongol/Kazakh/Uighur/ Tartar/ Turkmen, etc. you get the point) My family is not around much with working all the time so I like chill and study Russian in my free time and sometimes I find notes on the stove that says “hit me” which I assume means “heat me” and I make myself dinner. I live like a million light-years away from everyone I know which is annoying but now we can like leave our village so we can visit other volunteers in other towns. I went to the bazaar; they have these awesome Kazakhstan Olympic team track suits (in case you don’t know, their team this year kicked ass in wrestling and boxing scoring golds in both, we got to watch the boxing gold medal match here and everyone was all like so stoked when he wiped the floor with the rest of the world). Most people here just wear bootleg Armani shirts with tight jeans and drive in their cars that may be “pimped” out, in which it is just covered in stickers that say NOS but I assume there are no actual upgrades to it. There also happens to be a lot of Lexus SUVs here which I find surprising. My house has internet that finally works so I should be able to be on that more if possible but like every time I used the computer it like crashed within five minutes and I don’t know how to fix it cause it’s all like in Russian so I can’t read the problem. And like the power randomly goes out all the time everywhere because that’s just how things are so that’s always a problem too. I’ll eventually get around to taking pics of the village and home and the horses and mountains and things to upload but the internet and power here is so unreliable that you shouldn’t expect it for a while. When I go to Almaty the internet there should all be like decent so I can use that. Oh and they play this sweet game that I want to go see one day in which there are like 2 armies (really big teams) on horseback that have to take a goat carcass and put it into a goal. It’s like hockey on horses (instead of skates) with a dead goat (instead of a puck). Oh and they have these other sweet sports like chase down the girl on the horse and if you overtake her you get a kiss but at the same time she gets a whip and can whip you away. And there’s also the classic “lets all ride on horses and wrestle each other off” game.

So now that the Russian language has us totally confused (we just learned that there is no proper word order but instead there are 6 cases that give away which part of the sentence the word is so you can understand it through that, which also means that I now know 12 ways to say the color red, and I mean just plain old red, there are another 12 for scarlet, then like another for maroon, etc; we just have to learn how to use all the cases and when to), they decided to start giving us our Kazakh language lessons. Fact: Kazakh and Russian are not similar at all and don’t even make the same sounds. However, I am still not really able to tell the difference when someone is talking to me in one and not the other due to everyone speaking at a million words per minute.

Ok, Almaty entry happened. That means I’ve been in the Peace Corps for like 3 full weeks now. We took the marshrutka to the big city and Peace Corps headquarters. Peace Corps headquarters is pretty sweet. It’s like hidden in an alleyway near which may be a garbage dump on the city outskirts and like it’s this big fenced in area with cameras and barbed wire and we’re like wtf is this. We go inside and it’s like mini-America with our fleet of vehicles and 2 big houses with rooms, tv, internet access, a pretty sweet library with a ride array of books and movies on VHS including both “The Running Man” and “Point Break.” Is there anything else I could have hoped for? Then we saw the big city mosque that had a really cool crystal chandelier in it and a big old orthodox church that is made completely of wood and has no metal in it all, even for the nails. Then in the park there was a monument for the soldiers that died in the Civil War in 1917-1920 and WW2 and it was cool. It’s a solid black background of the USSR with soldiers bursting out of it representing the 15 Soviet republics. I think it’s the Paniflov monument maybe. I took a pic and will post it eventually. I also went to the Green Bazaar and saw what was for sale and walked around a little before coming back home.

Oh I have a cell phone. You can call it and it will be free for me to talk but and only (I think) 18cents a minute for you all in America if you use Skype. My number is +011 7 777 305 8360. The part from the 7 onwards is pretty right, you may have to like try a different code to dial out of the US; I’m not sure. The best times to call are between 8am and 12pm eastern standard time which is 6pm through 10pm time in Kazakhstan part that I’m all up in. And that’s 10hours ahead so like, I’m living in your future. Pretty cool, amirite?

Here’s my address if you want to send me things ever. Just copy this and print it out and tape it on a letter if you need to (note: I’m counting on someone (marc) to send me “LOST” and “The Office” (oh btw, always sunny in philadelphia is hilarious, spiciba william for making me get that before I left) and all of America’s newest hip fads in music, fashion, and other forms of entertainment like next spring when things are done so it’s one cheap package. Most of their music is a little behind but I did see a FOB/John Mayer music video covering Michael Jackson on TV and was all like sad inside, I hope that isn’t being played in America.

Peace Corps Kazakhstan

P.O. Box 257

Almaty 050022

Kazakhstan

ATTN: Kenneth Balla Jr

Корпус Мира Казахстан

а/я 257

050022 Алматы

Казахстан

Кеннет Балла

Ok, I'm just setting this up to make sure it works. It's my new email address: kenneth.balla@gmail.com so make sure you remember that if you want to email me but all the ones to the old ones are forwarded to it and I'm pretty sure the Tulane one will be deleted by the school anytime soon so don't even bother with that one. It's all set up to Almaty's time zone which is GMT + 6, so that's like 11 hours more than EST I think.