After looking at a map, I noticed that India is very close to Kazakhstan. I also remember last winter my goatee freezing to my face. The third thought in my head was that India is warm. As you can guess the connection, it didn’t take me long to decide to take a vacation to India with Gambrill. Not to mention that a round trip ticket from Almaty to Delhi costs about $500, so the best time to try and visit the subcontinent is right now when we’re young and close. The trip almost died before it had begun. The visa process is needlessly extensive. I had to take three separate trips to the Indian embassy before they even accepted my paperwork, not to mention the five days I had to wait for the bloody thing. In all, I had to provide my passport, a copy of my passport, two passport photos, a letter of invitation from my cousin who lives in India, a copy of my bank statement, a letter of employment and 11, 900 tenge. Gambrill had even more paperwork, including a permission letter from her father and a copy of his passport. A harrowing experience, and we only received our visas the day before we left. Henri IV of France once said “Paris is worth a mass.” For me Goa was worth the headaches, Tylenol and subsequent extra time spent over the toilet one day. It was just after the rainy season, so the beaches were less crowded. We settled on Agonda beach in South Goa and only had to share the beach with the cows and a few other random travelers. Nothing compares to eating curry and drinking beer with the sand filtering through your toes and palm trees waving in the background like a Rastafarian at a reggae concert. I’d love to be poignant and elegant, but we truly just lay on the beach, and life was good. The world is truly a better place when you don’t have to wear shoes. After a quick detour to Pune to see my cousin (boring family details, no need to tell you all) we entered the detour from the sphincter of Hades. Due to the fact that our visas took so long, we didn’t buy train tickets ahead of time. Bad mistake. By some act of God, or the Devil simply screwing with our heads, we got tickets from Goa to Mumbai. This is not normal. There are over one billion people in India and they all seem to be after those precious tickets that you covet. So, we had to take a detour from Mumbai to Ahmedabad and finally to our destination in Pushkar. We were ripped off by rickshaw drivers, shuffled between three separate travel sheds (office would be too kind of a word) and finally made it onto a bus that got us to Pushkar. Again, it’s always a question if an experience like that is worth it. For me, Pushkar’s camel festival was a sight to be held. This small little village booms as locals come to buy and sell camels, compete in random competitions and be gawked at by tourists (yours truly). The best competition by far was the Mr. Moustache competition. In the state of Rajasthan, a prominent soup-strainer is a sign of virility, and if that’s true, we were staring at some men who probably have to beat women back with a lathi stick. The most amazing one was the man who had two strands that he could pull out a full 2 feet away from his face. It basically was a fair, with amusement park rides, food vendors, stalls selling anything and everything (including camel dung paper) and, of course, camels. But, after plenty of shopping, singing, dancing, and tackle Red Rover (or at least that’s what the game appeared to me), we were ready for Jaipur and Ranthambore. Rajasthan is the land of kings, so it makes sense that there are a ton of palaces in Jaipur. Most of them are structurally breathtaking with influences from the Mughals and Hindu temples, the Amber Fort, the City Palace and the Palace of the Winds and Water are massively detailed structures built on mountains, in the city, and in one case, in the middle of the lake. Even walking around the many shops and stalls in the Pink City, where every building is a vibrant pink shade, it shows a brilliance that wipes away any memories of Soviet winters in Siberia. We even tried to catch a glimpse of the king of the jungle. Not far away from Jaipur is Ranthambore National Park, where you can take a safari to possibly see one of 45 tigers wandering the reserve. The closest we got to a tiger was a paw print, but the nature and other wildlife (monkeys, gazelles, antelopes) was still worth it. Finally, we finished with Agra and one of the wonders of the world. The Taj Mahal is truly worth the visit. Brilliantly white, even on a cloudy day, no picture can prepare you for the magnificence of its edifice. The craftsmanship put into this building is simply breathtaking. To think, the only thing this Mumtaz had to do was give the king a baby. For a building of that wealth, I’d try and push out a baby. Luckily, Agra is also littered with other buildings to see, such as the Red Fort, Chini-e-Kauza and the Baby Taj. But a day trip is really all that’s needed for this. Still, nothing wrong with ending the trip in a place of shown glories. I thought I’d end on a few thoughts and tips. India is big. I know it’s an earth-shattering proposal, but it’s true. I know most people from Kazakhstan plan Delhi,-Mumbai-Goa trips, but it’s must better to make your trip geographically smaller for flexibility’s sake. You will always lose at bargaining, unless you can somehow change your skin tone and accent. People in India tend to be more helpful than in Kazakhstan, but it can be difficult sorting out the ones being benevolent and the ones who are looking for a few bills from your wallet. Food is cheap and good, but make sure that you bring plenty of stomach medicine. I am grateful for the anti-diarrheal medicine my parents sent me from the states. In some cities, it’s possible to just hire autorickshaw drivers for the day, which I think is worth it (Jaipur 500 rupees, Agra 350 rupees). And if you think that people speak fluent English in India, you’re sorely mistaken. Basically think about the standard level of English for an 11th grader in Kazakhstan, and that’s the best fluency you’ll hear. Learn from our mistakes, eat a lot of curry and enjoy the time you spend in India. It’ll be some of your best memories.

It’s official. I’ve officially lived and worked for one year in Kazakhstan. You may be thinking, “One year? Well, by Jove, you just left yesterday.” I know my lovely, effervescent personality is deeply ingrained in your mind, but it is true that I have been gone for that long. The last few articles have just been running narratives of the summer without much analysis of what has happened (or at least according to my exacting standards). So, as long as gorgeous, scantily-clad Russian pop singers don’t distract me too much, I’ll put metaphysical pen to paper and provide random thoughts about my first year in Kazakhstan. 1 – Grills: One of the first observations involves the choice of dental accessories here. Actually, it’s not really accessories since people have them inserted in their mouths. People here have mouths filled with gold. Due to a lack of dental hygiene, people here lose teeth much more frequently in the West. It should be said that a higher proportion of women have gold teeth due to a confluence of less fluoride, less calcium in the diet and childbirth, which causes more tooth loss than normal. It’s actually kind of endearing to see mouthfuls of Fort Knox. Still, when people smile, you’re blinded. 2 – Spontaneity: It’s hard to describe but people here are spontaneous and not at the same time. Administrations are very willing to volunteer us for everything from translation to singing in front of a crowd of strangers on 5 minutes notice. The flipside of this spontaneity is that they are afraid of new things. New methods are welcomed but rarely followed through. We do teacher trainings over here over which everybody is enthusiastic but rarely put the new methods into practice. 3 – Hospitality: Kazakhs will proudly tell you that they are some of the most hospitable people on the planet. To an extent this is true. To strangers, they are more than willing to extend ample food and lodging assistance. When they invite people over to their houses, there is an ample feast with ample amounts of vodka. Even if they don’t know you, they are more than willing to have you over for tea and supper. On the reverse side, they’re less willing to help you with other various projects. They’re hospitable in simple things, but long-term friendship by Western standards are not as prevalent. This may be ethnocentrism on my part, but trust, even after a year, is fleeting. I just feel that they are selfless in superficial events but selfish in events that require more work than a pot of soup. I don’t want you getting the impression that I’m bad-mouthing these people. Their hospitality extends far beyond what I have experienced in other countries, and it’s something they should be commended for. 4 – Food: What can be said about the food. Some people like the cuisine here. I am not one of those people. The national dish is beshbarmak, something that I believe I’ve ranted on in the past. To recap, beshbarmak is boiled meat with potatoes and noodles with a few onions. Haute cuisine, this is not. I do believe that Kazakh culture is not tasty because there is not street food culture and that people do not consider eating as pleasurable, or not to the extent of in the West. I’d say gluttony is still considered a cardinal sin here but people eat a lot and drink a lot here. They just eat a lot of potatoes and the like. The best foods, Manty (Uzbek dim sum), Plof (Uzbek pilaf), Lagman (Uighur noodle stir fry) and Vareniki (Russian ravioli) all come from other cultures. I blame the nomadic proclivity in the steppe to boil everything, which is surprising since most other nomadic cultures grill food. A burger sounds really good now. 6 – Fruits and Vegetables: I felt it was important to add a little subset to the food entry. My mother will probably be proud for what I say next, along with my 6-year old self wanting to punch me in the balls: I was actually jealous of another volunteer because he had broccoli. That is a sentence I never thought I’d say or write in my life. Like I said, this is a meat and potato culture so there’s not much demand for fruits and vegetables. Other than that, seasons do matter here, which has been hard to get used to. There are wild price swings whether it’s the right season or not, even affecting whether the item is in stock or not. Thank god it’s persimmon season because after that winter pretty much means a dearth of fruits and veg. 5 – Music: Music and dance is a big thing here in Kazakhstan. Every major presentation has a music component and most of the time a dance component. This music part comes in one of two forms. Form one involves a glorified version of karaoke. This could be a girl or a boy or a combination of them singing a song, either in Kazakh or in Russian. The form usually takes the form of a bad pop song with a horrible disco beat. The crowd obligingly claps along with the beat. Honestly, I believe people here slavishly listen to this kind of music just so that they can clap along without any kind of thought process on whether the music actually has any artistic merit. For you to believe that I think this music style is crap would be an understatement. I believe there is a special level of hell reserved for whoever produces these god-awful songs. Form two involves the performance of traditional Kazakh music, which can be endearing in its own right. Usually, this involves a dombra, or a dombra with accordion or other instruments. To the uninitiated, the dombra is a two-stringed guitar-like instrument with a movable bridge. In the hands of a good dombra player, and in small quantities, it can actually be quite pleasant and relaxing. Unfortunately, longer exposure makes your mind wander away from your body. This is no fault of the musicians, it’s simply that there are only two strings and most songs sound the same. I feel qualified as an amateur jazz musician, who appreciates saxophone and trombone artists who can only play one note at a time, to say that most of the songs take the exact same formation without much variation. I wonder if I could convince some musicians to take up jazz dombra over here. 6 – Astana: I feel that a special section needs to be included on the national capital of Kazakhstan. It was only in 1998 that Astana was named the capital of Kazakhstan. Some viewed this as a dictatorial move by the president, Nazarbayev. There were some legitimate reasons to change it, but this entry isn’t about that. The building in Astana is unlike any other city in the world. Any architectural idea, no matter how crazy, has been tried in Astana. There are giant Chinese pagodas, a UFO, upside-down ice cream cones, a pyramid, a magician’s hat, a yellow tower, a dog bowl, and a larger replica of the White House with a blue dome. It’s sheer lunacy. Most of the buildings wouldn’t get past staging because they’d clash completely with the surrounding area, but they get built in Astana. Unfortunately words can only get so far, so I hope to eventually have some pictures up. 7 – Communism: It’s kind of odd talking with people in Kazakhstan about Communism. The thing to remember about Kazakhstan is that they were the last republic of the USSR to declare independence. They did not want to be independent and contained a large amount of sycophantic yes-men. So, people here have a massive amount of nostalgia for Communism, “when everyone had a job and there was no drinking.” Now, this is not true, or simply seeing the past through rosy, nostalgic eyes, but this is mostly through historical consequences. After independence, Kazakhstan went through a terrible recession. Pensions couldn’t be paid, factories closed down because of inefficiency, and shelves lay bare. Through this prism, it’s understandable that there is positive nostalgia for this time period, but it is difficult to hold my tongue when the virtues of Communism (plenty of jobs, no alcoholism, etc.) are extolled. But it is a way of life, and you simply hold your tongue. I guess these are all the thoughts that come to mind right now. I kind of wish that I could explain a little more, but seeing as my words are inadequate and that my thoughts leave me faster than I would like, this will have to do. I hope more blogs with plenty of coherent thought come forward over the coming year. All pretentiousness aside, it should be an interesting year to come.

Diaries and blogs alike are both therapy, or considered to be therapy. So, now comes the time to lie down on the proverbial couch and launch on a diatribe that I have unleashed on plenty of other volunteers. In brief, it has been an uncomfortable first month. September 1st is the first bell. It’s not really a day of school as much as a ceremony. There’s singing, dancing, speeches, speeches and more useless speeches. The day after is where the rubber meets the road. I had the pleasure of a new teacher, Nazgul, who just so happens to be Sara, my counterpart’s, sister. She’s also as green as a teacher can be straight out of college. That also means that she’s 20, which in my opinion is a bit too young and immature to be teaching students. Anyway, there’s also a new zavuch (vice-principal). To sum this up and not go into new detail, Sara left without so much as saying a word to me, leaving me very sullen and feeling betrayed and abandoned. Add to that the fact that of the new zavuch is so inept that we still don’t have a schedule (as of this writing on Oct. 8th there is still no schedule). So I have no schedule, a teacher who cannot control classrooms or make a coherent lesson plan, and I simply feel that I’ve lost my mind. In short, I’ve been fairly unhappy. It’s also a pain because students don’t remember anything from last year and seem to be very unruly. Now, unruly students aren’t the end of the world, but the set-up of Kazakhstani schools makes discipline very difficult. There is no detention, no suspension; bad grades don’t matter because students are always passed to the next grade. The reason for this is that discipline and the grades are the teachers’ domain. So, any disciplinary actions taken outside of yelling at the students are looked at badly by the department of education. Did I mention that they have a very quick finger to fire teachers? A school up in Kokshetau fired 60% of their teachers over the summer because they didn’t think they were doing a good job. So, even if the students are the problem, you can’t really do anything about it, besides failing them for the day, but only for the day. I did move into a new place. I now live with Yuri Ivanovich. It’s kind of nice, even though he treats me like I’ve never lived in Kazakhstan; he’s a very nice man. He’s a geologist with a gold company and has a 15-day-on, 15-day-off schedule. So, half the month I have the apartment to myself. This doesn’t mean I’m completely alone. Yuri’s father and mother, Vanya and Valya, stop by every once in a while, as do Nikita, Maxim and Lena, his son, daughter-in-law and grandson. So, it’s halfway between living on my own and with a family, which is more pleasant than I thought it would be. They’re quick to make sure I have plenty of potatoes and that I know how everything works in the apartment. Nikita usually runs around asking for nyam-nyams (dried pears from Yuri’s cottage). There will probably be more tales to come. As for now, that’s enough complaining for you all. Since the beginning of school, there hasn’t been much interesting outside the frustration at school, so I’ll take leave for now and keep searching for the light at the end of the tunnel.

The final stop on the whirlwind tour of the Kazakhstan ended in a small town in Kostanai Oblast called Auliekol, the site of one of my language training group’s members. I had visited Kostanai earlier in the year and, outside of one of my region’s members insulting Kostanai Oblast, it went well. Chris was the volunteer at my site who was forced to move to Kostanai when he chose to extend for one year. The other members of the oblast, Bree, Jonny, Janelle and Trenton, are all good friends of mine. To sum it up, this oblast has a special place in my heart, mostly for the people. So after finally arriving in Auliekol, Chris and I headed over to Janelle’s apartment, since that was to be our residence over the week. It was a nice little place with an awesome pull-out couch. It was like a trundle bed that extended out then pulled up to level with the rest of the couch. Chris also brought his Wii for our entertainment purpose (don’t ask how or why he has a Wii in Kazakhstan). We set up a rotating cooking schedule and, true to the course of Janelle’s anal-retentive side, started planning the activities for the week. I really can’t knock Janelle’s organizing since that was what made the first half of the camp such a success. So, Monday we got to her school, met the students and divided the students into four teams for the duration of the week. Divide and conquer is always a good philosophy. Throughout the week we had various themes, like holidays and the like, to give us a little framework to deal with. By Tuesday, all the volunteers were at Auliekol, making the apartment a little cramped but cozy. Honestly, if it was anybody else in the apartment, we would have been at each other’s throats, but we’re all chill and mellow people. The course of the camp was pretty much us playing games until noon-ish then volunteers playing as we do. Jonny did have his baseball gear with him, so we got to teach a new batch of students baseball and confuse them as much as possible with the rules. Honestly, if you don’t know the rules, baseball is a game that is very hard to understand. Outside of Janelle’s students being particularly good at English, nothing spectacular happened at the camp. The kids were good, and that’s the best that can be hoped for. There were a few interesting events. We spent a couple days by a lakeside and a riverside. The lakeside was in walking distance from Janelle’s apartment and was probably one of the cleanest lakes I’ve ever seen in this country. There was clear water, a nice sandy beach and good company. The riverside was a little different. We had to drive out to the river in a couple of cars with a few locals. Supposedly this was the best and cleanest body of water in the Auliekol area, which in my opinion was a lie. I mean it was pretty good for Kazakhstan but the shore was littered with bottles and cow defecation. I mean, we enjoyed ourselves with Janelle’s counterpart, since this was her idea, but the lake was closer and much nicer. The last event was outlandish, even by our new expectations. After living in Kazakhstan, us volunteers are used to local people doing some inexplicable things. So often, people will suggest something and totally flake out the day of or they’ll ask us to do something on very short notice. That’s par for the course. So, Janelle’s landlady came by the apartment. Janelle had just happened to pop out to get a few vegetables for supper. Anyway, Janelle’s landlady comes in and starts poking around the apartment. We tell her that Janelle will be back in a few and that we’re just a few friends helping out with her camp. However, her impression was that we were living there with her indefinitely. She just starts yelling at Janelle when she got back, saying that there are 150 Americans living there and that we’re going to steal her clothes and other stuff. I mean, we obviously can’t be trusted considering we came here to teach children. We are a devious bunch. Janelle’s counterpart had to call her and have a 2 hour conversation to explain to her the situation. So, this ends the summer series. I wrote this a little too far after the fact, but somehow my procrastinating nature followed me here. Next time, I’ll have a lengthy diatribe on random thoughts after a year in Kazakhstan. Until then…

Well, the summer isn’t just reserved for the kids. Us volunteers do have a chance to do something for ourselves in the form of improving our Russian. Even after almost a year of studying Russian, my speaking abilities are still deplorable. So, the only way to improve is study. The first Russian camp was in Petropavlovsk in the far North of the country. It’s one of the most Russian places in the whole country. It’s where my best friend in country, an Indian guy named Sidd who has the same acerbic sarcasm that I possess. Lodging was also free because we stayed at the dorms. The downside was that we had to be in the dorms at 10 pm. No late night partying, well, not in the normal way. So my dorm room was Aaron, the 30 year old married dude from Texas, Brendan, the whitest Irish-American I’ve met who dispenses decent advice, and Jamie, the New Englander who lives in the middle of nowhere, which is saying something in this country. So the form of the camp was very simple. We were divided up into groups of 3 or 4 and had 4 hour lessons in the morning everyday. After that, we were free for whatever. Because Sidd was in my class, most conversation ended being far too inappropriate, in both languages. I did learn a few good words though, like horny in Russian. Don’t know how that’s going to help in my conversations, but I’m glad I know it. Aaron was also with us along with Hannah, the stereotypical Midwestern girl from Minnesota. I actually enjoyed being in a structured class setting because it really focused me on improving one of the skills I truly wish to cultivate. I have a personal goal to speak 4 languages by the time I’m 25, which I’m on course to meet. I just need to improve my Russian and my Spanish, and I’m there. We covered all kinds of grammar components and vocabulary that I didn’t understand, and I’m extremely grateful for that. Our afternoons were varied, but usually involved napping or walking around Petropavlovsk. I say napping because we ended up playing Risk until 4 in the morning a couple of times. That may sound lame, but we were all big strategy game buffs and did not give an inch in warfare. These were epic encounters not seen since Napoleon walked the Earth. Unfortunately, I was about as useful as the genius who came up with the Maginot line. In short, I lost. My ego was downsized a bit. We also played Carcassonne, which is another strategy game involving tiles, and I highly recommend it to one and all. A couple times we did prepare epic group meals and drink some vodka and beers. We had Italian food and Plov (Uzbek pilau) and just sat and talked. It was honestly the closest to just hanging out with a bunch of buds that I’ve come to. There wasn’t anything spectacular that happened, just relaxation. The second camp right after that was another language camp in Shuchinsk near where I live. The unfortunate part of this camp was that most of us were sick through most of it. The dynamics were different, but good. Sidd came down to this with his girlfriend, a local girl named Sveta. She was our teacher, and the rest of our group was Audrey, the other local Wisconsinite, her indefatigable and tenacious (in a good way) boyfriend Patrick and Jessie, the independent-minded girl of our oblast. These classes were a little more serious than the other camp, but that’s all right I think. Because the other guys at the camp were crazy and lazy at the same time, which seems like an odd combination, but it works. Unfortunately, most of us were laid out with some kind of summer cold, so it was a little more low-key than we thought. Still, we managed a couple beers every night and some Scrabble and Risk action. No matter our personalities, we’re all nerds at heart. We also had a rotating chef duty and had some awesome food. Well, except for me. I had a nice stir fry all planned out, only to have the propane tank to run out 2 minutes after I started. I guess ramen noodles aren’t too far off. The highlight of this all was the trip out to Borovoe. Borovoe is the resort town of North Kazakhstan and has the nickname of “Switzerland of Kazakhstan.” Obviously whoever came up with that nickname has never been to Switzerland or even seen mountains. It’s only Switzerland in the sense that the rest of the area around it is flatter than a plank. Sidd, Sveta and I actually hiked up one of the hills and had reached the summit after maybe 30 minutes. I think Audrey was right in calling it the Wisconsin Dells of Kazakhstan. Despite the misnomer, it was nice. Just as I imagine like other parts of the former Soviet Union, people in Kazakhstan take horrible care of their environment. Littering is endemic here with bottles and bags strewn everywhere and lakes almost as green as the bushes that surround them. However, Borovoe is such a resort with enough people coming that the lake and surroundings are clean and as pristine as nature can be here. So, Audrey, Patrick, Jessie, Hotrad, another one of the older volunteers) and I headed to the beach and just lay there or swam. No responsibility and relaxation. Just what the doctor ordered. I think it’s best to end on that note, lying out on the beach with cool clear waters reflecting the green hilltop.

Since it was 30 hours to Zyryanovsk, by the laws of Sir Isaac Newton that’s how long it took to get to my next site at Lake Karagai. Well, actually 36 hours because the road was under construction. To all those who have experienced road construction in Wisconsin, take your worst experience and multiply it by 10. Between Astana and Karagai, it was a teeth-jarring brain-addling experience. I’m pretty sure my senior thesis popped out of my head somewhere around Balkhashena. But I made it. This was a different camp because it wasn’t run by volunteers but by an organization that had had volunteers in the past. It was sponsored by Shell and was outdoors, meaning being with the kids 24 hours a day. Well, I did get a tent to myself for part of the time. The staff consisted of Natalya, the stuttering matriarch of the organization, her husband Vasilly, the stuttering son Misha (I only point out the stuttering because with my level of Russian, it could be hard to follow their conversations sometimes), his wife, the absent Olessya who showed up for only 2 days, and twin wonders Andrei and Vova. I ended up being here about 11 or 12 days. I need to preface that some of this was a few things that transpired beforehand. My regional manager contacted me about a month or so before the summer and proffered this camp to me. I had nothing planned for this time period, so I said I’d be able to help out with the camp with the hope that I could scrounge up some auxiliary support from other volunteers. Very shortly after this, the older volunteers in my oblast started telling me I shouldn’t do this camp because it was poorly executed the last year and that the organization didn’t allocate their resources smartly. I was stuck though, or at least to keep my integrity at least in myself I was stuck. To be fair, one of the contentions was that they had not fed the kids enough, which was not the case this year, so they had improved upon experiences from the past. So, I arrived at the camp and they had set up a bunch of tents and a yurt along with a cooking area. I will eventually post photos on Facebook (I can’t on the blog because it’s technically blocked in Kazakhstan and too much work to e-mail my sister, who posts these, all the photos). This was not roughing it in the Boy Scout sense. They had brought two huge propane tanks and an actual stove. Guess hot dogs on a stick don’t fly. We had a couple of tents to eat meals under, but one was broken by the gale-force winds the first night before the kids came. I mean, the wind was like a banshee on speed. So the first week was the little kids 10-13, who were awesome. Every activity I did, whether it was first aid or American football or improvised percussion instruments, they loved. There was kid in particular, Kolya, who spoke four languages, and I swore spoke better English than most of the people in the United States. Another one who stuck out in my mind was Madina, a small little Kazakh girl who was willing to try out everything, including swimming. I’m proud to say by the end of the week she was able to do the front crawl. There was a small problem in that I was the only volunteer who showed up for this and had the brunt of the tasks to do activities. I mean, there were supposed to be other people helping, like Olessya, who only showed up for 2 days because she was doing registration in Karaganda instead of helping out, but we’re kind of regarded as Supermen who can do everything. So I played with the kids, taught the kids, sang with the kids worked myself into a state of exhaustion. During this period I was sharing a tent with Andrei and Vova, who slept like it was a full-contact sport. In short, I was tired. Those two also spent more time flirting with the teenage girls than actually doing anything to help a brother out. The midpoint was when the crew from Shell came to see how their grant was working out. I liked to think of this as the dog-show moment, where everybody put on their best faces. So, the traditional action is to make a song and dance and tour everything about the camp. I was particularly perturbed because I had done some improvised percussion stuff with the kids, which Natalya had taken to mean that these kids were savants and Mozarts even though most of them had no musical ability whatsoever. As sullen as I may have been, I had to put on a smile (okay, tried not to frown) and prepare them for an impromptu concert. The people from Shell were actually pretty cool. They actually brought a bunch of activities for the kids to do, like a version of Jeopardy and brainstorm sessions on health and other things. In essence, what the organizers of this camp should have done. But, I got to socialize with the Westernized directors of Shell who came out, and the older kids replaced the younger ones. The older kids SUCKED! I know that teenagers don’t want to stick out because they’re “cool,” but why would you come out to a camp in the middle of nowhere if you wanted to just sit and text your friends all day. Some things are universal, and the constantly flashing thumbs across a dial-pad are now becoming ubiquitous among youth across the world, or at least in my humble opinion. So, with the generator broken (yes, they brought a generator to charge cell phones), most of the girls (and there was only one boy) were sulking the whole time. Come on, they had a cute American for eye candy. Haha. One girl actually came with one-inch nails, which seem ineffectual in normal life but completely useless in a camp. It was worse because the whether was extremely windy and cold. We wore sweaters the whole time because the wind cut with the precision of a sushi chef. In general, the mood was low with blips upward with the different activities prepared by moi. The whole thing ended on a sour note when two girls left early, plus the boy because he had spent a night in the girls’ tent. To make a long story short, there were lots of people passing by for day trips. Well, some of the girls heard voices and got scared so they asked this guy, Ablai Khan, to keep an eye on them. Lord knows if this was true or not, but the moral of the story is that they should have awoken one of the adults, preferably the one with a black belt. Teenagers not thinking is what it amounted to, at least in my opinion. So this came out in the morning, and Kazakhstan being more conservative in mindset, no matter how girls dress, he was sent home. I’d hate to see how the family reaction was to that. That’s not to say that the whole time with the older kids was bad. We played some games, did scavenger hunts, picked wild thyme and practiced their English skills. I also taught them a bunch of card games, which they enjoyed enough that I left a deck of cards with them. I think it was definitely a learning experience. I learned new ways to entertain and educate kids through a difficult situation, and I think it was probably very fruitful. Now if you don’t mind, I’m, gonna take a nap and wake up in about 30 years.

I’ve already told some of the stories of the start of summer, or at least some feelings. To actually bring some life and happiness to this blog that has been sorely missing, I think a few anecdotes from some camps are in order. Well, in the next one I will do some griping, but you have been forewarned. So, the first camp away from summer during the summer was a camp at Tom’s site in Zyryanovsk. Zyryanovsk was actually a closed city during Communism, and maybe a few years after independence (I can’t quite remember, might be making that up). Anyway, it’s mainly a one company town dominated by a zinc mining company. The area is very hilly, bordering on the mountainous, but what is amazing are the mountains of rock from the mines. In full view of Tom’s apartment was a mountain of mining rubble. The most interesting thing, at least for me, was the statue of Lenin in the town square. The reason for this intrigue is that it wasn’t torn down or placed elsewhere in the village. In Makinsk, we still have a Lenin statue but it was shunted over to the old folks home where the elderly people lovingly attend to it as their communal safety blanket. Zyryanovsk’s was still proudly in plain view. It’s the small things that turn our heads now. Getting there was one of the biggest pains that I have ever endured in my life. I couldn’t take the train there because it crossed into Russia, and without a Russian visa I couldn’t even cross through Russian territory. So, instead I had to take a bus the whole way, or three buses to be exact. This was a lovely 30 hour jaunt through the Kazakhstani countryside, including stops in such illustrious cities as Cemeypalatinsk, where they set off nuclear bombs just to see how the local population would react to the radiation. To this day, we still don’t have volunteers there for fear of radiation. But, after arriving in Ust-Kamenogorsk, I got onto a small bus called a marshrutka and headed through some gorgeous country. It was nice to just see verdant, lush valleys and mountains. The greenery was almost an emerald quality and it almost glistened. This may just be to the relative brown quality of the steppe after the grass dries. So, staying at Tom’s were myself, Tom (of course), Sam, Jonathan and Gisela. Tom’s a nice and cocky (in a good way) SoCal guy with an easy-going attitude, who is balanced by the sassiness of the Long Island qualities of Sam. Honestly, those two act more like a brother and sister more than I have with my siblings. Jonathan is a nice guy prone to funny quips, while Gisela is a motor-mouthed girl from Pennsylvania who is almost endearing because of the rapidity of sentences spilling from her mouth. In short, a good crew of people to spend a week with. To sum up our activities, we woke up, drank coffee, and then lugged two huge bags of equipment, including baseball equipment, soccer balls, and footballs, to his school a few blocks away. There we would play random sports with about 20-30 kids from 7-10 grade. After a lunch in the school cafeteria, we would play a little bit with smaller kids who hung around. Finally, the rest of the day was what we wanted to do, which usually involved games and beers or a combination of both. I consider this a small sliver of heaven. There were a few funny things from the kids. First, there was this group of girls that had a demented sense of what they needed to wear to play sports. In general, the fashion sense is to dress like ladies of the night in the West. I mean, honestly, they’re about a pair of stilettos away from looking like hookers. In that vein, there was a group of 3 girls who showed up everyday in miniskirts, tank tops and heels. They even took a few diggers. You’d think after the first day, they would have thought “Maybe a little stability from tennis shoes would prevent excess damage to my knees.” Nope. The other was one particular boy who acted like he had been given an extra dose of testosterone at birth. You could almost see the thought process in his brain, “ Hit the ball, hit the ball. Can’t stand still, must do push-ups, push-ups, now pull-ups. Gah, must run. AAAAh.” He would disappear for 30 minutes then reappear to throw a football, then disappear again. There must have been a Bermuda triangle around there. All in all, the kids were fun to work with. All the volunteers we had there bonded in cooking and cleaning. One of the last nights we all got to play circle of death and finished off with a game of drunken or semi-drunken Twister. By far the worst rule was that if you said somebody’s name, you have to put your head on the table. Eventually, someone else will say my name so I can take my head off the table. J

So the last blog and the current blog are going to kind of run together. The difficult part of this is that I’m running around and still have no access to internet. That should actually be a good thing because then I can put thought into these blogs. In theory, that’s what should happen. However, with so much running around, after I craft one of these beauties, I really don’t like to go over them and correct them. It’s a flaw that somehow I’ve gone through college with. Still got A’s on most of my papers. Hey, they say that first instincts are usually correct. Anyway, with all the running around, when I have time to put figurative pen to paper, I just want to blaze through it. That may be part of why some of my entries can be a bit more down-trodden than others. Mood swings are major thing that happen here, partly because of the weather, partly the distance from home. Anyway, I guess this is a back-handed apology for lack entries and quality maybe. Or just a blanket statement to cover my ass. Maybe I should be a lawyer. J Anyway, so far I’ve done a few meetings and a few camps. At the beginning of June, we had to go to something called PDM, or in the non-acronym world Project Development Management. This is an extended weekend seminar to, you guessed it, develop projects. We are a clever people. The best part of this was a weekend on the booming metropolis that is Kokshetau. Well, it’s 100, 000 people and there are cafes. When you live in a village, standards are kind of low. Actually, the best part was that we got to stay in a hotel, with a shower! Even though most of the information covered were things I’ve dealt with in Youth Service Learning and Boy Scouts and Pi Sigma Epsilon, a refresher is always good. Plus we did it with our counterparts, so the hope is that we plan and execute these projects with our counterparts and they can then do their own projects after we have left the country. It’s our one big buzzword in Peace Corps: sustainability. So, that was a start to the summer. About 3 or 4 days after that, Roshan and I hopped on a train down to Almaty to have our yearly physical. This also included a trip to the dentists, which was kind of a fearful moment before we got there. Due to the lack internet, I can’t recall if I wrote about my last brush with the Kazakhstani health system, but I’ll briefly touch up on it. I had an ear infection and I went into a time warp that brought me back to 1950s health care, except it’s alive and well in Kazakhstan. So imagine the consternation before going to the dentist’s. Well, it was actually a modern place and had at least one thing I’ve never seen before. Instead of a fluoride paste like at my dentist’s back in the States, they had some kind of gun. It’s hard to describe what came out of it. It was a cross between foam from a shaken up soda and salt. That may sound unpleasant but I swear my teeth were squeaky afterwards. And no cavities, which in itself is a minor miracle considering the massive amount of sugar everybody consumes here. Thank god the no-sugar-in-tea thing is working. I believe half the volunteers got cavities here. The only other eventful thing on this trip was a lovely woman from Chelyabinsk on the train back north, and I saw lovely very tongue-in-cheek. She was a stereotypical Russian woman, body build between a linebacker and a defensive tackle with a strong odor and an even stronger voice. I believe her knob was stuck at 11. Anyway, Roshan and I were sitting there talking with another woman who happened to be on the train down a couple days before. To preface this, Roshan is half-Indian and half-Chinese and complete serenity, or at least only on the outside. He hides his anger a little bit. Anyway, this meathead of a woman had the gall to say that Roshan was not a real American because he was not white. Needless to say, we were pretty incredulous (trying to use a different term than pissed off) but luckily other people in the cabin were a bit stunned to. Luckily, she started explaining to a Kazakh woman near us why Russia was better than Kazakhstan, so we were able to extract ourselves from that conversation, but we were not in the best of moods afterward, as one can imagine. Come on, I’ve got plenty of friends of multiple ethnicities. It’s hard to deal with bigotry, even if you kind of expect it in other countries. Anyway, in the last blog I talked about my camp in Makinsk, and the less said the better. It wasn’t bad, it was just non-descript, so the less said the better. I prefer not to bore you. Needless to say, the kids ran around, did some ridiculous activities that the teachers though were “authentic Native American,” went to the local museum and spoke a little English. Trust me, the other camps will have better tales, and I shall regale you with them. As for now, I have a ridiculously long 36 hours of bus rides ahead, so I shall write again soon.

As you’ve probably read throughout these pages, we Kazakhstan volunteers tend to go through our own trials and tribulations, some more ephemeral than others, but they still wear on our minds. However there is a silver lining: the magical time of year known as summer. As in America, teachers don’t work during summer because of the old idea that students have to be on the family farm to help the summer harvest. Though, that is somewhat true in Kazakhstan, or at least in the wheat belt in the North. And it’s quite not true for teachers because they still have to work at school during the summer, and I use the word “work” very loosely. Depending on how megalomaniacal the director is, the teachers either do bullshit work or they do nothing. It’s the system and we’re on the bottom.

That sucks for the teachers of this country (or doesn’t depending on the teacher), but it leaves plenty for the volunteers to do that is not school-related. Actually, instead of doing school, a lot of the teachers do summer camps, which here works out as a less-organized version of summer school. In America, students would be doing classes such as Kooky Spooky Science or Summer Theatre. In Kazakhstan, they let you run around as long as you don’t punch another student. Actually, I’m not being as charitable as I should to it. The summer camps do give something for the students to be doing. If not, they’d just be sitting around the house doing nothing. The summer camp lives and dies on the organization of the camp, so planning is important. I planned a bunch of activities for the kids, and I think they all went well. They got to run around, learn a little English and did more than sit under the gossipy teachers who did nothing. Sometimes the organization here can be infuriating, but if you teach the kids here, maybe they can change a few things when they grow up. Besides, they like hanging with the cool foreigner, and I get to let out my little kid, which they enjoy. It’s a win-win I say when the volunteer organizes stuff.

Now I know that the above does sound a little bleak, and that may be a little bit of jaded Scotty showing through, but summer is about recharging your batteries after a long, long winter. I’m always reminded by a joke back from Wisconsin. We have four seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter and road construction. Amended to life in Kazakhstan, it’s three seasons and there’s no road construction. My coccyx can attest to the jarring conditions of the road, but that’s neither here nor there. But, summer is a time for travel, and since all the volunteers put on camps they need plenty of help from fellow volunteers. We are all happy to oblige. The weather is warm and the camps vary greatly. There are sports camps, drama camps, English camps, other language camps. Anything and everything volunteers are willing to organize will happen. The camp in Makinsk was organized by teachers at my school, but next year it will be an extravaganza organized by myself. I’m looking forward to seeing volunteers, even after 18-hour train rides and 30-hour bus rides. Travel is a bitch, but there’s a merciful God who deemed it necessary to invent iPods and e-books.

Oh, the last thing about summer that is very exciting is the ice cream. When it’s –40 outside, it’s very hard to come up with a valid excuse to have ice cream. I keep thinking back to the days when I was younger when Dairy Queen actually closed in winter. In all honesty, a cup of warm chocolate always sounds better than frozen chocolate when you can scoop up frozen ice from your doorstep. Not so in winter. For the low price of 25 cents, you can get an ice cream cone from the local store. It’s not Ben & Jerry’s, but it works its magic. The best part is that Kokshetau, the regional center, has really good ice cream for 45 cents. Worth every penny. Gotta enjoy the goodies.

The most positive thing about IST was the attitude that we had after that training. Most of us, including me, had a bit of energy injected into us, especially after a long winter that would just not go away. So, I returned to Makinsk to see that most of the snow had melted away, but left behind a ridiculous amount of mud that would just not go away. Everything got muddy, there was no way it couldn't because most of the streets aren't paved but dirt roads. Melting snow plus dirt roads always equals mud. This was not a good omen.

The most frustrating thing to deal with in the Kazakhstani educational system is complacency and laziness. These are problems that volunteers cannot single-handedly get rid of. An apt point would be an example. One of the first classes back from IST, I did a lesson on goals. This class was with a 10th grade Kazakh speaking class. Since, only 11 years of school are compulsory, this is basically the equivalent of a Junior class back in the States. This is the time that students start to think about what they want to after high school and hopefully have goals and ambitions. So, since we are only a couple hours away from the national capital, I thought I would hear a little ambition from the students. Instead, most of the students just wanted to stay in their little village, even though jobs are scarce and hard to come by. It's this complacency and the laziness that is attached to it that makes me feel like a Whack-A-Mole sometimes. You get an idea, but kind of get smacked back down by the lack of wanting to put a step forward. It's a cultural thing, but one I think that dates back a few hundred years. There were the Soviets but also the Tsars too who basically gave edicts to people and expected to be obeyed. Because of that, I still feel there's a bit of expectation that someone from above will tell you what to do and you do it. This is probably a trait that will take a long time to die. In the mean time, I need to give these kids something to be ambitious about.

As any organization or business, Peace Corps has us do periodic trainings. Right after Nauryz, we had what was called In-Service Training, or IST for short (we're all about the acronyms here). First I had to get to Almaty from Shymkent. With most of the trains booked, I decided to take a sleeper bus. It was about the size of a coach bus, maybe slightly larger, with 3 rows of beds which are overlapping, so that your pillow is on a bump under which is the next passenger's feet. The beds were also barely wider than a person's body. We were sardines for about 12 hours, but it wasn't too bad. The only thing was that the bus was made in China so it was made to the proportions of Chinese people. There aren't many 6 foot Chinese people like me, so it wasn't the most comfortable trip, but it was oddly relaxing.

Once I got to Almaty, I went and stayed with Kyle, another volunteer that I get along with. We did the normal things, eat chili and swap movies and pretty much just talk. After the stay we had to go to Kok Tobe, the sanitorium where we do all our central trainings. We were greeted by meetings galore. Some of them were helpful, like the grant meetings and the summer camp meeting, some were not. The culture sessions were lots of bitching sessions about our particular sites, but that may be just because we have to get things off our chests temporarily. Just sometimes our ethnocentrism pokes its ugly head through. At the end they gave us new books and new English supplies. Unfortunately, most of them involve the need of a copier, which most of our schools lack. It's the thought that counts. I'd go on for a little longer, but there's nothing interesting about meetings, so I think I'll end it here.

I know I haven't been able to write a post recently. I'd love to say it's because I haven't had internet, but I've been struck down with a bout of lethargy, so I'm hoping to pound out a few posts to try and catch up. Who knows, I might get it fully updated.

So this first one involves Nauryz. Nauryz is the Kazakh new year, so it's all about the Kazakh culture. In general, this involves eating lots of beshbarmak (boiled mutton and noodles), baursak (fried dough balls) and drinking kummyz (fermented mare milk). To be frank, the Kazakhs are not brilliant culinary masters. I mean, kummyz tastes like a mix of buttermilk and stale beer. The entertainment is a little better. There's kokpar, which is polo played with a headless goat, and kizku (bad spelling), which is a man chasing a woman on horseback trying to steal a kiss while the woman hits him with a riding whip. This would have been great, but unfortunately they didn't do either one of these sports, so some of the excitement was not there.

So, I met up with a few volunteers in Astana and we made our way to Shymkent. To go from the North to the South or vice versa is usually a 24 hour trip, so the only way to keep your sanity is to have a lot of entertainment or some people to chat with. Check on that list. So we arrived there and with a large amount volunteers split into various rented apartments. I love being around other Americans, but sleeping on a floor with 8 other people can fray ones nerves.

Anyway, we went to Turkestan, which is one of the few ancient parts of Kazakhstan. Most of the country was nomadic, so history is a lot of conjecture and hearsay. Turkestan is close enough to the Silk Road. Anyway, in Turkestan was a mausoleum to an imam, which was pretty and interesting in itself. My great genius forgot my camera, so I should hopefully get photos from other volunteers. Anyway, the tilework on the mausoleum was cool, but the interior was plain and barren. The funny thing for me is that the Kazakh Muslims consider 3 trips to Turkestan equivalent to one trip to Mecca. I'm not sure how Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia would agree to that logic. So after a few hours wandering around in glorious heat, which is much better after 4-5 months of constant negative degree temperature, we returned to Shymkent.

As is normal with groups of Americans, we went out to a night club, which was actually a good way to let off some steam. However, as usually happens when people and alcohol are mixed together, drama ensued. I don't feel like getting into the depths of it, partly because it's personal, partly because I don't fully remember all the nights. Suffice it to say Peace Corps is a small community and rumors and gossip tend to fly much faster and much farther in small communities. Toss in locals here who can be a bit eccentric at times and the proverbial can hit the fan.

So, to be able to stay there a bit longer, we had to do a little work. So, Phil, one of the local volunteers, had us do a project with some of his students from college and university. He has a lot of students who will work in the local service industries and as interpreters, so they need practice working with native speakers. So, most of us went on tours with local university students and we wandered around asking questions. I was surprised at their level of English, but then of course my starting point are 17 year olds who can't answer the question "how are you." So it was refreshing talking English and correcting English from a more advanced speaker. Plus it doesn't hurt that she wasn't hard on the eyes. :-)

Finally, the most important part of this trip: FRESH FRUITS AND VEGETABLES!!! Food in Kazakhstan is not like food in the U.S. The seasons are adhered to strictly here because most people buy their food every few days. Also, with most of the country blanketed in snow for long stretches of time, there's none available. So, just the ability to buy fresh apples and peppers and other things that are not potatoes and cabbage was such a refreshing experience. One of my first experiences was buying 2 pounds of apples and eating them right away. It's the little things in life that count.

I’m in Kazakhstan. How many people legitimately can say that? So it’s interesting that this fact does not phase me any more. It’s always amazing when the shine of a new place makes way for the tedium of everyday life. I mean, the first few classes that I had here were exciting and felt amazing that I was actually doing something in a foreign country. Now it’s just the Monday through Saturday grind. But it’s the little things and everyday miracles that you need to remember, so here’s generally how my days in Kazakhstan go.

I usually get up at 7:30 everyday. Well, the actual routine is groan, look at my alarm clock with a venomous glare and hit snooze a couple times before I actually get up. My host mom makes Kasha every morning, which is basically cream of wheat or porridge, sometimes with cheese and fruit, although fruit in winter consists of really bad apples from China that are probably slowly giving me cancer. After that, I do the normal morning things, like brush my teeth, get dressed and the like. Then I tear apart my room for all the odds and ends I need for class because I have absolutely no foresight, and bolt out of the door yelling at Baba Vera that I’m leaving. Baba Vera is the grandma that lives with the family.

So I get to school and start doing lessons or lesson plans. The hope is that the lessons go well but it’s highly unlikely because the textbooks here are horrible. So, I usually just look at what we want to teach them grammatically or with vocabulary, and then I try to use the book as little as possible. Besides, my personal priority is to teach them speaking, not reading. Reading is easy but speaking takes much more time and energy. In there, I usually have one break where I go to the cafeteria and have a cup of tea and some kind of pastry.

There are only 6 classes, but my workday doesn’t end when the kids’ does, so I have office hours and English club in the afternoon. I keep office hours mainly because teachers here don’t. I’m the crazy American, so I’m basically a novelty act, but it allows me to be more involved with the students, so it’s probably a good thing. Anyway, I answer grammar questions and then for English club we play different games to help them practice. Always keep in mind, Mr. Scott, as I’m known here, is a funny, awesome guy. I was working on adjectives with one class and I only got compliments, but I believe it’s only because of the red pen. Power is awesome though.

Afterwards, I go home and change out of the monkey suit into something a little more comfortable. It’s still frigging cold out, so I tend to stay indoors. My array of activities include practicing the guitar, practicing Russian, reading, watching movies and TV shows, or just sitting around and talking with my host mom. Usually my brother is killing brain cells in front of the computer, much like my brother at home in America. It’s amazing how many things stay the same even though the scenery changes. I fit a meal in there somewhere and then go to bed. It’s actually not too bad. Every once in a while I do a small art project for classes, but my penmanship and artistry skills are lower than a 6 year old who just started finger painting. All in all, not too stressful. So that is a typical day in the grind here. Next week is Nauryz, the main Kazakh holiday. I’m looking forward to some headless goat polo. More on that when I see it.

Holidays are a fun time. Number one, there’s no school, or at least shortened school. This is good and bad. Good because I get a break, but bad for the fact that my kids have had way too many days off because of cold weather. But outside of that, it’s fun to celebrate holidays that don’t exist in the U.S. This was the case with July 14th and the Student’s Carnival in France. This was the case with Women’s Day in Kazakhstan.

Women’s Day has the feel of the old Soviet Union. I didn’t ask anybody, but I can probably say with certainty that it’s a holdover for the good old USSR. There’s also a Men’s Day, but as with Father’s Day and Mother’s Day it’s the women that matter and the men don’t. So, you dare not forget March 8th because anything other than adulation upon the womenfolk is akin to social suicide. It definitely was interesting.

First of all, the teachers make all the boy students give the girl students cards or chocolate, which the girls absolutely adore. Then after that it’s the teachers’ turn to kick back vodka and sing and dance with the women teachers. All the male teachers waited on all the female teachers, which was like 5 guys. So we brought the food and the drinks. As per normal, there was wine and vodka. The food wasn’t as good this time as the last few parties, unfortunately. Fat is a way of life here, and they love to add it. I swear to god the number one condiment in Kazakhstan is oil. I’m still scratching my head as to how I lost weight. Anyway, so we celebrated for about 3-4 hours and then eventually stumbled home and drunk dialed a few people.

Finally, we had guests over, women guests obviously. We had a massive feast with bread and cabbage rolls and cake. It was mostly older women, so they were all chattering between themselves about lovely life and wishing good health upon each other. Then it got a little awkward because they started crying about dead sons and husbands. Kazakhstan is a country with a lot of tragedy. These people have been shit on and continue to be, and practically everybody has a sob story about a family member. I know my host mom, Tatyana, has a son and a daughter from two different fathers, and I still haven’t had the courage to ask about it. Most likely at least one of them is dead, possibly both. So, crying babushkas plus me being sick meant I asked to go lay down in my room.

So, in conclusion, Women’s Day is Mother’s Day on steroids. Be nice to all the ladies in your life on this day and treat them like princesses. Every girl deserves a ball I guess. So celebrate away. Next holiday is Nauryz, so there should be plenty for stories coming.

I officially have a much larger respect for teachers. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had some bad teachers, but I’m starting to see how hard it is to be a good teacher. The preparation, the discipline, the getting to know your students, it’s all a pain and takes far more time than you would think. Add into that being in a new country and a whole new level of frustration has just been making my life a minor hell. Maybe hell isn’t the right word, but some days you just want to scream.

Part of it is the system here. In America they say that the system fails some kids. In Kazakhstan, I believe this is more apt. This is not to say that I don’t have talented kids. Some of my students are very motivated and being in close proximity to the capital, Astana, I hope they will be able to use there smarts by getting into the government or some business. However, the system over here sometimes tends to rubber stamp kids through. Grades here are done on a five-point scale with 5 being the top and 1 being “you fail at life” and 3 being a passing grade. The problem is you cannot give a kid a 1 or a 2, so there is no fire under the kids rear-end to succeed. You really have to be creative sometimes to actually get kids to come to class. Especially some of the older kids have realized that grades don’t matter, and when that happens the sand castle tumbles all around you.

Now I don’t want to make this seem like a Kazakhstan only problem. This is also a problem in the States too. We are not perfect. This all boils down to the way we keep teachers accountable. It’s a very dicey proposition to tie pay and compensation to student performance because this just breeds a culture of cheating; by the students and by the teachers. If you want to read something interesting about this, read Freakonomics and in the first chapter the authors talk about this concept. The large majority of the people are apathetic.

I chalk all this up to a post-Soviet hangover. During Soviet times, steel and factory workers made more money than doctors. Education was not as important as it is in other countries, even though it is given lip service here. It’s still the case that teachers and doctors are not paid well, still lower than factory workers. Still, I feel it has to be changing a little bit

The general strategy I go with is to key in on the students who want the help. The motivated students will work on their own and the ones who aren’t won’t. Hopefully you can use a little peer pressure through those students and slowly build up confidence.

Don’t get the impression that I want to go home. I’m still interested in staying here, and I have a few things on the docket to do here. I’m going to be doing presentations on how to study foreign languages on your own, and if that gets only a couple students, they’ll be better speakers for it. I also want to start creating a digital English library so that students can do more than just play video games on their computers. That and summer’s just around the corner. This is a long-term project so road bumps are inevitable. In the end, I think it will all go well.

Just like any business or bureaucracy, there is a decent amount of quality control by everybody above us. There are reports to file, constant training, and, as was the case this past week, visits by our managers. Each oblast (the equivalent of an American state) has a regional manager. My manager is a woman named Natalya Kotova, a very intense blonde-haired woman from Kokshetau who now works in Almaty at the Peace Corps headquarters. The reason for this intensity is that she basically runs the education part of Peace Corps, which makes any mistakes by me in classes glaringly obvious. Even more so, she’s quick to point them out. On the positive side, she is also very good at enlightening you on what you do well. Still, it is a bit unnerving. Worse, or better, still, the director of Peace Corps decided to make the trip up. So about 10:00 am, I was having meetings between Natalya, John Sasser (the Peace Corps director), Sara Ustazhanova (my counterpart), Anar Yesliambekevna (my school director) and people of the Rayon department. The Sara and Anar were very friendly and extolling my virtues, while the women from the rayon education department were expecting me to suddenly transform days into 30 hours so that I could train all the teachers within 2 hours to be master educators. Apparently, I’m the second coming of Jesus, Buddha and Krishna, all in one. No pressure. Luckily, that was only the rayon people. That didn’t stop all the teachers and directors and zavuches (vice-principals) from heaping as much praise on me. Now part of that is kind of cultural thing. Here, if you screw up or act in a way that they consider disrespectful, they will tell you. Mincing words is not a Russian or a Kazakh trait. To illustrate, without thinking, I entered a door before Natalya. She immediately grabbed me by the arm, pulled me back through the doorway, and explained to me my lack of manners. Message received. The reverse of this is that if they perceive a kernel of wonder that you have achieved, they will tell every living thing that crosses their path what an amazing individual you are, that you have solved every problem imaginable, that babies laugh only when you pass and that no amount of compensation could replace the mysterious deeds that you have accomplished. So, I was sitting through so many situations where people were saying that I was the uber-human, compassionate, intelligent and insightful. Unfortunately, they forgot modest and humble, so that with every compliment, I just wanted to sink even further into my chair or the wallpaper that was behind me. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the praise; I just don’t like to have it piled onto me in public. Shake my hand or give me a pat on the back, just don’t make it seem like I can solve world hunger. Still, it is nice to be appreciated. Anyway, Natalya and John visited all the teachers, the director, the rayon, my host family, and one of my classes. We had lunch at the school and conversed about myself, but also my goals and a bit of economics, though I think I didn’t explain myself well enough so that it went over there heads. Either my English is escaping me or I need to stop drinking so much caffeine. So, I guess I’ve made a good impression so far. Too bad that’s only 2 months down and 22 more to go here in Makinsk. Just need to find a way to pace myself.

In the dead of winter, with temperatures regularly dipping below double digits, you’d think the smart thing to do with a vacation is head South with those intelligent, ornithological beings. Nope, instead I felt inspired enough to head North to Siberia. Well, a bunch of friends live up there, so that’s good enough to hop onto the train and enjoy myself in the confines of Petropavlovsk. I would love to say that it was a deeply interesting time, but it wasn’t necessarily Spring Break in Cabo. All of us volunteers (roughly 10-12) gathered in a few apartments around the city. The weather was so bitterly cold (-20 F) that we didn’t really venture outside. Frankly, the only times we left were to get food and vodka. We basically Maslow’s basic hierarchy of needs, though we added vodka and beer to the shelter and food that every living being needs, or at least Peace Corps volunteers in the dead of winter. This is all in jest, of course. Boiled down, we basically sat indoors, ate, shot the shit and played board games. I had never heard of this company called Rio Grande Games, but they put out a lot of good quality games. Most of them are strategy-based games. They are definitely not Candyland, but they’re good entertainment. My personal favorites were Carcassonne and Colonizers (this is my translation, I’m not sure what the actual name of it is in English). It was somewhat marred by the fact that one of the older volunteers and went home after a vacation in London, which left us to pack up his things. It is kind of sad to pack up the belongings of one of our peers. It also racked my mind because my first thoughts weren’t necessarily fellow-feeling for him as much as they were “I wonder if there’s anything I can take home.” Unfortunately, that’s the extent of life out here; we work and then we leave, usually leaving a lot of our possessions her for whichever scavenger wants them, whether they be Kazakhstani or American. Don’t let this imply that I didn’t have fun. Just the simple face of going and hanging with a bunch of volunteers, including my best friend here, Sidd, raises our spirits. Spending an extended weekend with fellow Americans is the spiritual equivalent of relaxing on a beach in Bali. It was also fun because the last day we got to play a bunch of games with some orphans at the school that Becky, another volunteer in Petro, works at. They were definitely vibrant and alive, just happy to play very simple games with you and laugh. Something about kids being kids and not little shits or brats makes you feel like a kid. It’s the youthful exuberance that I hope to keep going the whole time I’m here. But I must say, I think the next vacation I’ll go somewhere a little warmer

Events of the past week serve to highlight my state of mind, and probably the state of mind of some of the other volunteers here. I say this because one of my best friends from PST just decided to leave early, which I can understand but doesn’t make me feel that great. I talked with him a few weeks ago and though he was fine, but he was put into a difficult situation, as I’ll explain.

The hardest thing about Peace Corps Kazakhstan is twofold. Number one, we are pretty isolated in Kazakhstan. There are a little over 150 volunteers in the ninth-largest country on earth. I have it easy by being on the electric train route with 2 volunteers being within a 45-minute train ride. The fact is that some volunteers, including my good friend, are hours away from the nearest volunteer. Number two, this is not the traditional Peace Corps where you’re in a random little village in Africa where there is nothing. On the contrary, I work in a school that has computers, the internet and interactive boards hooked up to computers. We did training on having limited resources, but that is far from the reality here.

I’m not going to deny that isolation is difficult, but that’s something we could prepare ourselves for. I mean, we signed up for the Peace Corps knowing we’d be far from people. It’s hard to reconcile the fact that we’re providing a service that is not provided in the country when there are a decent amount of resources available. Even worse is when you go to the cities and have to reconcile your preconceptions even more with what you hear and see. Just a few days ago, I was Shuchinsk and me and couple other volunteers went to a bar. While we were having a beer, we were watching Bordeaux vs. Montpellier on a flat screen. Also, one of my students had an iPhone. A fucking iPhone! I don’t know about other volunteers, but when I see that, I have trouble truly believing that I am truly needed in this country. It’s this slow stream of doubt that seeps into your brain from these external factors that combines with the internal factor of being alone. It’s not easy. But it’s moments where you hash things out in venues like this blog where it becomes therapeutic. I think I’m slowly taking the view that other education volunteers have taken. We may not change much here, if anything, but if one kid gets a chance abroad, I guess it was worth it. Expectations can only go higher.

The time has come to update the blog. I’ve been a little lazy so it’s about time to kick it into gear, I guess. I accidentally put this and the last blog out of order, but whatever. Either way, let’s talk turkey

Being far away from home, it’s the holidays like Thanksgiving that can really take a toll on somebody’s toll. Far and away, the worst period for an American abroad is the period between the end of Thanksgiving and right after New Year’s. It’s a malaise that just sneaks up on you then slowly snowballs until all of the joy of life is sucked out of you. Of course, this feeling doesn’t persist forever, but it can make life miserable.

One of the best medications is to simply hang out with people you share the same predicament, which luckily Akmola Oblast and North Kazakhstan Oblast has about roughly 20 volunteers in the same state of being within easy train ride from each other. So, we all gathered in Zerenda, one of the resort towns in Akmola oblast. As we all trickled in, there were plenty of handshakes to older volunteers and warm hugs to all the familiar faces from PST. And then we proceeded to try and drain the town of all the beer in town…

Well, not exactly. I jest because the stores around has had only a given amount of beer and the fact that 20-odd people coming in to town and looking to buy up bottles of beer for 2 days of revelry leads me to at least that the owners of these stores were very happy with our many purchases, but maybe the rest of the thirsty populous wasn’t. Eh, we were all reasonable, so it was a good time.

So, the plan of it was very simple. We basically chatted around over a few beers, played Ultimate Snow Frisbee, which I’m glad to say the amazing team of Myles, Holly, Sholpan, Niall and yours truly creamed the other team, and made thanksgiving. There were massive amounts of stuffing, turkey shashlik (basically marinated kebabs), mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, salad, fruit salad, pumpkin pie and chocolate bread. Any calories that may or may not have been lost during the Ultimate Frisbee match were officially gained back, and possibly tripled, during that feast. After toasts by everybody, some of us retired to the banya to clean ourselves and just chill in ridiculously scalding environments, which as some of you may have already divined from my previous posts is extraordinary. But literally the best part of it was just being around so many people and just talking in English with people who understand your position and can relate to you. So much of what you have to do here is diplomacy, trying to figure out if what you do and say is politically correct in new surroundings, making sure that you are understood instead of just having a makeshift human bobblehead nodding at you, worrying about whether you’re having an impact. In short, to relax, just plain relax. That’s definitely what I was thankful for this Thanksgiving.

I have definitely been running around so much lately, which has made me feel a little guilty. I know I’m supposed to integrate within my community, but when it’s so damn cold out everybody’s running to get home and curl up next to the pechka (the central stove in homes here). Either way, I have a few ideas, including academic teams like back home in high school. I also want to do some financial education classes to kids and adults, especially since want happened not too long ago. In my school, when there are three bell rings in quick succession, that means there’s a teacher’s meeting, which annoys the hell out of me. Most of this is because there are only 6 classes in the day, so this destroys one of them, and the kids aren’t focused afterward. Unfortunately, we just got a new director, so these kinds of meetings are becoming more commonplace. Anyway, I prepared myself for the meeting, which is in both Russian and Kazakh, but instead the director or zavuch (vice-principal), we had a saleswoman from Kaspi Bank extolling the virtues of the credit available through her bank. Something about this smacks of the credit debacle back home, so I figure I might do some financial education when I learn enough Russian.

Anyway, back to the running around. So I have been to Kokshetau and Shuchinsk to the north of me because the older volunteers are there. However, I had a chance to go in the opposite direction, to Astana to do a radio interview. Jessie, one of the older volunteers who lives near Astana, invited us to do it, and I was the only one available. So, I packed my bags and headed to Shortandy. We headed the next day to the American Counsel to do an interview for one of the local radio stations, answering the standard questions about how we like Kazakhstan, why we chose to come here, etc. I still have to laugh about some of the questions, especially about the one about if I want my career to be a volunteer. Unfortunately, that’s not a very well-paying position, but I think I deftly swept it aside by saying that I want to have a career doing economic development with developing nations. The other one is always awkward is when they ask why we chose Kazakhstan, which in fact we did not. It’s always hard to see how they take the responses to that because we have to be truthful about it. I definitely can’t bullshit a good enough reason after spending half my time as a human popsicle.

Well Jessie and I stayed there and chatted with a few people who could be contacts to do events in Akmola oblast, then headed out for pizza, which may not sound extraordinary but is amazing after about a few months of potatoes in all its forms. After another night in the raging metropolis that is Shortandy (tongue in cheek of course), the boys all headed to Shuckinsk for our monthly banya night. It’s better because we supply the drinks and Segar supplies the awesome Indian food. I think I’m getting spoiled, but I guess any radio star eventually has to be brought down to earth to check his ego. Though I’m still waiting for my adoring admirers to come out of the cracks.

I can’t remember if I ever updated about my life here in Makinsk, but this sounds as good a time as any. I live in a home with Tatyana Pavelonvna, the psychologist who works at School #5, and that’s not just because she helps with the voices in my head. ;-) She is much more patient than my old host mom in Issyk was. I still don’t understand everything, but it’s easier and I’m a bit more motivated because there is a light at the end of the enormous tunnel that is the Russian language. Anyway, it’s her, her son Dema and Baba Vera, Tatyana’s mother. Dema is basically like my brother back home: obsessed with rock music, addicted to the computer and lacking in some maturity. But, I guess that should be considered standard for a 15-year-old. Baba Vera is kind of cool because she loves talking about Soviet times and the past. On the flip side, like old folks back home, she loves to talk about the various illnesses affecting her at the time. We live in a 4 room house that wraps around the central heating system that is the pechka, or a coal-burning stove that heats a central wall. When it’s baking, the house is hot, but otherwise it is cold.

I work at 2 schools now. The main school is School #5, which is a 15 minute walk from my home. It’s half-Russian language, half-Kazakh language, which gives it an interesting dynamic. It’s funny because some of the Russian classes have a lot of ethnic Kazakhs, but the Russian classes are much worse behaved than the Kazakh classes. Still haven’t figured out why. I have 4 teachers to work with, but mainly I work with Sara Amantaievna, who is very enthusiastic about the Peace Corps lesson plans. If she could just be a bit more forceful, I think she would be the model English teacher here. Guess that’s a project to work on. I haven’t worked with the other 3 that much, but they are young which is probably better than a bunch of old-school teachers who just work by the book. Unfortunately, that book is by a guy named Ayapova, and it is a monstrosity of a language book. There is no methodology and it repeatedly uses vocabulary that is over the students head. The other school is School #2 with Elena Yurievna who is a force of nature. In a nutshell, any stereotypes that you have ever heard about large, loud Russian women, that is Elena Yurievna. That’s not a slight against her because she is a very effective teacher and person to work with, but she is intimaditing.

The town isn’t small by village standards, but it is boring. Part of it may be the ridiculously cold temperatures. At night, it can get down to –35 and possibly –40 C, which is well below 0 F. But there’s a bank, a bazaar, some cafes and a train station on the electric train that goes between Astana and Kokshetau, which I can’t emphasize how important that is. It is very cheap to go in both directions and a lot of volunteers live on the train line, which allows us to all visit each other. I just need to make sure I don’t abuse that too much. Anyway, this is probably not as comprehensive as it could be, but that’s pretty much my life here.

There’s something about roasting in a banya that’s as hot as a roasting oven, except for the fact that there’s nothing dry about it, that gives you a clear mind to have completely erratic thoughts. I guess me being a dim sum would be a more apt metaphor. Anyway, maybe your brain gets addled by the heat or something that just puts the most random thoughts. Anyway, I’m just starting teaching classes in a few days so here a few of my banya thoughts, the horror, the horror. First of all, I’m still having trouble coming up with an idea why Kazakhstanis are able to fully insulate their banyas so that the hot air stays inside it, but they haven’t quite gotten to insulating their houses effectively so that the hot air doesn’t leak out. But, it definitely is better up North. But, for all their blustering about cold weather, Kazakhstanis can be babies about the cold whether. Food here has been pretty good, but I say that about the North of Kazakhstan. As my friend Nikita pointed out, it’s a lot of variations of meat and starches, which is fine right now, as long as I don’t balloon up, which my host families have definitely been trying to do. Either way, there has been less oil up North, which has been great. Surprisingly, I’ve been getting a decent amount of fruit, though that’s bound to clear away. I have had the pleasure to have a persimmon for the first time, which are delicious, and pomegranates coming out of my ears, which I’ll happily take. Technology was also on my mind. I work at a school that has seven interactive boards, mostly because this is an initiative by the president here, Nazarbayev. Now these boards are useful, and once I figure out how to use them, they will probably be a valuable tool. At the same time, I think the English textbooks they use could definitely upgraded, especially under the prices of the interactive board. This kind of reminds me of my classes at Carthage on development and the discussions there of how to develop a country. Do you build up the technology or do things that are more basic, such as the textbooks? There are examples for both sides, whether it’s just cell phones versus slight changes in basic services. I’m still undecided on which is better, though I lean towards the replacement of horrible textbooks, any new resources are probably good in whatever capacity, especially since there are so many young people making education an important part of government. I probably had some more thoughts rolling through my head, some more profound than others and some down-right stupid (come on, it’s me) but it kind of got too hot. So if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the banya.

As it always seems in this country, I’ve had plenty of new things to happen and far to little time to reflect upon it. So, as per normal, this’ll be a hack job on way too much information to filter down.

So, we said goodbye to our host families and saddled up towards the actual part of our service. First, there was fact that we had to swear-in as official volunteers, as we had been only trainees for the past 2 and a half months. After many speeches and song and dance numbers, we became official Peace Corps Volunteers, as opposed to unofficial volunteers. Either way, this was the beginning of what is our real service. Most people got on the train right away, but the group going to Akmola and North Kazakhstan. This was kind of fun, because it gave us time swap music and movies and bottles of beer. Never anything wrong with that.

Anyway, we boarded the train for a whole day’s journey. Luckily it was with Patrick and Sidd, a couple of my best friends. Sidd was actually scheduled to be in another room with Becky and her counterpart, but he was kind of smoked out by the counterparts BO. We basically passed the time by watching movies, listening to music, playing cards and eating ramen. Though that may sound like a dream to most guys, doing it in a room the size of a closet that is normally meant for 4 people is not necessarily nirvana. But I was fine.

Anyway, so after a day, I arrived in Makinsk where Sara, my counterpart, and one of her friends, Asset, picked me up immediately and brought me to my host family choices. Though I would have liked to have a little time to think about it, I guess it’s best to get that choice out the way. There was a choice between a pensioner and the psychologist at my school. I eventually chose Tatyana, the school psychologist, mostly because it was a family, with her, her son Dima and her mother. The grandmother is kind of hilarious because every once and a while, she spouts off random Soviet sayings. Anyway, so far it’s been pretty good. She’s very patient with me, which is definitely different than my host mom in Issyk. I’ve had the chance to meet with Sara and the other teachers at School 5 along with Yelena Yurievna at School 2, the other school I’ll be working at. However, the teachers in my district are furloughed right now, so there really isn’t much I can do right now. But this next week coming up, I should hit the ground rolling.

As for a little anecdote, it is absolutely freezing here. Today’s temp was hovering around 0, which is bad enough in normal circumstances. However, there is no running water here, so anytime I need to go to the toilet, I have to don boots and a jacket and run out to the squat toilet. And also pretty much pray to good that you don’t get any stomach ailments. The flipside is that your cleaning choice is the banya once a week. Now once a week may sound like not very much, but there’s something about sweating for 15-20 minutes and then washing it all off. It actually makes you feel cleaner than just a straight shower. It reminds me of taking a sauna and then washing off in the lake in Hackensack at Lac du Bois. It’s definitely refreshing. Anyway, this is enough rambling for today. The internet connection is less common here, so posts may be a little less often. Anyway, tata for now.

Welcome to the last week of my training here in lovely Ecik. Actually, today I felt like I was back in Wisconsin, outside of the fact that there are no trees, mountains right in plan view, and everybody is trying to run each other over with cars. It's always the little things.

Anyway, this last week was a conference in Almaty to meet with our counterparts, with a little side project of spending a few tenge on supporting the Russian and Kazakhstani vodka industry. Everybody's hurting so every little bit counts. So my counterpart is Sara Ustazhanova and should be a good counterpart. She speaks English fairly well, has a law degree, but is pretty shy, so that will probably a slow building of trust. It will also be interesting because most of the English teachers at my school are 25 and some of them are single, so the hope is that this doesn't descend into a Kazakhstani game of the Bachelor. Well, maybe if they're cute. Haha.

Anyway, it was a lot of meetings and meetings in meetings, which can be extremely frustrating, but the fact that we're having means that they were deemed important by past groups of volunteers. It was nice to get out of Ecik for a while and just be pampered. Taking a shower everyday almost made me feel like a lush. I was dirty for being clean, which is the most ridiculous oxymoron out there, but it had some relevance.

It's actually kind of sad to think that we're all going to be scattered to the 4 ends of Kazakhstan in a week. I mean, I got lucky since I'll be in Akmola oblast where everybody is a few hour bus ride away from each other. But there are so many people I get along with who are going to be in the middle of nowhere or a 2 day train ride away (I'm not kidding, there are 2 day train rides here). But this is what we signed up for, being the only American person and helping develop this country in anyway possible. Well, there's not much to add, because I've been lounging around the hotel in useless meetings with a not very talkative person. Pretty soon I'll be in a new place with new stories. And maybe I'll post pictures of my clean-shaven self since I can't really have a beard in my region. Sucks. Well, I could be in the Domican Republic.

So, after a long delay, I have returned. There is a decent explanation for the fact that I haven't updated this. I've been sick and I am just a slight bit lazy. But that has been remedied and I've taken time out of my day to try and update my life as it stands.

First of all, since most of you don't speak Russian, the pun up there has to do with the fact that it's really starting to annoy me how much bloody salt they put into the food here. The two main condiments are salt and oil, which I like to think of as part of the reason why healthy living has become more difficult as of late. That and cravings for junk food have become more prevalent. Even with that, I'm pretty sure I've lost something like 15 pounds, which I have absolutely no qualms about.

We just finished up our classes at Tereshkova, which was a kind of sad event, though it was a hectic week. Last week, I was banned by Dr. Victor from teaching class, so instead of 4 classes one week and 5 classes the next, I had to teach 9 classes. This wasn't terrible since that is closer to my normal workload at site. I definitely enjoyed my 7a class, who blew me out of the water on all my lessons, which is much better than the alternative. Though the teachers may have been difficult to work with sometimes, the enthusiasm by the kids always made it better. We even got a decent showing to our community project, which was a job fair. The kids around here just simply don't know they're options, so we made sure to present some alternatives to them. It was definitely a good idea on Charlie and Janelle's part.

A week or two ago, we also found out about our future sites we will be working at, and it couldn't have happened at a better time. After 2 months together, it's easy to see that some of the nerves are starting to fray between the volunteers. That's one of the problems with being such a small community in difficult circumstances. Anyway, I'll be going to Makinsk and replacing a volunteer there, though I will be working at a different school. Makinsk is near the capital city of Astana in the North, so I'm already preparing for frigid winters. From the information I have, it's a fairly quiet town of 25,000 people, which is fine for me. Outside of the possibility of no running water, it seems like a nice place. As much as I'd like to give more information about it, I just don't have very much. The good thing is that the people in my area are awesome. Hannah, Holly, Molly, Miles and Audrey are all going to be near me and they are awesome people. Funnily enough, we're all from the north or the mountains, so I think we'll survive the weather.

So, next week, we meet our counterparts, and the week after that we do some teacher training, and then we have swearing-in, after which they boot us onto a train to our respective villages. Honestly, I'm excited to get there because we've had so much training, I think we just need to get to where we need to go. Ecik has been a great city, with some nice people, but it hasn't left much of an impression on me. There are some stand-outs, like the shashlik guy at Cafe Anna, who would always take time out of his day and practice Russian with us. Otherwise, the people I'll miss most are Peace Corps staff, like Olessya our technical trainer, and other Volunteers who will be far away, like Becca and Nick. Either way, I'll be here for a little longer, and hopefully I can have at least one more deep thought before I leave. :-)

This post is just difficult to know where to begin because this whole week has just been a roller coaster, which is a cliche that is used far too often. I had my first class, which was terrible, mostly because I kind of caved in the middle of it. The second class that I taught went fairly well, but my perfectionist mind says there is plenty for me to improve upon. Then, Russian language class is just kicking my ass from here to Moscow, though I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of it. It really hasn't been eventful, except for the fact that I've been going between hating being here to being happy that I'm here.

I think Friday definitely helped out, which was when we went to a waterfall nearby with all the Trainees. There were tons of people I hadn't seen or heard from in a few weeks, so it was complete sensory overload. The waterfall wasn't Victoria Falls, but there were plenty of hiking trails, and Mark, Becca and I ended up hiking to the top of the mountain, which wasn't necessarily the safest thing to do, but it was worth it. Life's all about living on the edge, or at least leaning over it for a look.

We also had our first English Club, which went better than I could imagine it. We ended up taking a group of 20 or so kids, and the fact that they wanted to sit there and practice English made it far more enjoyable than any class I have taught or observed to date. There skills are still lacking, but I guess that's why I'm here.

And for Nikita and Axel, I finally met the Wad. Frankly, you all wouldn't recognize him from your Ripon days. Well, at least physically. Well, my brain is mashed potatoes right now, and probably will be for a while, the wittiness will have to wait for later.

I'm actually about an hour away from teaching my first class, which should be fun but is completely nerve-wracking. I feel that I'm unprepared, but being the perfectionist that I am, that's pretty much normal. The main reason is that I've hit a low point. Minor conflicts with the host family coupled with being away from home for almost a month now means that my morale is at a low. It's something to be expected from living away from home, but it still sucks to have to plow through the low point. Luckily, everyone here seems to have hit the exact same point at the exact same time, so we all hate the world together.

That's not to say that things are bad. Saturday I went with Becca and Athena to Almaty and had an enormous meal at a relative of Becca's friend. There was a huge plate of beshbarmak (Kazakh national dish, horse, beef and noodles), baursak (fried bread), fresh fruit and tons of sweets with tea, including an apple dish that was so similar to Grandma's apple kugen, I wanted to cry then and there. But I'm a guy, so I'm contractually obligated by Man-law not too. Haha. But it was delicious, and then we met up with some people who have been here a while. Honestly, I think I just need to get past this on my own. Life is all about ebbs and flows, so I just need to get past the next couple weeks, and hopefully my teaching and Russian will be exponentially better. Anyway, time to teach the kiddos about introducing themselves in English. Ciao

It's been kind of annoying to me that so far most of my blog posts have been pretty much just a narrative and nothing substansive, so I thought I'd try and expand on a few things, in particular the food and the people.

For all the warnings of the food before we arrived, it hasn't been too bad. It's pretty much been mostly combinations of pasta, rice or potatoes with some kind of meat (most of it has been mutton, I think) and some vegetables, like carrots, peppers and eggplants. Frankly, it's been better than any warnings, though this is summer so the fresh produce will probably dry up soon. Guess that will just leave meat and potatoes later. The vodka has also been few and far between, but the combination of Ramadan and the fact that I don't live with any males probably explains the lack of alcohol. Once I get to sight, it will probably be more present. As for drink, it's pretty much chai, chai, chai, and a little more chai. Frankly, I'm not sure if they drink water without a teabag in it. The one thing I have to write about is kumis, or horse milk. At least to my palette, it tastes horrible. It's basically if somebody mixed sour buttermilk and beer together. Not a pretty combination, they probably think I'm the weird one.

As to the hospitality, it has been extraordinary. There are always sweets on the table in case somebody comes, and a teapot at the ready to make some chai. Hell, sometimes I think they treat guests better than their families, even though that really isn't true. They have something here that they call ghosting, which is basically going over to somebody else's house. I did that and they brought out almost a dozen plates with different food and various drinks, including some vodka (luckily only a small bottle) And they'll sit with you and chat for hours, even if the only Russian you speak is broken Russian. I truly don't think you can get this kind of treatment in a 5 star hotel.

So pretty much all I've been doing is eating sleeping and studying. The only day we have off is Sundays, which last Sunday I hiked up into the mountains around Issyk with Mark and Athena (two volunteers) and Athena's host brother, sister and friends. The climb was damn near vertical, but the views in the end were worth it. I hope to get pictures up eventually, but I don't know when I'll have time. Anyway, tomorrow is Almaty and then a free day, so hopefully more adventures and stories to come.

This is the first official post from abroad, but there really isn't enough time and definitely way too much information to speak of, so I'll try and keep this to the basics of what has happened so far. When I have some more time, I can probably elaborate on some other random thoughts.

DC:

So, afer a couple of flights that I completely passed out through, I got to DC and found there were not a single bus to my hotel, so there goes 20 bucks on a cab. Nice Ethiopian driver though, so nothing wrong for a tip for conversation. There I pretty much realized that none of my paperworkwas finished, but luckily I wasn't the only one. Good to know that I'm not the only procrastinator in the group. We continued through a long meeting and then proceeded to get our last meal in the states. Hopefully it's not odd that my last meal was soft shell crab panang curry. It was good, so screw it if it wasn't American. A long sleep in a plush bed and then off we were to Kazakhstan.

Flight and Kok Tobe:

Two long flights and a couple of beers later (come on, the layover was in Germany :-)) we got to Kazakhstan and proceeded to Kok Tobe, the hotel. This was our location for a ton more meetings. Something about turning into an adult means you have to sit around and listen to random people, whether it's pertinent information or not. It's not up to me, so I have to listen. Luckily, I lucked out and was put into the room with the jokers, Johnny, Mark and Nick. Outside of bonding with other people and listening to the hilarious storied of Angola, Moldova and Madagascar from Dr. Victor, Kok Tobe was just chumming around with people, trying to figure out who are kindred spirits and who's full of it, though most of you probably think I'm the latter.

Now in Issyk:

Now we've been split off into different groups into different cities for pre-service training. This involves training to be a teacher and most importantly, the language. More on the Russian language to follow, but suffice it to say, it's not easy. I now have an appreciation for the English language. So far, I'm with a nice Kazakh family: a mother Sagadat and a daughter Anara, who should be going to university soon, and I'll have to sink or swim with my broken Russian. After this month, I should be able to become professional mime. The food has been pretty good and copious. Apparently, the goal is to transform all of us into marshmallow men and women, but all this walking around means I have a chance. As long as it's good, I won't complain. I know this seems to be a completely uncreative narrative, but time isn't really available that much. There's just too much language and culture to learn. In the net couple of weeks, I hope to do a few posts about specific parts of culture and life here. Hopefully I can also post some photos later. That and I'm doing this after Russian class, so my brain is a mix between sludge and ooze. Anyway, I'll keep this up and hopefully talk to you all later.

I must say, this is definitely a post of mixed emotions. Life has been eventful and will get even more eventful, but I can't shake the feeling that I still haven't done enough before leaving. I have a feeling ironies will be starting for a while. Anyway, I should probably start with the road trip.

First off, I horribly miscalculated the amount of travel time. Nothing like 8 hour driving days to lull you into a coma before driving into random cornfields or off the face of Appalachian bridges. I must say that seeing friends and seeing parts of the U.S. was definitely nice. You don't realize how diverse of a country we are until you drive through the massive city of Chicago straight through to unending cornfields in Indiana, on through rolling hills of Tennessee and Western Virginia, up through intimidating scenery of Appalachian West Virginia, up through small town Ohio with closed restaurants and decaying, opulent farm houses, up to Rust Belt Michigan, and back to Chicago and Wisconsin. We are literally a schizophrenic country, but it makes life more interesting.

Now I'm in my living room, unable to sleep, or possibly starving myself of sleep, wondering what will possibly come of this long flight. There is doubt, but it's almost like the doubt is possibly a good thing. Doubt gives more meaning to perseverance. As it stands though, I've said good bye to friends and family. The only thing that is left is leaving my mother, father and brother. Honestly, as it stands, my mind is ceasing to function. Time to pack up the rest of my life into a few bags and see how deep this rabbit hole goes.

No, there is nothing immaculate about this, but it is definitely inaugural. As normal, I'm putting off paperwork and language learning things to do something that is vaguely important, but that isn't as pertinent as I'm making it. Anyway, this is the blog that I hope to be making semi-regularly from Kazakhstan. As to that country, I've been reading up on it and trying to learn about it, but I've resigned myself to not expecting much. The idea behind that is to just keep myself open to whatever will pop up. Creating too many impressions beforehand will just make it more difficult, so malleability is key. So, the plan for right now is traveling around and visiting as many people as I can before I leave for the Peace Corps. Should be fun.