SO. I have only a few weeks left. School will start next week. I don't yet know what groups I will be teaching, or with what other teachers, which is fine - I don't expect to find out for a while still.

I have spoken to a number of people in public accounting, but almost nobody who is actually still doing public accounting, and nobody who has followed a path similar to mine, although I am very non-standard since I'm not coming to the profession directly out of school.

I almost made cookies today, but got distracted reading about bento, which seems to be a Japanese style of lunch. I began to fantasize about having somewhere to go where I couldn't be back home for lunch. Or spend 3 hours making and then eating lunch. Not that I do, but I could.

Tomorrow I think I will make cookies, and maybe a cake. I should also make real food. I will buy some bell peppers for scrambled eggs the rest of the week, and maybe make another lasagna.

I didn't notice that I had missed a week.

Just finished my last class for the summer semester. On the 30th I will start the Fall semester. I have only 3 chapters left in my main textbook, and I have promised myself that I wont buy the books for the rest of the classes until I finish this one. I'm hoping that I can finish the first chapters of all the books by the end of this week.

I hope whatever readers I have are doing well. I have received some interest from two firms, and have applied to a total of 4. I am optimistic.

I found out yesterday from one of my professors that Deloitte and Touche recruits at my school, which is very good to hear. I still need to figure out how to get into that process from KZ, but it is a step in the right direction. I also need to start actually applying to jobs, rather than just looking at them online.

I am leaning towards eliminating my goals for Russian beyond keeping up with my words in Anki. With my two classes, I'm not really feeling the krazy studying that I really need to do in Russian to make substantial progress by the middle of September when I will take my test. I do want to listen to a few audiobooks, however, and see if that is helpful.

My law class finishes this week, and I'm sad because I dropped to an 89 percent. It would be nice to have a 4.0, though as I think of it an A- probably won't help me get there. More classes next semester, though I don't yet have all the ones I want. Still need to get permission from a councilor to take more than 16 units.

Still mulling my options for my trip home after PC. I still want to go to Russia, but I might make it a shorter trip than originally envisioned, and spend less time also in Ireland.

A lot of it will depend on when/if I get a job. I now have a big piece of paper on my wall where I'm writing down my thoughts and possible plans.

I finished Pat's camp in Persnofka last week. It was fun, but very tiring.

Yesterday I finally finished catching up on the stuff I missed by going to camp, and am mostly where I need to be for stuff. I still haven't gotten to the Russian audiobooks I have, but I remain hopeful for the weeks after Russian Camp.

There will be 8 volunteers from outside Petro coming in for the camp which will be held in my college, which has graciously offered us rooms and is letting the out-of-town volunteers stay in the dormitory. It should be a fun time.

The weather today is pretty chilly, as was the day before yesterday, but yesterday was very hot. I'm hoping it will stay like this for the rest of the summer, but it will probably heat back up.

My current torment is the thought of getting a job. The internet news is pretty grim on the prospect for recent graduates, and there is increasingly serious talk of a double dip recession, which would be a bit of a bother for me. It looks like more than half of recent BA's don't have a job for which a BA is a requirement.

Hopefully I will be able to leverage my PC experience to avoid that.

Anybody know any Public Accountants I could do an Informational Interview with?

I won't be on campus to attend the recruiting events, and so I need to make an unconventional entry into the profession.

Current plan is to start calling everyone with a CPA that I have a connection to and asking their opinion of how to get into the field from where I am now.

The summer is fully upon us here in the north. It must be about 90 degrees every day. The mosquitoes have also begun to breed and find their way into my bedroom.

This week and last I taught a class at my school for a few students. When I agreed to do it i initially asked only for a room that I could reliably have. I was assigned a room, but then was kicked out by other teachers the second day. It turns out that that room is not really suitable for me because they need it for other things. Then there was a period during which I moved from one room to the other every day, and students were unable to find me or the class. Then I was assigned a room that would be available for the rest of the time, but the next day there was no key to it.

At any rate: I now know that I should not agree to teach in room 50, and should be thankful that the class is over.

Next week I will go to Bulaevo for a summer camp, which should be fun. After that I will have another week in Persnovka for another camp. That will be all of my travel for the summer unless Kyrgestan magically becomes stable in the next month, but even then...

We shall see.

Just a bit late, but I had been having trouble accessing this site. It seems to be blocked by the government. I can now post, however.

I am also planning to take a few courses online at a CA community college while I'm here, and in the Fall. Current plan is Accounting I (if I can get into it), and Business Law. If possible I want also to take personal finance. I already have one of my books, which is exciting.

I also found a bread recipe that I really like at http://theitaliandishblog.com/imported-20090913150324/2010/2/26/amazing-artisan-bread-for-40-cents-a-loaf-no-kneading-no-fus.html I have been looking (rather half-heartedly) for a recipe for the 5 minute bread online and was only recently successful. It worked out very well, and required almost no effort or time. 3 minutes to mix stuff in a bowl, ignore it for a while, put it in the fridge, grab a chunk and make a ball, ignore it a while, bake it, let it cool and eat. I look forawrd in the future to add additional bits like dried fruit t o it also.

I now understand how to make kvass, but I haven't gotten around to doing it yet. I never seem to have enough water on hand, though I did just recently find a suitable container.

I think that's about it. The wind is very strong, and the weather a bit chilly, but othwerwise things are fine. I have shashlik and beer with friends from time to time, have three classes tomorrow, and a camp starting next sunday, as well as the sunday after. Then I'm back here for two weeks, before two more camps, then in the city for all of august.

Toodles. I'll try and update again once I have info on my classes, but I may not be able to post from camp. Next monday is first day of class, but it will be tuesday for me, I think.

As was recently brought to my attention, I have lapsed in updating this blog. I shall, therefore, endeavor to return to it with greater regularity, though I have another 2 weeks of travel coming up at the end of this month.

I have just returned from a few days spend in Kzlorda, which is in the far south of Kazakhstan, and West of Shymkent. It is the furthest I have traveled from Petro so far, not counting my trip to India, and was the longest travel I have ever made.

The way down the 60 hour trip was broken by spending 12 hours in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. That 12 hours was just about enough to see everything that the capital offered, although we couldn't find the museum in a convenient period of time.

The main site is Baiterek, which is a golden ball on top of a bunch of white sticks. It symbolizes the egg of wisdom that was deposited by a bird on top of a poplar tree. At the top, as one expects from a tree of wisdom, is a pedestal with the signatures of a number of religious leaders from around the world, and a golden hand impression of the first and current president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbaev. I have a picture now with my hand in his. I hope to get it at some point.

Other than that, the main attraction of the city is the architecture of the government section of the city. Overall I was favorably impressed. Many complain that although there are many fantastic buildings, they are all empty and shoddily built. While I can't disagree, they are still pretty cool, and the section as a whole does seem very well designed with subterranean parking structures that would be very nice if US cities would copy them. It does seem to be based loosly on the Mall in DC, except with the President's Palace at the head of the Mall, and Congress off to the side.

There was also a traveling exhibition of the Love Bears, or something. A bunch of painted bears, one for each country. Some were very well painted, others looked like a bunch of school-children smeared them with paint. Unfortunately both the US and Irish bears were rather unimpressive. I can't remember the nationality of most of the ones that impressed me, though Kyrgystan was much nicer than I had expected. I think there will be pictures later.

Anyway. After Astana I went the rest of the way to Kzlorda for the National Association of Teachers of English in Kazakhstan (NATEK) conference. They show up in a different city each year, and this was the second year I was able to go. It was a good conference, and I gave a presentation on sources online for native English in written and audio form. I focused mostly on Project Gutenberg and the BBC Learning English section.

I have decided not to apply to be a trainer for the new group of volunteers because it would require me to move into a host family near Almaty that might not have Internet, and a lot of the things I am currently working on, like getting a job, require the Internet for searching as well as calling the US via Skype at all hours of the night and very early morning. I'm also hoping to take an online class on accounting to see what I think of it. If I enjoy the class I will be pursuing a job in a CPA firm, or secondarily as an accounting clerk, Accounts Payable/Receivable once I get back to the US. Ideally I will be able to get a job offer before I leave Kazakhstan.

Connected with that, I'm trying to foresee how much money I will have/need once I do get back to the US. That's leading me to scale back my initial plans to travel extensively after the Peace Corps. I still want to go to Russia since I'm so close, and my Russian will be fresh, and if I'm going home that way anyway, I would like to try and swing through Ireland to see family, but I will probably cut out Germany and other countries.

I am also considering requesting an extension of 30 days or so at site to finish the semester, and close out a few projects I hope to be working on at the time. My ideal time to return to the US would be end of December, which would give me a week or two over the holidays to readjust, and then I would be able to start work after the New Year.

I am growing some plants in my apartment this summer. My tomato plants seem to be doing well, and I'll start a few more this week, I think. I'm also growing parsley, dill, basil, in addition to some flowers which will hopefully be pretty.

The school year is over for this year, so my work will turn to summer camps and summer classes that I will run at my school and the library. The library is already scheduled at Thursday and Friday, and the stuff at my school will be scheduled (probably) this week.

Things are well, I am healthy, and I hope you all are also!

I lapsed.

I got limited internet in September, but it was very expensive since I was paying by the Megabyte. Now in October I have unlimited internet, but I forgot to update my blog.

I am well. It is cold, and there are a few inches of snow on the ground. The last of the 19's who are leaving will leave on Monday, but it seems likely that he will be able to meet his successor before he goes since the six new volunteers will come in on Monday also. Two of them will remain in the city, and a third will be in a village very near by, which means there will be a very large number of volunteers in Petro.

My travel plans have updated somewhat; I may be going to a village in the eastish at the end of November, and I as planned will go to Almaty at the beginning of December for PC Training. I will probably go to a city in the far west for Christmas, but I expect to be back here for New Years, and I am still planning on going to India in March, Kyrgystan in the Summer, and Russia in the winter after I COS.

I'm still not very pleased with my progress in Russian, but I will take the test in December anyway. I have another 12 months to practice before I take the final test. I have identified several Russian language courses that I could take for a month or two in Russia to improve my Russian before I get back to the states. I would like to be able to speak in social situations with a fair degree of fluency and correctness and read at the high school level. We shall see if I achieve my aims.

I will try and remember to take some pictures tomorrow and on Saturday.

I have returned from a small trip. A group of us tried walking 90 kilometers to Baravoe, which is a resort town about 300k south of Petro. We were initially successful and it was enjoyable to walk across the steppe. On our way south, however, we began to hit agricultural areas that went on for miles and miles. There were roads around most of the fields, but it was less enjoyable to walk on a dirt road between fields of sunflowers or wheat than it was across the open steppe. We also had some trouble with blisters which afflicted part of our group and we accidentally wandered off our map because the roads went around the fields, which put us half a day behind schedule and caused some water-related problems. In the end we only ended up walking for a day and a half, or about 40k, before taking a bus the rest of the way. We then camped on the beach for two days in Baravoe, which is very beautiful. Our last night we had two groups of random visitors at 9 and 10 pm. The first guy was some Russian who comes regularly to Baravoe, and who brought a bottle of cognac with him to our fire. The second group brought smoked fish and sat silently for a while. It was a good trip, and we may do something like it again next year.

Next week I'm going to go to school and try and start some classes, and get back on track with studying Russian. Other than that not much is happening, though earlier this week a guy wandered through who is updating the Lonely Planet guide to Central Asia. I didn't get to meet him, nor have I heard anything from those who may have, but it is unusual.

I hope you are all doing well as another August wends to its end.

I have returned from my summer travels. I spent most of July in Almaty for the annual medical check and then with a Professional Development Institute where I helped teach English to a variety of non-English teachers. After that I went to Lake Balkash for a summer camp and where I became quite ill.

It was interesting to spend so much time in Almaty. I feel like I have a much better sense of the city now that I have spent some real time there. I didn't have much in the way of cooking facilities so I ate out every evening for dinner which was very expensive, although it was good to try out since I don't eat out very much at site. The students, unfortunately, had limited interest in working really hard to learn English in the summer, but they were very nice and overall it was fun. I didn't improve much at all in my Russian during that time, which was a bit of a disappointment, though I did improve my chess game, which is also something I am working on at the moment. I also got to eat at the new Pizza Hut, which tastes just like America, and costs the same.

At the end of my time in Almaty I ate some fruit which I hadn't washed, and the next day I traveled to Balkash. I wasn't feeling particularly good when I left Almaty, and by the morning after I got to Balkash I was feeling distinctly bad. Later it got worse and I spent most of my time resting in bed and so didn't participate in any meaningful way in the camp. Once I was mostly recovered I took the first transport out of the city with probably impolite haste and went home to site.

Now, of course, I am home, and on Sunday or so I will leave for a 4 day hike from a village to a lake a ways south of here. We are hopeful that it will turn out well. The weather is very changeable here. The last two days it has been quite cold and it hailed briefly yesterday. Now it is sunny and a bit warm, but it is unlikely to stay so for long. The clouds will probably return soon enough and we will probably get at least a little wet on our walk.

Other than that I have no set plans at the moment, though I hope to hear from my landlady in the near future about getting Internet in my apartment and from my counterpart about me teaching some classes before school actually starts. I don't have any details yet on my future schedule, although I'm not sure how likely there is to be an actual schedule until the middle or end of September. I also hope to apply to be a presenter at the new volunteers' counterpart conference in October.

In the meantime we have a pair of guest volunteers here at the moment who are working on a mural with yet another volunteer, so there is much meeting and such among us. I'm improving slowly on the violin and in Russian. I still hope to get Intermediate Mid or Advanced Low on my test in January, but there is a lot of work before I get there.

I missed June. Ooops.

Nevertheless, I shall plod foreward with July.

I am currently in Peace Corps Kazakhstan Headquarters in Almaty. I will be in this city for the next two weeks or so doing a Professional Development Course at an Institute in the city for Directors and Vice-Principals of schools. I will be teaching English with two other volunteers.

The institute has been kind enough to offer us both a free room, as well as free board while we're there, which will save a lot of money, since Almaty is a very expensive city compared to Petro, although the price of fruits and vegetables in the Bazaar is much, much lower. I saw banannas for sale yesterday for 35tg per kilo, where they're 300tg in Petro.

After the Institute I might go to Lake Balhash for another summer camp. I would kind of like to go home so that I can cook again, but I have signed up for the camp already, and it's only a week. I can probably also cook there.

I should get back to site by the second week of August, at which point I expect to run some English classes for interested students, and I might participate in a hike from Petro to some place further south that will last three or four days.

At some point later school will start and I'll get a schedule. The PCV's in country tell me that the first month or two of school has no effective schedule and that my classes will be rescheduled at the last minute with no attention to making sure that either the students or the teachers are informed. My school has, in the past, made pretty successful schedule changes, so I am hopeful that the year will not start entirely awash in chaos, but it does remain to be seen.

An Imperialist Anecdote:

Yesterday was the first time I have ever really felt like an imperialist. I was in the Pizza Hut: the only one in the country which is a higher-end restaraunt here, but actually tastes very good, much like Pizza Hut in the US. My waiter was very good. He spoke very good English and was prompt and solicitous, but had an attitude that I can only describe as fawning. It was a very odd experience. Perhaps I was mistaken for one of the rich foregners who come in to eat there for a taste of home and leave American-style tips. I feel this story lacks pizazz. I may rewrite it sometime later to punch it up, but for now I'm drawing a blank.

Again we have a protracted absences on my part. I have moved into a new apartment, of course, and I still don't have Internet.

Interesting things have happened these last few weeks.

I went to the NATEK (National Association of Teachers of English in Kazakhstan) conference in Karaganda two weeks ago. It was a very good trip, and I got to meet a number of teachers from around the country. They were very motivated and active, rather different from some of the other teachers I have met in Kazakhstan. I will probably try and go next year as well.

I also went to a summer camp in the nearby village of Bulaevo, though I recall posting about that before.

I have also begun trying to learn Kazakh. As it turns out, I think that the Peace Corps textbook for Kazakh is terrible. It is poorly organized and riddled with errors, so I'm going to set it aside until I can find a better textbook or a competent tutor.

I'll also be going to another camp on Saturday for two weeks. I'm told the food is indifferent, but volunteers last year enjoyed it. Afterwards I will go to Almaty for the rest of July for a two-week session of some sort. I was originally told that it was for English Language, but the schedule from last year they sent me was for a teaching conference. I still need to get in touch with them to see what they actually want from me.

I'm also putting together my own little recipe book; I'm getting tired of having recipes always on my computer or scribbled on little pieces of paper and I want things handier in the kitchen. My mid-range goals are to get a couple of good breads, and some delicious cinnamon rolls.

I'm also contemplating the future. What should I do after the Peace Corps? I don't want to keep teaching at the moment, but I'm not sure how to transition my skills into a more business-oriented line of work, much less what specific job titles I should look at for just-above-entry-level employment.

I could always go to B-school. That's a pile of money; I need to look into it more closely.

I moved into a new apartment at the beginning of this month and I don't have internet yet. I hope to get hooked up in August or so, but until then my posts will be sparse. I am doing well, and am basically finished with school stuff for the year. I will be doing a few teacher conference things this summer, spending some time in Kyrgestan, and probably doing a summer camp or two with kids.

My new apartment is nice and has salmon colored walls, the couch is reasonably comfortable, and it is near all the important parts of the city. I hope you are all doing well who read my blog, and that the rest of you fall down a short flight of stair snd bruise your shin or something...or not.

Enjoy your summer!

It snowed here yesterday. I went with the University Group to the Lake for a picnic and it snowed and hailed, and was generally pretty cold. I also made Spanish rice, and I think it may have given me indigestion. Oops.

I have also decided on a new apartment. It is closer to my school, though it is further away from the rest of the volunteers than my current location. It is also further away from the library, but it looks good, is a reasonable price, and the owner is known to my CP.

I have pictures of food, and I hope to post them once I charge my camera batteries. Not much else of interest. I am going to try to budget myself for 12K tenge per month for food, which is about $80. That probably won't count the special food items I buy in various other places in KZ where certain items are cheaper. I want pine nuts, for example, but they are very expensive in Petro since there are no pine trees. I'm hoping they are less expensive in Karaganda since there are pine forests there.

My summer is also filling up more quickly than I had expected.

I was awarded a grant by PC to give a presentation at a national teacher's conference at the end of May, then I have a summer camp, and a language camp for the next two weeks. After that I will prepare projects, I think, then go on vacation to Kyrgestan, then another summer camp, then maybe an English seminar thing in Almaty, then finalize plans for classes and my schedule before school begins again on the 1st of September. In the middle of all that I'll study Russian. I hope to get a history textbook directed at very young students and try and read my way up to more advanced stuff.

I hope you're all well and living the life you had always dreamed you would.

I had only two events today, so I spent the morning and afternoon cooking. Just now I had what is very nearly the most flavorful thing I have yet eaten in Kazakhstan: A felafel with baba ganouj. I am very pleased with how they turned out, though I might put the felafel back into the refrigerator again tomorrow to try and get them crispier.

I also made 3 side dishes, so that my meals can have a more mix-and-match flavor. The first is cole slaw, though next time I will need to chop the cabbage more finely. Adding lemon juice is very good. The second is Korean Carrot Salad, which had too much vinegar the first time I tried it. It has been diluted with some water, but I haven't tried it again yet. I might add some garlic and horseradish, though I may also save those for the next salad I make. The final side dish is colcannon, which is an Irish dish of mixed cabbage and mashed potatoes. I tried it immedaitely after I made it and was very pleased, but it remains to be seen how well it will store in the fridge.

Tomorrow I will make a potato pie, which with the pasta in the freezer, will give me 3 main dishes and 3 sides. I earlier made latkes, which were going to be my breakfast (with the colcannon), but they failed miserably to store in the fridge. They turned black, probably because the potatoes were very old that i used. I have newer potatoes, and I may try to make hash browns, but I don't really understand how to fry things, so I might wait until I can get someone to teach me that skill. I will try to remember to take pictures.

I am in the process of looking for cooking lard or vegetable shortening. I believe I can make lard from Sala, and may do so later, since I've never used lard and I would like to try and make pie/pastry crusts with it, but not in the immediate future. Nobody seems to know what shortening is, and I may have to try and buy it in Almaty, or a Ramstore somewhere.

In other news, the snow is now melted, and this morning was characterized by huge wet puddles and acres of deep, sticky mud. It was a warm day, however, almost 10 above, so a lot of the water has evaporated or otherwise drained, and some of the mud has stiffened to the point where it can be walked upon.

My attention was drawn earlier this week to men in bars who order [sto gramm], which is 100 grams of vodka, or about 2 full shots, drink it at the counter, and walk on. The seem to be mostly older folks.

Anecdote:

A few students were speaking with me this week.

"Where are you from?"

(me)"I'm from California!"

"Ah, no. Um, motherland?"

"I was born in Ireland."

"Ah! We knew you weren't American"

"Why am I not American?"

"Americans are aggressive, yes?"

Yesterday we got 4 inches of snow.

It had all melted and despite occasional snow flurries, it would melt almost immediately upon reaching the ground. Now, however, the snow has fallen and stuck, and the city is white again. I prefer the white to the brown, and I especially prefer the frozen ground to the sticky muck that will return as soon as the snow melts and stay to the end of May.

Nevertheless, things are going reasonably well. I am contemplating the purchase of a food processor, and I might buy one tomorrow or Tuesday, since the shop currently has a sale, and I'll want to use one starting in May when I will hopefully move out.

I still don't have an apartment lined up, but I have a lead or two, and I will ask my counterpart and co-teachers again this week and see what shakes out. I am still optimistic.

Until another time, or something.

I have returned from Naruz in Schimkent and In-Service Training in Almaty, however I don't want to write about that just at this moment. Instead I offer an (hopefully) amusing anecdote from yesterday. Additionally, I noticed that comments were restricted to registered users before. Comments are now open to the general public, so if any of you were repressed before, you now can be rehabilitated.

I was teaching a class for future teachers of English and we were working on vignettes. I had them list answers to the W questions (Who, What, When, Where, Why) in preparation for the actual paragraph. The assignment was to write about a "little man(person)" and one student chose a village school teacher, and others chose doctors, actors, etc.

At the end of the class as they were reading their paragraphs, the student with the village teacher described how the teacher died and the narrator heard that the teacher had died penniless and sick and nobody except the minister came to the funeral. At this, another student burst out laughing and said, "That will be us!"

I understand that there is a way to hide pictures behind links, but I don't know how, and the blogspot help on pictures didn't mention anything of the sort. If someone would like to provide script or a keyword I can look up, I would be happy to hide the pictures so the page will load more quickly.

This second one should be a picture of me, not to be confused with the President of Kazakhstan, guest-teaching in School Number 8 during an English club. We were doing logic problems.

This first one should be of Naserbaev speaking to a crowd here in Petropavlovsk for Maslenitsa, which is a spring holiday I don't really understand at the moment.

Somehow my second block of text became a hyperlink.

I will begin with the proximate event, and then transition roughly into mundane ramblings.

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY!

Although we don't celebrate it in the US, they do in Kazakhstan. It is a major school holiday since, of course, most of the teachers are women. It is a fairly major holiday. It falls on a Sunday this year, but classes were abbreviated on Friday, canceled (I think) on Saturday, and there it is a national holiday on Monday, so school is canceled.

The students performed a concert (read: talent/variety show) for the teachers on Friday, and then reprised themselves on Saturday. Saturday also some students prepared amusing mock lessons for at least some of the teachers.

On Saturday after the concert the male teachers had laid out a tea for the women. This was one of my very few encounters with a group of men here in Kazakhstan, and they sat in almost complete silence at one end of the table while the women chatted and suchlike. They nibbled at the fare and some drank tea. After the women finished the other men and I cleaned up, and the PE teachers came back with real food for their own little meal: a loaf of bread, a two-foot link of sausage, a jar of Ikra (a vegetable past, tastes good, also on pasta) and vodka.

They were still pretty taciturn, even after the younger subset of the faculty; specifically the secretaries, came back in a joined us (they drinking wine as befitted their lack of...cognac). The guys mostly gave toasts, and the girls chatted. I left after the fourth shot and halfway through the second bottle, but they were still going strong and showed no slackening of their interest.

When the guys do speak they are pretty difficult to understand. They tend to mutter or mumble their words, as if enunciation is too much trouble.

Maybe I should write a story. I am surprisingly busy, all things considered. I have my violin, which should take up more time than I really give it. I have my Russian, which is taking up an appropriate, but massive amount of time, and I have my classes, which take up a variable, but currently small amount of time. I have a few other skills I want to specifically work on developing, including learning to effectively use OpenOffice and learning to type swiftly in Cyrillic. The latter of these is currently dependent on acquiring from a previous volunteer software to help practice, although I'm sure I could find a lesson plan somewhere online if I started looking for it. I haven't spent any meaningful amount of time recently reading, though I have enjoyed the first 30 pages of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and I expect to continue through it. My internet connection recently has not been functioning correctly, presumably due to a recent switch of the phone lines. My host mother was kind enough to call them and ask what was happening, and they suggested that we should wait to the end of the week to see what would happen. These last few days I spent a lot of time creating flashcards to get a few weeks ahead so that I have cards to go through during training in Almaty without having to drag my dictionary down. I am looking forward to Shymkent, though I am still a little fuzzy on the details of the trip. Others tell me that it is scheduled properly and will all be fine, so I'll live with that for the time being.

I participated Friday in the initial celebration of Women's Day at school. My part was limited; I congratulated the women on their holiday and wished them health and happiness. The first part was in Russian, but I got through it comprehensively with only two or three tries. Students also performed and the male teachers sang a martial looking song; they were dressed in armor and had swords. They also had an image on the projection screen that came up a few times of a naked man covered only by an apron scrubbing the floor. I hesitate to contemplate where they might have found such an image.

I think I have fixed my 403b, so that should settle in a week or two, and now I need to turn my attention to my taxes, and see what this cool new stimulus will do for me. I need to take a look at the numbers on my W-9's. I remain optimistic.

Year 2008 PC August to December 4 months

Can deduct moving and storage expenses for 2008.

Year 2009 PC January to December 12 months total 16 months

Can deduct storage expenses for 2009, but have no income to deduct it from. Likewise insurance. Is there a way I can move this to 2008 where it would actually help me?

Year 2010 PC January to August or November 8-11 months total 24-27 months

Can deduct cost of getting back to the united states that I pay out of pocket, excluding sightseeing trips, and the cost of moving my stuff from DC to wherever. Problem is that I won't have any significant income for this period either. Can I shift it to 2011?

The answer to these last few important questions seems to be no. My best bet is to take what I can this year, and then make sure I don't move my stuff out of storage until January 2011 so that I can deduct the expense. This is an example of the value of tax planning. If I had examined this carefully I would have rented the full 27 months in advance. On the other hand, my readjustment allowance might be taxable. I should look into that in a year or so. Yay taxes! ::wiggles hands::

I also really like blini. You should all learn to make them.

Yes indeed, this city is beginning to fill with mud! I think it will not be as pretty as the snow, but I remain unrealistically hopeful. The lack of snow, on the other hand, should bring about the return of green things, which are also pretty.

As mentioned in my last post, I was successful in moving my audiobooks to their own lonely little corner of my WinAmp library where they are free to beg and plead in vain to return to the group. I also have an audiobook in Russian, which is neat, though I can't yet understand much of anything.

My Russian is proceeding apace. I passed 1000 cards last week, and I am shooting for 250 per week, or about 35 per day. It takes about 2 hours to fully memorize that number, but I have lots of time now since I can't find brown sugar.

Brown sugar, you ask? What an interesting and well-placed tangent, you say! Yes, I am currently in fervent pursuit of brown sugar. I think it was sold in the Raxmet supermarket, but that supermarket is closed for renovation (the locals mutter darkly that they closed to raise all the prices because of the devaluation of the tenge) until the end of March. My usual supermarket doesn't have it and I have been unsuccessful in locating anything looking like brown sugar in the bazaars (unlike the flayed and decapitated goat that I kept passing). I know I can find it in Ramstore, but Ramstore is in Almaty, and I won't be there for a while. I seem to recall that Pyramid sells specialty foods, so today or tomorrow I hope to venture in search of this store somewhere in the vicinity of the train station.

And now we come to the highlight of this post!

Last week was Maslenitza, which is a holiday of some sort that involves agriculture and blini, which are halfway between crepes and pancakes, and are quite delicious. On the Thursday, my school called me in earlier than usual so that I could be prepared to give a speech to the Kazakstanian Minister of Education, who was to visit that day.

After I arrived, I found the school eagerly preparing itself for their distinguished guest. In particular, I saw about two dozen students wearing blue scarves standing at four-meter intervals all along the halls of the school. They had been standing there for several hours, and would stand there for several hours more, until the guest left. These were the atlichniki, the excellent students at the top of their classes and I was told that it was a great honor for them to stand like little unarmed sentries and represent their school. There were also groups of students in classes which had been sent into a holding pattern since the minister was scheduled to visit them, but ended up about two hours late.

Initially I was to give my speech in the main hall, but at some point they decided, presumably since my speech was to be in English and almost noone of the hundred or so faculty and students would therefore be able to understand it, they decided to move me to the Language Center of the school to be their distinguished American volunteer. I bounced around a bit then from class to class before ending up in a Kazakh language Information Technology class. I think it was an IT class, since they had an interactive board and the highest proportion of males that I have seen in a class here, though it might just have been a Kazak classroom fortunate enough to have one of the school's boards.

With suppressed excitement the word passed quickly around the school that the minister had arrived and was beginning his whirlwind tour of the school. Not long after, he stepped into the classroom I occupied. He was accompanied by a whole cluster of aides, sycophants, school officials and a pair of cameramen who captured his every move for posterity. He went to the front of the room and was suitably impressed by the slideshow on the interactive board, delivered a short speech that mentioned interactive, an English cognate in most languages I expect, and began to leave the room.

At this point someone mentioned that an American PCV was in the back and everyone gave a little gasp. The cameramen almost tripped over themselves in order to get a good angle for the the handshake between the minister and myself, and everyone was very impressed by my Kazakh greeting. The minister then said something in English as he left.

One of my teachers, who was guiding me to and fro during this experience then led me across the hall into the English classroom I had been in earlier. I still don't know why we went in, but while we were there the minister had finished his little ditty on a dombra (Kazkh national instrument like a 2-stringed banjo) and entered this room, somewhat surprised to see me again, but over his surprise at hearing me greet him in Kazakh. He poked the student's books a little, and spoke some words before heading out to make his way to the auditorium where he delivered a longer speech.

My guide and I were by that point behind him and since his entourage took up the whole hallway, and in any case it would have been a little implite to sidle past the rolling cameras, we could no longer make it to the auditorium before him. My guide and my counterpart decided that it would be inappropriate to enter after he began speaking, so we hovered just outside the doors for a short time before deciding that it would also be inappropriate to be caught hovering outside the doors when he made his whirlwind exit, so they dispersed and sent me home, having been for the second time featured on a Kazkhstanian television camera, and having shaken the hand of a high government official.

But it gets better!

Earlier that day I had, in passing, been told by one of my teachers that she and a number of her students would be going to a street fair the next day (Friday) to represent the school on the arrival of President Nazerbaev, who was scheduled to arrive and address the populace!

Needless to say, I immediately decided that I too would take this opportunity to gaze upon the weathered and grave countenance of the man who had been leading Kazakstan since five years before it gained its independance from the Soviet Union. Other volunteers in the area shared my view that this would be the right thing to do, although we were aware that Nazerbaev had been scheduled to arrive last year also, but had not done so.

Nevertheless, we showed up at 11, ready to wave our little Kazak flags as Naserbaev approached and passed before the stage full of colorfully dressed and probably very cold traditional Kazak dancers, many of whom appeared to be of Russian derivation. I unfortunately had a class at 12, but was still able to get back in time for the announcement of the president's approach. Thronged by a nearly silent crowd with the occasional waving flag, he walked up the road flanked by a dozen policemen, and gave some sort of address or interview or review of something into a bank of cameras. Then he finally moved up onto the stage and began to speak. I didn't understand a single word, but I am told it was less than inspiring oratory.

He seemed pretty short and unemotive. He was certainly very staid, and looked much older than 55, which I think is his actual age. The crowd was also very quite and sedate, and was much smaller than I had expected, with only a few hundred, maybe a thousand people. They also put the fair together very quickly, and took it all down in less than two hours.

My next post I hope to add a few pictures, but right now my camera batteries are dead. I hope you are all well, and your lives are filled with blini-like goodness.

I notice that my recent post titles have all ended with exclamation points. Today I shall break that pattern!

Last week I went to Shchuchinsk for a conference on community activity things. It was good to have gone. I learned more about how the long-haul bus system works and I feel better about using it in the future. The bus station in Kokshshatau also has not been refurbished since the USSR and still has a medallion portrait of Lenin on the wall. He looks pretty creepy.

I also have learned about 1000 words so far this week. My goal is 1000 cards learned by IST at the end of March. It would be nice to get 1500.

I also found a cool add-on for WinAmp that physically organized my music into more coherent file hierarchies. I'm very happy with it and got rid of about 100 duplicates that have been cluttering my library. I still haven't figured out how to prevent it from displaying my audiobooks in the same window as my regular songs, but I am confident that it is merely a matter of time before I discover the solution.

I almost have three songs on my violin (exclamation point)

I participated in Kreshenia on Tuesday. It is the celebration of the Russian Orthodox Epiphany and is celebrated by dipping three times in a blessed river. Here and in most of Russia, it is necessary to cut through a few feet of ice to get to the water first, of course. There was a huge traffic jam on the road to the lake. It was, in short, very cold but surprisingly invigorating and feeling returned to my toes after 15 minutes or so.

There were two tents, one for men and the other for women, in which people stripped to their swimsuits before going out through the crowd to dip into the water. It was about -20 degrees Celsius and there were about 16 other KZ PC volunteers up to do a Teaching Conference here. Most of us participated in the event and then in the evening went to the Banya to warm back up.

I was also stopped today for the first time by the police asking for my documents. The guy seemed fairly young and was reasonably friendly. I had a bit of trouble understanding him a few times but my Russian was overall sufficient to chat with him. He carefully examined my document card for about 5 minutes, before I went on my way. He also refused to shake my hand for reasons not entirely clear, though it is possible that he is forbidden to do so by some policy.

So yesterday was a good day. My violin arrived from the US, and it is working out well. I was very happy with the service I received, and the violin is what I expected. Next step on that, of course, is to learn to play the violin.

I also co-bought a copy of Settlers of Catan with one of the other volunteers and we shall dragoon the rest into playing with us. It is amusing because it is in German and Russian.

Today I made gnocchi, and although they were not spectacularly successful, I am happy with them as a first attempt. The sauce was not quite as good, but was acceptable, and I will eventually figure out how to make a good sauce.

I will also be on TV on Sunday at 12 here. One of my teachers had a camera crew (a cameraman, a producer/chaperone, and a kid who did the interview). The interview was in Russian, which will hopefully be well edited, but they said I could get a copy of the show by going to their office after the second airing of the show.

This will be useful because I might not be able to watch it on Sunday since I may be helping brighten the lives of orphans here in town with a cluster of other volunteers who are coming to town for Kreshenia.

Kreshenia is a holiday here where people, presumably mostly hairy men, strip down and dunk themselves three times in the river Ishim next to town. It is scheduled to drop near -30 degrees C over the next few days, so it will be a very cold river. They will probably use power-tools to cut the hole in the ice, and I wouldn't be surprised if they need to pause the dunking to get rid of new chunks that grow. The volunteers are coming all this way to participate, of course, and I anticipate general survival, as well as lots of shivering.

I now have a DSL connection to the internet. The violin I ordered from the US is still MIA, but I hope to try and get USPS to hunt it down or make an insurance claim.

Big news of the week is that I purchased a furry hat. It isn't one of the huge furry hats that are frequently seen on the street, though it is real fur (probably), and of modest size. I decided not to go with a furry baseball cap, though I was tempted. It also has flaps that I can pull down to keep my earsies warm.

I also failed today to make brownies. They turned out rather golden, and excessively cakelike with almost no taste of chocolate. I will need to try again with cocoa powder instead of real chocolate and a fudgier recipe.

Later Note: Upon further consideration, they taste much more of chocolate once they have cooled, and were not substantially different from the batch I baked with cacao. They are still cake-like, but overall I am pleased, and everyone seems to like them.

Happy New Year to you all! This is postdated, of course, but I was thinking about the outside world at the time.

Interesting events occurred as the days around New Year's were associated with my first real parties in Kazakhstan and my first experience with Bishbarmak, the national dish of Kazakhstan. Each in its time, however.

My college faculty held a party in the school with feasting, dancing, and departmental skits. There was also, of course, drinking. There was, in fact, more alcohol per person than I have seen before, but less than I had expected. Each table of about 10 people split 2 bottles of champaign, two bottles of red wine, and a liter of vodka. This was polished off in about 3 hours, together with a fair amount of food, most of it excellent. My table had the English teachers (all female) and the PE teachers (all male) so I had some champaign and then some shots with the PE teachers while avoiding most of the offers to dance. I couldn't guess at the style of music, but they seemed like dance tunes and most people seemed to have a good time dancing. Each table also presented a short skit, and the English teachers presented a popular, although pretty morose, New Year's song from 1979, which I later heard almost everywhere I went, in supermarkets, on the TV, on the radio, on the main street.

In the evening one of the other volunteers hosted a dinner for his counterpart and the rest of the volunteers, and one of their host mothers and there was more vodka, and, of course, champaign.

I diverge here for a moment on champaign. I'm sure there are good champaigns, and I may even have tried them in the past. A bubbly, dry, sharp wine with a clear pale golden color. The cheap stuff here, however, is terrible, and certainly never came from the Champaign region of France. It is sickly sweet, and has no redeeming features at all, except perhaps for US college students for whom it would cost substantially less per liter than Pabst.

Returning to the thread of narration, we sang the first verse of Old Lang Syne, because nobody new the second or third, and parted ways. The following day, New Year's Eve, we again were hosted by a volunteer and ate spicy things and drank, of course, vodka. We then drifted to the apartment of another volunteer whose host mother hosted us for a while with another dinner and more vodka. President Naserbaev, looking rather terrible in poor lighting and in front of a washed-out background gave a speech on TV and after clock struck we again sang the first verse of Old Lang Syne, for which I really need to learn the latter verses, and traveled in a group to Constitutsia, which is a large and very pretty pedestrian street where lie the old museum, the city park, and the city and oblast administration buildings.

For New Year's, the street is decorated with blocks of ice cut from the lake nearby and stacked into rails for the street, a bandstand complete with ice backdrop, platforms for giant Christmas trees, and two large structures for children to slide down on the ice. It is pretty cool. See the enclosed pictures!

Anyway, we also played a game or two or three of Risk over those few days. A few volunteers from outside the city came in so we gathered together to chat and walk around town and suchlike to celebrate the new year and had some vodka.

Concerning vodka, which I had never really tried in the past except to decide that I despised the crap that comes in big plastic bottles: There are some types that are not that bad. The standard brand here seems to be Status. This is what my school got for their party and what the volunteers seem to buy by default. It is much, much better than the plastic bottle stuff in the US, though still a bit harsh on the pallet. It costs about 420 tenge for half a liter, which is about $4. I did spend some time over the holiday haranguing the older volunteers about the various qualities of vodka, and they asserted that there are better ones which are more expensive, and they recommended two brands in particular which are quite expensive, one almost 1300 tenge, nearly $11! At any rate, by putting up some money I convinced one to journey into the cold and the dark in search of one of these mystical bottles, and though he returned with a third brand, Zelony Marka or Green Label, it was noticably better than the standard Status. Someone also later bought a bottle of some 85 tenge vodka and the difference was very much noticeable in the other direction. You get what you pay for when you spend 50 cents on half a liter of alcohol.

A note to younger readers if there be any: I do not recommend drinking to excess, and you should eat heavily when drinking, especially strong drink. The standard Russian feast includes lots of alcohol, but little drunkenness both because you are expected to eat correspondingly huge quantities of meat, fat, and buttery goo, and because it is socially impolite to become too drunk. On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be a social prohibition against drinking early, so sometimes you'll see guys staggering to the corner store at 11am to get another bottle.

The holiday was very enjoyable, and I look forward to next year, though all the locals were sad that there wasn't any new snow.

Cheese is a troublesome thing. The pizzas here would be fine if they had some decent mozzarella and parmesean. A sharp cheddar would be nice, and maybe a few more exotic styles just to try from time to time. It is, of course, entirely possible that there are some really good cheeses, either imported from more bovine areas of the world or produced in the area served by the trains and rolled across the steppes in great herds of curdled milk, but I haven't found them yet, and it has been suggested that the 'cheese' that I have so far located is, in fact, not cheese at all but rather a milk derivative similar to Kraft. I remain optimistic and will continue my pursuit of cheese everywhere within a 10 minute walk of where I live, although often the assorted cheeses aren't really labeled.

I have missed all of November. Woe! Thus far I haven't really hit my post per week target. Nevertheless, I will valiantly continue to try.

The weather at the moment is much warmer than I was led to expect. It has been hovering around 0 degrees Celsius for a week or so, with only one day of minimal snow. My heavy faux-fur coat has been sitting unused, although we had one day of -15, which while fairly cold, still did not merit the big coat for the walk to and from school. I have also learned where the post office is, and improved my general understanding of the layout of the town.

The schedule for my school still evades my complete understanding, but my fourth form students will not have classes with me again until March, which means that I need to acquire a few more classes to make up the time, although that will probably be difficult since I think the rest of the courses are winding down for the winter break, although I don't know when that will be and suspect that it will be different for each group of students. I likewise don't yet know when the Lyceum students will end for the year, but I am told they will continue for now.

You may or may not know, but Kazakhstan has a standard 6 day work week. Everyone works from Monday to Saturday, including students, and rests on Sunday. On holidays, however, it looks like they sometimes work on Sunday as well to make up the day they lose when they have a 2 day holiday like the 15th and 16th. It seems strange from an American perspective that looks forward to plenty of 3 day weekends.

I also have now a great deal of time to read, for which Project Gutenberg has been helpful. I am still really thrilled with my E-Reader, though I'm not sure how much I would want a stylus with it as the new model has. Also I am still waiting for the price of ebooks to descend to a reasonable level.

I search for anecdotes, but suspect my life lacks a certain pizazz. I also have only been here a month or so.

Today I went to the post office to try and get a package that had arrived. The package slip listed only the P.O Box number without any name and it was my first time trying to do something with the post office. I filled out the back of the slip and waited patiently for someone to pay attention to me, and after standing in the wrong line for a while, I managed to get the attention of one of the blue-clad workers (all women, of course). She wandered off into the back for a while, then wandered back and asked to see my passport. I showed her and she wandered out back again. The second time she returned she told me that the package was for someone else and then dismissed me from her mind. I tried, but failed, to convey that I wanted the package slip back, so after a few moments, I too wandered out, saddened by the absence of a package. O great woe!

My story lacks something. Maybe I should fictionalize it. It could be a love story, or, in light of recent political events, a war story. Or both, of course, though I wouldn't want to get too ambitious. I could make it a serialized choose-your-own-adventure for my readers, like the Ctrl-Alt-Del comic.

At any rate, things are still going well, though I have misplaced a galstock, or tie. My green one specifically and my light blue ties look strange with my dark green shirt. Nobody has commented yet, however, and I choose to assume they are too overwhelmed by my obvious competence and self-assurance.

Hello everyone!

I am told that it is snowing in Petro already, but I have purchased a large, heavy coat. I am hopeful therefore, that I will be warm and happy. I may also purchase a furry hat, as I am told that they are the height of fashion in the winter. I am also told that -40 C is, indeed, very cold. It won't be that bad during my visit next week, but there should be some opportunity nevertheless to see snow at last, and hopefully walk in a snowy wood.

I am having much trouble and travail finding good yarn, which is not something I had expected. The best I have found so far is some really thin 50% wool stuff from China. It is reasonably inexpensive, and when doubled up is comparable to yarn of reasonable quality, though it will be a while before I can evaluate its warmth.

When I and my host mother came to the yarn stall, the guy behind the counter couldn't sell us anything since he was just watching the stall for his fiance. She had gone to show somebody something, and we expected her momentarily. We ended up waiting for 15 minutes or so for her to return, but I did get a reasonable price on the yarn.

Time is still compressed. Going now.

My phone number is 8777 165 1439. I am not charged for incoming calls, though of course it is quite a long-distance call for all of you. Please keep in mind the time difference. I get up at about 7 here, and go to bed at 10 or 11.

I now know my permanent site in Kazakhstan. I will spend the next two years in Petropavlovsk, which used to be the most northern site in Kazakhstan (and possibly the world) until this year when there is a new site thirty kilometers closer to Russia than I. It apparently has excellent cheese and is a major producer of pasta and grain products. The soil of the steppe is very rich and the whole area was and remains the breadbasket of the region.

I have already bought a doublonka, which is a heavy Russian coat that goes to my knees. I think it is fake fur, but you never know. I paid 12,000 tenge in Baraholka, which is the largest bazzar in Kazakhstan and probably the region. It is a very heavy jacket, and I anticipate that it will be very warm in the coming months. I will visit Petropavlovsk at the end of next week, and will take a 33 hour train ride to get there, much like traveling from California to Oregon. If I miss my stop I may be in trouble since the train goes from Petro to Russia, for which I will not have a visa.

Baraholka was an experience, although not as terrible as I had feared. It is really big; I only saw a small part of it when I was there, but the but took 30 minutes to crawl out of the parking lot. Traffic efficiency is not well developed. I am actually in the internet cafe writing this so it needs to be short. I will try and add some anecdotes to my next post, hopefully on Monday.

Limited time, I'm afraid, but hopefully (again) I will today have an opportunity to post this backlog of text. Our community project ideas have distilled down to two--a fitness day, which has the benefits of being able to reach a very large number of people and requiring the very limited funds that we actually have, and expanding the internet access of the Russian school to more than the one computer. We shall see how matters progress.

It is possible (edit: I will be going) today that I will go to Almaty this afternoon to see the Kazakhstanian Orchestra play. I am told that the tickets are about 500T, which is about 4.5 dollars, and we are told that the orchestra is very good.

I taught my first class portion on Wednesday, and it went very well. The students all participated and seemed to enjoy my presentation. I also had two hours of prep for an English test they have called the Olympiad (possibly spelled differently, and presumably in Cyrillic). The first time I had 8 girls, who seemed to enjoy the activity, and the second time I had two girls, though it was a Friday afternoon. Now I have a copy of a practice test for the exam, so I will design some appropriate activity focusing on that specifically. I will also teach at least two hours next week, and I am hopeful that things will continue to go swimingly.

TTFN