Менің қымбатты қазақстандықтарым! Қымбатты достар! Қазақстан Республикасы Тәуелсіздігінің 20 жылдығымен құттықтаймын! Тәуелсіздік күні құтты болсын! My dearest Kazakh friends! Happy 20 years of Independence! Happy Independence Day! I wish from the bottom of my heart I could be with you today to celebrate Kazakhstan’s two decades of independence together. But even though I couldn’t be [...]
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Today is not only Thanksgiving, but marks the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and lies at the heart of the “UNiTE to End Violence against Women” campaign that the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched in 2008. Click here to read the full article. Vlastimil Samek, the United Nations’ Department of [...]
My dearest friends. Today we are leaving Aktobe. The grace, care, hospitality, and love you have shown this past week has filled my heart with love. You say you will never forget me, you will never forget us, you will never forget Peace Corps volunteers: but I challenge you to prove it. To treat someone [...]
Peace Corps Kazakhstan Headquarters asked volunteers to: “Please refrain from sharing information about the Volunteer departure with the media or posting information on Facebook or other social media sites until all volunteers have safely arrived at the conference location.” With so much attention, debate, and chatter occurring, I felt it necessary to make a statement: [...]
From October 6th-8th, Dariya Tsyrenzhapova – a freelance journalist from Almaty, came to Aktobe to do a story on education in village schools, specifically my school. Click the photo above to read the story she wrote.
Келесі аптаның басында мен Ақтөбеден кетуім керек. Ал келесі Сенбіде Қазақстаннан да кетуіме тура келеді. Бұл менің шешімім емес, бұл менің қалағаным да емес. Қазақстан Үкіметі Бейбітшілік Корпусынан волонтерлардың Қазақстанға бұдан былай келгенін қаламайды. Сондықтан барлық волонтерлар қазақ жерінен келесі Сенбіде кетуі керек. Мүмкін біз кеткеннен кейін неше түрлі өсектер болар. Бірақ маған кім не [...]
Thanks to Dina Orazova – journalist of Kazakhstani news portal NUR.KZ – our Kazakh wedding photos have found a whole new audience, 213 comments, and in just 24 hours over 230 new visitors to my blog! Dina was even kind enough to post a link to my books grant! Visit the site by clicking the [...]
On the front page of the October 20th edition of the Aktobe Times, the headline article was entitled “Обвиняются в шпионаже” : They are accused of spying. To summarize briefly, the article implies that the “U. S. intelligence agency” is behind “the network of terrorist organizations around the world, the Orange Revolution, Rose Revolution, the [...]
I have spent this past year working to bring you a multimedia narrative of the culture, practices, and traditions surrounding one of the most important holidays in Kazakhstan: Kurban Ait, the “Festival of Sacrifice”. Due to the rich breadth of this experience, I have devoted an entire page on my blog: click here to begin [...]
Remember the PSA I made back in July called “Поставь себя на наше место” (“Put Yourself in Our Place”)? Read the full story here. If you didn’t see it, watch it here:http://vimeo.com/alexmwhite/ourplace We entered into the Soros Fund-Kazakhstan’s national “Open Your Eyes” PSA competition, and out of 46 videos produced, we won second place! If [...]
Today I had a English consultation with my 10th grade girls and we were supposed to cover adverbs of frequency. Instead the lesson drifted to the topic of music. My students usually only listen to Justin Beiber, Pitbull, J.Lo, Lady Gaga, Pussycat Dolls, and the likes. However today I showed them “1-2-3-4″ by Feist, and [...]
On October 15th I took a taxi to the neighboring village and walked alongside the Каргалы river back to my village. I wanted to capture what that afternoon felt like here in Қызылжар. Dedicated to the girl who makes my heart feel like a golden autumn sunset, my Lauren . Music: Michicant by Bon Iver. [...]
One of my new favorite bands is NewVillager. With my internet situation at school, it took me about a week to download their album but it was absolutely worth it. My two Kazakh little sisters – Мерей (Merei) and Толқын (Tolkun) did an improvised dance to “Black Rain” by NewVillager. There were no rehearsals, coaching, [...]
(One of my favorite projects is working with the Coverdell World Wise Schools Correspondence Match program. World Wise Schools matches up Peace Corps Volunteers in the field with U.S. classroom teachers and it’s been a great experience. One of my nephew’s teachers is currently working on a fairy tale unit, and asked me to share [...]
Teacher’s Day falls on the first Saturday in October here in Kazakhstan. Every school celebrates a little differently, but in short it’s the one day a year teacher’s are recognized for their hard work here. One of the traditions at our school is the older (9th-11th grader) students teach all of the teachers lessons. Cards [...]
Yesterday was another Sunday harvest. We sell most of these vegetables at the bazaar. Whatever we don’t sell, we keep and eat throughout the winter. We’ve had an especially good potato crop this year. This isn’t Photoshop. This is one “ginormous” potato (over 1 kilogram in weight). After helping with some of the harvest, I [...]
Imagine if you were a parent and you didn’t know how to say “I love you” to your own child. Imagine if you were a child but couldn’t tell you mother or father “I need help”. This isn’t the premise of a foreign melodrama, but rather the daily plight of thousands of deaf citizens in [...]
This year’s new schedule has really done away with any time to sit down and write. As always, there are dozens – if not hundreds – of stories to tell. However for the time being, I’ll have to settle for micro-anecdotes until there is time to tell a good story. For Lauren, who gave my [...]
Happy Labor Day! The school year started here in Kazakhstan on September 1st and it’s been exciting to see all of my wonderful students again. I didn’t realize how much I missed them and their character, smiles and personalities, until I saw all of their faces. I still can’t believe the great group of kids [...]
July 28th, 2011 was one of the highlights during my time in Kazakhstan thus far. I volunteered to help at fellow PCV Yelena’s English Summer Camp in Khromtau. As luck would have it, she gave me the advanced group of student. I had three hours with six 15-17-year-old girls. I had been wanting to produce [...]
On May 20, 2011 the Office of the Inspector General at the Department of Homeland Security published a report entitled “Supervision of Aliens Commensurate with Risk” Included in this was an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) list of countries “whose people should come in for extra scrutiny to make sure they’re not terrorists.” The list [...]
It’s not often that Americans get married in Kazakhstan. What’s rarer is when the ceremony follows traditional Kazakh wedding customs. When Lauren & I decided to get married in Kazakhstan, we knew it would get some attention on the village-level. What we did not expect is for our wedding to be featured on a 15-minute [...]
There are so many things to say, pictures to share, stories to tell. I am currently on my honeymoon with Lauren in Astana for the 4th of July as well as Astana day, so the details will have to wait for a little longer. For now, here is a video of the “Bet Azhar” ceremony [...]
With summer here, I will have much less access to the internet. I have so many things to catch up on (Korban Ait, New Years, Konakking, Nauryz, Last Bell, etc) but I realized there are so many smaller events in between my posts that I wish to share that get lost when I finally sit [...]
To eliminate any concerns or anxiety regarding the news in Aktobe yesterday, all Peace Corps volunteers in Aktobe are safe and absolutely no PCVs were affected in any way. Most PCVs were informed before the majority of the general public found out.
Yesterday, a suicide bomber detonated a bomb at KNB security office in Aktobe. [...]
As I sit in the Abu Dhabi International Airport, waiting to board my flight back to Kazakhstan, I am still catching up with everything that has happened the past three days. I had braced myself for terrible American-sized culture shock, the potential gap that happened between friends over, awkward indifferences towards what I had imagined [...]
I wrote this entry aboard the flight from Almaty to Abu Dhabi, where I am now currently waiting to board to New York in 14 hours. This coming Saturday, I will be the keynote speaker at NAMI’s 11th Annual Education Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When I left the US back in August 2010, I had [...]
As you can tell, I am still working on uploading material from November 2010. Other volunteers, such as Jonathan Halpern, already have pictures, videos and stories up from March 2011. Until I catch up, take a look at Jon’s Taldysai blog. There’s even some pictures of me when I attended what has come to be [...]
Aktobe to Almaty: 42 hours, over 1300 miles
On November 6, 2010, only a few short hours after being officially sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I boarded the train in Almaty with about a dozen other volunteers. I finished this video two months ago, but I didn’t want to post it until I could [...]
These photos were taken the morning of November 4, 2010 in villages surrounding Almaty, as PCVs said goodbye to their host families.
Back during the third week of January, the circus came to my school. My Kazmom is the director of social activities at the school. When she came by our room selling circus tickets, I was confused.
I asked Жанар, “Are these tickets to a circus in Aktobe?”
She said, “No, the circus will come to [...]
Hello Everyone! I’m currently at In-Service Training in Almaty. I have been off the internet for most of the month of March, but that means I should have some good content to put up in the coming weeks. Happy Nauryz!
This month, Peace Corps celebrates the 50th anniversary of it official creation by President John F. Kennedy. Peace Corps Kazakhstan’s 50th Anniversary committee that I am part of has come up with a number of ways to mark the occasion and we need YOUR help!
Check out the Get Involved page, map yourself on the Peace [...]
Above is a video I made for my little brother Бейбарыс. He wanted to show his friends at the Turkish Lyceum what his American older brother’s birthday party was like. Бейбарыс also invited four of his friends over to our house so they could practice their English toast-giving skills. As a result, the video focuses [...]
Kitchen hoarfrost. I can’t decide if hoarfrost sounds poetic, smutty, or if this is even the correct usage of the word. Regardless of the semantical correctness of it’s name, this was a beautiful formation of frozen water on the window of our kitchen. Even after all my winters in Colorado, Montana, and New York, [...]
I have resigned to the fact that unless I am given three days a week where I am uninterrupted and without obligations, I will remain a minimum of three months backlogged in regards to uploads. The following are from the month of December 2010.
The sunsets here are beautiful. The wide open steppe allows the clouds [...]
Contrary to popular belief, I don’t always have my camera on me. As a result, some smaller moments of life slip through the cracks when I write. The following is a collection of anecdotes without the visuals I normally like to accompany them with.
№ 1: On Monday I woke up an hour earlier [...]
For his American Postal Workers Union newsletter, my mother’s partner has requested a personal narrative about what the postal system is like for me. I decided to post it on my blog for your amusement.
My name is Alex and I am an American serving in the Peace Corps. I am currently living and working in [...]
From left to right: Нариман, Жангерей, Бекнұр
This past Sunday Жангерей passed away. He was playing with his siblings when he fell and broke his neck. I am told it is the first time a student has been lost in school history. Жангерей was in 6th grade, only 12 years old. He was a close friend [...]
“Корея Кафе” (Korea Cafe)
October 28, 2010 – The last dinner of PST we had together. All of the Peace Corps trainers and trainees of Panfilova were in attendance. I decided to post it on my blog simply to show one of the few rare moments in which there is a sense of normalcy shared. Less [...]
Christmas time is here. I have had moments of homesickness since I have arrived in Kazakhstan. But I think Christmas Eve was the strongest. Most of the time I had been able to cheer myself up by taking that time to bond with the people around me. I also tell myself that homesickness is a [...]
Бірінші қонақ (First Guest)
September 26, 2010 – My first Kazakh қонақ dinner. I was still living in Panfilova at the time with Раушан and Азат. Раушан’s daughter – whose name I have since forgotten – made a rare appearance, as she usually resides in Almaty at her university. This is a very low-key, quiet қонақ [...]
October 24, 2010 – We went to the “Қазақтың мемлекеттік Абай атындағы академиялык опера және балет театры” (Abai Opera and Ballet Theater) in Almaty and saw “Othello” and “Carmen”.
Last Monday my school’s library put on a presentation about the history of Kazakhstan’s independence from the Soviet Union. Halfway through the presentation, a two-man television crew arrived. After the program was over they asked me a few questions in Kazakh, which was then translated by our Russian teacher into English. I cannot remember the [...]
My Mac has been revived and with it my ability to edit photos and videos. I still have footage from September to cut together, but I wanted to post a few recent photographs to share my new home: the village of Қызылжар.
The days seem to be growing shorter every day. We haven’t had any snowfall [...]
(Note: My Mac’s operating system was corrupted in early November, so unfortunately my video uploads are suspended and my photo uploads are extremely reduced until further notice. Hopefully things will be up and running mid-to-late December.)
Today is my favorite holiday: Thanksgiving. Last weekend, all of the Peace Corps volunteers (save for one) serving in the [...]
Greetings from the Aktobe oblast! It has been been a week packed full of exciting changes & high emotions.
My village does not have internet, so updates will be reserved for trips into the city.
Peace Corps can’t fulfill every volunteer’s every wish when picking sites & assignments. But they absolutely did for me and picked the [...]
The video produced for the Kaz-22 Counterpart Conference to introduce our counterparts to our group. The first minute and last two minutes are new. It is still in rough cut form, but the conference starts today. The majority of the footage at the beginning of the video was taken during my train ride from New [...]
Today was my last day in Panfilova. I had a running narrative in my head all day, all these seemingly wise realizations and timeless epiphanies. But at the end of the night, the articulations that were so clear earlier have passed. I now only have a few fragments to share.
I voted in the Colorado General [...]
The most striking element I have found living abroad thus far is the reoccurring realization that people are people, regardless of location, socioeconomic status, or culture. A smile is a smile and a laugh is a laugh, these things can be shared without a common spoken language. I have found that the same can be [...]
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