Happy, happy, happy Thanksgiving to you all!

I hope your holidays were full of laughter and tasty treats. I had lots of fun trying to explain to my new students, colleagues, and host family what Thanksgiving is. People have some pretty weird ideas about how Americans live, mostly from movies and music videos, so it’s always an adventure discussing American life. Plus, my fourth graders made hand turkeys and wrote what they were thankful for, which made me feel like a real teacher, even though I’m pretty sure they didn’t understand what the phrase “I am thankful for…” meant. It just doesn’t translate well into Kazakh or Russian, but I figure that most 4th graders in American doing the same assignment don’t really understand what they are writing either. So it’s OK. Then today, the day after Thanksgiving, my 10th graders wanted to try pumpkin pie. They brought in or begged the cafeteria for supplies and I showed them how to make something sweet out of a pumpkin. Everyone, from the cafeteria lady to other teachers and the school secretary, came by and commented on the process: Nora, are you sure that is how you want to make dough? You’re putting what in? How did you make pumpkin puree?

My favorite part was watching everyone’s faces when I made them smell our ingredients. People definitely did not like the smell of cinnamon (which we could find here), nutmeg (which came from home), or pumpkin puree (which I made the night before). But, if I do say so myself, the pie turned out pretty darn well. There is one last piece sitting on the kitchen table to share with my host family. It is next to a big bowl of small sturgeons (the type of fish caviar comes from). Probably the weirdest looking fish ever… might be an interesting dinner…

I wonder how soon everyone I meet will be asking about that pie. Word gets around pretty quickly here, and I seem to provide plenty of conversation fodder. For example, my host mother told me the other day at dinner that I had gone for a walk – apparently one of her co-workers, whom I have never met, saw me and reported back the big news. I am still being introduced to many people in the village, from neighbors to the regional governor, but most people seem to already know me. I’ve been hearing the phrase “Oh, you’re Miss Nora!” fairly often. Mostly from parents of my students; this always makes me curious as to what their kids have been saying. In general, I seem to be getting along fairly well with the students, though the honeymoon is definitely starting to wear off with a couple of our classes. Luckily, I teach as often as possible in the company of my co-teacher, Altyngul, which means we have twice the manpower to manage a rowdy classroom. Plus she is able to translate into Kazakh when I don’t have the vocabulary or when my pronunciation is off, both of which happen often.

Almost two weeks ago, I arrived to the last gasps of fall in Zhelesinka. Dry, clear ground, a hint of frost on the morning air, skies brushed with pink as I walked to school in the morning.

Now there are six inches of snow on the ground, with ski tracks and coal trucks making paths along the mostly dirt roads. After the first snowfall, I was informed that winter still hadn’t come, since the weather wasn’t too much below freezing. But a week after that, the cold is settling in. We live on one bank of the Irtish River, a big ‘ole guy almost as wide as the Mississippi in Minneapolis. This means that with the cold comes clouds of moisture off the river as it freezes, which in turn means everything in the town is coated in hoar frost. It is a truly beautiful sight in the early morning: white smoke pouring sideways out of chimneys in the wind, fruit trees dipped in white, white roads, white houses with blue painted gates, and white sky.

I am adjusting to a northern town with no daylight savings time – barely light waking up at 8 in the morning, and very well might soon be a dark walk to school at 9. But there is much appreciated light until almost 5:30 or so in the evening. I can barely figure out where west and east are because the sun’s arc is so skewed to the north

Long story short: my new host family is great, and though we are still figuring each other out, it is going well. School is also going well. Not perfect, but if it were, Peace Corps wouldn’t be there. Haven’t had much chance to hang out with people my age, but there will be time for that after I get the lay of the land and feel settled at work and home. At the moment, it’s probably best to cultivate a quiet image and live a quiet life – people say there are a lot of drunks in the area, and I really don’t want to get mixed up in anything. Plus, it’s too cold to just wander around meeting people. Get ready for a long winter…

Two hours after helping push a neighbor's car out of the snow, I looked up from teaching and saw the first horse drawn sleigh of the season. I smiled and stifled a giggle. No one else gave it a second glance. Later that night, I was looking for songs to teach on Thanksgiving. A recommended one was “Dashing through the snow, on a one horse open sleigh.” Guess here this is less of a romantic memory and more of a practical reality!

Enjoy your holidays!

Love,
Nora