Finally, some pictures

Hey all,

The other day I was lightly heckled by Jeff (that's my site mate) for not keeping my blog up-to-date.  So here goes.

First I want to say a huge thank you for the packages that arrived in the past month.  So much wonderful reading material and so many treats!  Evie and Joanna's package took the longest -- close to two months.  But the next batch only took two weeks.  Go figure.  Nicole, Roxy, and Annie, you three are rock stars.  I had hippie-Vermont flashbacks imagining you around the Weybridge table, it's tough to believe that two of you are now Midd graduates, not freshmen.  I have a maple syrup sized hole in my soul, as well as one shaped like a bag of brown sugar, so when I saw the jug I rolled my eyes to the heavens and gave thanks.  Really, I did. In my classroom being observed by a local friend.  Evie and Joanna, I'm laughing my way through books and quickly wearing out new socks thanks to you.  Mom and Dad are trying to fill the Thai-curry missing part of me (not really a hole so much as a gaping cavern) with spices and instant noodles. They're also ambassadors, sending gifts to my host family.  Thanks.  Ginny, I'm trying to hold out opening your package until Christmas, but those "perishable" stamps on the box are calling to me...

Here is what I have done in the past few weeks.

Work accomplishments:  Continue to teach, albeit sporadically due to holidays and other engagements.  Such as singing a Kazakh duet in a huge folk concert in Pavlodar.  Last week, my English club performed a Shel Silverstein poem at a regional youth gathering. Four of my fifth grade girls sang in Kazakh, Russian, English and German at a big concert for Independence Day and I had the deep pleasure of being their choir director.  I also performed in a comedy show.
Oh, and we've started a new pen pal exchange with a fifth grade class in Michigan. Now we're in the waiting for reply stage.

Social accomplishments:  Went to a 40-days party yesterday, like a baby shower but a month after the birth and the first time the mother is allowed to show off her baby.  Continue to play volleyball with motley assortments of teachers, students, and "guys" in the purest sense of that word.  Still getting along with host family.  Possibly was on a date the other night walking home (big emphasis on possibly).  Enjoying having a sitemate to talk English too -- also encouraging to realize how far I've come in adjusting.  We killed another horse and I had the stamina this year to stay after all the meat cutting to help stuff sausage (see the new profile picture).

Today's accomplishments: hoping to ski, put some pictures on this page, and relax for the next few days -- it's a state holiday and we've got 5 days to rest up for New Years festivities and end-of-the-quarter finals.

Love ya,
Nora


PS-- some of my fifth graders:



And another of them, this time in our classroom:

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I hope your holidays were warm, thoughtful, and most importantly delicious. Last year I spent the day at my site, baking a pumpkin pie and drawing hand turkeys with students. The other Peace Corps volunteers in my area, it would seem, were disappointed in my choice and this year insisted that I come into the city to share the meal and company. It didn’t take much convincing… So my site mate and I made the trip down – not without complications of course. In the early morning that felt like the dead of night, we tried to slip out of town, but our taxi got a flat tire before we had even left the gas station. And on the way back home I snagged a seat on a bus with absolutely no heating. I’d say the trip was well worth the effort.

Our celebration took place in the apartment of a volunteer in my group; he’s living on his own and has lots of space plus parents with the incredible foresight to send canned corn, peas, cranberry sauce, instant gravy, microwaveable stuffing, and hot chocolate. Thank you! We spent most of the morning tracking down cooking items, plate, chairs, and plenty of food. The most coveted purchase: a 7 kilogram turkey from the local market, already killed and plucked, but with the long neck and entire head still intact. This was the source of much amusement, as you might guess. We toyed with the idea of roasting the bird with a bit of apple in the beak or boiling it and offering the choice cuts to honored guests ala the traditional Kazakh sheep’s head… In the end the knife won out, and off with her head with was, but I’d advise you not to look in the freezer anytime soon.

The biggest challenge of the day came just after we arrived at the apartment, turkey and pumpkin in tow. We went to wash out hands, turned on the tap, and listened to the gargling hiss we’ve all gotten used to. No water; perhaps turned off due to the snowstorm outside. The water didn’t come on all that day, nor that night, and we left our poor host with a pile of dishes – nothing to be done while cooking but buy some bottled water and use sparingly.

Despite all this, I was pretty impressed with our feast. Apple sauce, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, mashed pumpkin, bread, corn, peas, fruit, pumpkin pie, graham cake (a local favorite), wine, beer, the obligatory vodka for our native guests, and of course the turkey. We cleaned that carcass pretty well and even put a second chicken in the oven to satisfy post-pie cravings. But somehow that chicken was cooked with all of its innards intact, a less than pretty picture or smell, so she ended up taking a swan dive off the 10th story balcony. There was a delightful fwompf as she hit the fresh snow; I hope we made a stray dog or cat very happy.

The company was equally good. We now have a fairly full contingent of volunteers around; it was nice to meet the new guys and there is always plenty to talk about. A few local friends from the city came, too. It is wonderful to get to treat the people around us to a cultural spectacle; finally instead of us always asking the questions and being surrounded by unintelligible babble and jokes, our friends are! We did bow to the local custom of toasting, but it seemed very appropriate and appreciated on this particular holiday.

The day after Thanksgiving I unwittingly participated in my least favorite of American holiday traditions. But it had to be done. Winter is here; today the temperatures dipped below 0 degrees (-23 in Celsius) and I needed a new hat. Not just any hat, but a fur hat. I went to the bazaar with a mission and within half an hour the entire row of fur hat sellers knew an American gal was on the prowl. Going hat shopping on a cold day is like entering a grocery story hungry. Everything looks so good. Luckily I’ve been scoping out the options for about a year now, and I’m happy with the gorgeous new addition to my winter wardrobe. Blue/grey, fluffy, huge, earflap equipped, and in a style with possible Kazakh origins, I hope to hold on to this baby for a while. And lest my more, shall we say, PETA oriented friends complain, at least the leather on the hat is fake… most importantly, in today’s weather and on today’s bus, every inch of me from my nose to my toes was icy. But above the nose things couldn’t have been better.

PS – not to name names, but here’s a shout out to my site mate’s parents. Apparently they found this site a little while ago and reported back to him. In a parallel action, my parents found his blog and reported back to me! I’m going to avoid reading his because I’d rather just find out in person what’s new, but if you’re still curious about Kazakhstan or specifically about this little spot, check it out. Apparently it shows up high on the list if Nora and Kazakhstan are Googled, or just head here   Also found this old link from last winter on the Pavlodar website.  

Weather Report

It’s about 5 degrees Fahrenheit outside right now and the third snowfall of the season has covered the ground, except for the wind-scrubbed patches of dirt. A few days ago saw our first hoar frost morning. I wonder if this snow will melt like the last two… something tells me we’re in for it already. It’s time to go buy a fur hat. The change of seasons feels familiar and somehow reassuring – I know what to expect from here on out in terms of the weather, school, and community. No more flying by the seat of my pants, now I’m just refining what I did last time around with the huge advantage of last year’s hard work. And I also know just how many wonderful things I have to look forward to: first ski, Constitution Day, New Year’s, competitions, concerts, and somewhere in the far distance, spring and glorious summer. So welcome winter!

3 Wonderful Things

One of the things I do quite often in Kazakhstan is write lists. Favortite forms of Kazakhstani transport, pictures I wish I had taken, pictures I'm glad I couldn't take, things I've picked up to threaten stray dogs with, books I've read in country... and so forth. But last week I had a list of 3 Wonderful Things That Happened in Two Days.

The first is just cool: I saw a shuttle launch from the Baikonur space center, where the Soviet space program was based. To this day it sends up missions and space tourists, and their path out of orbit arcs over our village. Despite all the years of the space program, my host family had never actually seen a launch. But about a week ago, as I was peeling a mountain of garlic and my host mother was stuffing said garlic into green tomatoes to preserve them for winter, my host brother came dashing in, cell phone in hand, to announce that host dad was watching a "rocket" from his fields of wheat and rye. So we raced out to the garden (already long stripped for winter) and stood freezing in our slippers, full dark at 7:30 and clear; perfect shuttle watching weather. It could have been a comet, a red speck trailing white curtains like the Northern Lights. We watched until the speck burned out, the clouds must have slowly faded.

I never would have seen this in America, I don't think, and I doubt I'll ever see it again. Still, despite having larger concepts of space travel and the atmosphere to comtemplate, this sight suddenly remined my of just how far I am from home.

Wonder number two: while teaching my second graders family vocabulary, I brought in a picture to share. As I toured the room ("This is my father, this is my mother"), one of my more precocious boys, who happens to be a neighbor, piped up in Kazakh: "Your father's name is Anthony Blair Williams." "Well, yes," I replied, though I refrained from asking how the devil he knew that. One minute later, he contributed that my mother's name was Kathy, though he didn't know her middle name... Later I remembered that my parents' names were listed in the local paper when they came to visist, little Timerlan must have picked it up from there. But in the classrom it came as quite a shock. Later, I met with his mother at a post-Ramadan feast; she related that he had come home from school that day with big news: "It turns out Miss Nora has a brother and sister, too!"

Wonder number three: I'm getting a sitemate! One of the other two schools in my village requested a volunteer this year and were lucky enough to have one assigned. This makes my life a bit more interesting and complicated, of course, and there is a lot more to be said and thought about on this topic, but we'll leave it at that for now. This is a place that I love; I hope he comes to enjoy it, too. And I'm looking forward to having someone to speak fast English with.

Peace,
Nora

A haircut

Dear friends,

I passed the one year mark in Kazakhstan this past month, made especially notable by the arrival of our new group of volunteers. With my remote location so far from Almaty, I may not meet any of them until next summer (unless one is assigned to my site, working at a different school, which is a possibility), but just knowing that they are starting training reminds me of how far we’ve come.

This summer I saw more of Kazakhstan that I would have thought possible, but it is still a huge country to explore – especially the cities and nature preserves to the South and West. My parents had a wonderful trip (or so they keep telling me), and should anyone else come to visit, I promise to not make the same mistakes. We will have no train ticket fiascos, there will be no interpreter-less banyas between my two fathers, and I will not sing songs that make my mother cry. No, I will not make the same mistakes again. I’ll make new ones! Just for you. That’s one tourist offer you’ll rarely hear.

Now I’m back at site, and here is the biggest news: I got a haircut, and frankly, I’m a little defensive about it. Not because of the cost (though it was expensive by local standards, it was ridiculously cheap by mine) or the style (I really like how it looks, a little retro but long enough for a ponytail). The problem is this: why are the community responses to this change bothering me so much?

Generally I’ve gotten good reactions and praise. Even my 16-year-old host brother complemented it, though he was honest in his dislike of the styles his other two sisters chose. But most people seem to view it with either relief or excitement mixed with an odd sense of resignation: “Oh, Miss Nora, you look younger, you’ve changed your image!” “It looks good, now all we have to get you to do is wear make-up and dye your hair – then you’ll look really beautiful.” “I guess you’ll be spending more time prepping in the mirror like your mother and sisters” (from my host father).

I’m happy with the style and I’m happy that other people are happy for me. But these comments irrationally bug me, and I’m trying to figure out why. First, of course, is the idea that my image needed changing and that this is another step down the road to conforming to local standards of beauty, femininity, and contented womanhood with a rich husband and a gaggle of kids. Second, people assume I’m simply taking part of a yearly ritual of renovations before the start of school.

Both of these points indicate that people are happy to see me conforming to the collective. Fitting in, matching societal norms, adhering to communal norms, however you put it; these are the aspects of Kazakhstani culture I see emerging here.

I am liked in my village, but people are confused that I like to spend lots of time alone reading, walking, or writing. They don’t quite understand a PCV’s desire to do more and do more faster, cleaner, and with more efficiency, much less why I like to get things done independently. How can I focus in on making grading sheets when there is so much catching up to do, when I could be wandering the school exchanging news, stories, and sometimes out-right gossip? Why don’t I like to do what everyone else is doing?

From this perspective my colleagues, friends, and local family are thrilled that I’m finally showing signs of doing something just like the rest of the crowd – i.e. primping for the opening day of school. If everyone else were painting their kitchens instead of getting haircuts, I think folks here would be equally excited to find out that my walls were a new shade of chartreuse. By which I mean to say that what it really bugging me here is not the expectations of me as a woman (I have to get over that every single day, so at this point the issue raises a only tiny lurch in my psyche) but the assumption that I, too, am rejoicing in joining the fold, in becoming a sheep.

That is a metaphor that extends well, incidentally, to explain where this joy in conforming comes from. I can imagine that a lone herder coming in off the steppe or a farmer returning to life after the haze of harvesting 72 hours straight would revel in the communal fire and rituals of tea waiting for them in a summer mountain camp or gingerbread village.

But for me, it grates. No, I want to say, actually this haircut is for me and me alone! I wanted to change, not conform. I wanted a new style to make myself feel pretty, not to fit your ideals of beauty – that’s why I picked the style on my own! Don’t you see, this isn’t fitting in, it’s a rebellion – I would have never done this at home. It’s a unique cultural experience in a foreign country that I can write home about, not something routine for the fall. Don’t assume this will lead to make-up – cosmetics are a personal choice, damn it, not a logical progression towards your vision of a stable, well-fed community!

Even more frightening is the small voice that says, well, Nora, maybe they’re right. Maybe you are so assimilated into this culture that you are conforming unconsciously and all your reactionary sentiments are simply denial.

Whew. On a side note, explaining why I don’t use cosmetics usually leads to more confusion, mostly because I usually try to defend myself from a personal angle – I’m too lazy, I had too much make-up in my youth on stage, I never took the time to learn, I was playing Frisbee instead… these excuses don’t go over well. But when I debuted my new argument – from a more communal perspective – my host sister began taking my side. Now when the issue comes up, as it often does, she jumps in and explains in the way that makes sense to her: “Nora says that in America many women don’t wear make-up and that it’s OK in their culture. Isn’t that great?”

I realize that this explanation is not entirely true; it’s weird in America to go cosmetic-free too. My mother and my sister both color (this is how the phrase directly translates from Russian to English, which I love. It’s the same verb you would use to say you were painting your fence), but if I bring that up, I weaken the argument for my acceptability in American culture. Intentionally rejecting what your family does? Opening yourself to critique by members of your society? These things would make a Kazakhstani sad, not empower her as they do me. Just look at what my host sister said again, the subtext is “I wish out culture would allow us to do that.” They’re not wearing make-up necessarily because they like it, but because everyone does it and they’ve got to be a part of everyone to feel good. The communal versus the individual.

To return to haircuts, the discomfort I’m really feeling here is really this divide, this clash of cultures, the leap between individual and communal. I resent feeling like a lemming – our culture pounds it into us to resist sameness. Now that I know the root of this uneasiness, I think I can deal with the bile that rises every time someone mentions a new brand of spiffy hair products I might like to try. They are only, after all, welcoming me to their side of the world. And I can always appease my individualist side by resisting those cosmetics.

And you, oh you, reading this in your comfortable chair with wheels or balancing on a cushion, laptop humming, you are amazed that this should come as such a realization. Obviously there is this divide. Obviously this is a disconcerting wall to come up against. The Nora of last year, Nora circa August 2006, she agrees with you. She has read up on the Peace Corps, lived in Russia, paged through handbooks on culture shock and knows the general distinctions between individual/communal and progressive/traditional cultures. Even in my first months at side I could pinpoint evidence of this divide: in classroom practices where cheating is seen to benefit the whole or in how hard it is for a single unwed mother to marry after breaking such a taboo. But who could guess that only after a year can you begin to notice that vague emotions truly indicate fundamental leaps of culture? Who knew that most epiphanies come from an indefinable feeling of discomfort stemming from the reaction to your new haircut? This is only in Kazakhstan, and only for me – but also for all world travelers in every country. Despite all my individualist hopes, others have felt this. As much as I want this to be mine and mine alone, nothing can be purely individual, just as nothing can really fit my village’s vision of universal conformity. Try as we might, we can't make everything fit our perfect visions.  But we still try.  Isn't human nature funny?

Good Times and Translating Mishaps

The parental visit is coming to a close already, only a few short days left. So far it has been a charmed visit -- things I was worried about came together, the weather has been cooperating nicely (rain turned to sun when we went to the beach but the heat wave in Almaty or 100+ temperatures broke into showers just in time), and the inhabitants of my adopted country have stepped up spectacularly. My parents have been treated to every sort of fried, boiled, or baked dough, lots of tasty bits from various animals, and a wide range of fresh melons, berries, and veggies from the garden, the farm, and the woods. We waved hello to Russia accross the border and today are less than 3 hours from Kyrgystan.

As far as translation, I just want to tell one story. Then I'll be out of Internet time.

I was trying to explain the organic food movement to my host mother, as explained by my parents, first thing in the morning over dishes of berries and fried delicacies. I was searching for a way to explain, and remembered reading ingredient boxes -- there was some word that was a cognate, but was it conservative or preservative? The latter seemed to make more sense, so I put it through a Russian accent and continued. It was only when my host mom asked me why I kept saying that word that I realized my mistake. After laughing to myself for a minute, I explained to my parents why she was confused. After all, why would anyone in their right mind want to put condoms in food in the first place?

I'll tell you about all the English words I've forgotten some other time. Suffice to say that my mom said, "Booze" and I stared at her. After searching my brain for logical associations (bows?) I had to admit: "I don't understand what that word means," translating a phrase I often say in Russian. They kindly gave me synonyms, and the word came back, but that was a very, very, very disconcerting moment.

More later if I get my act together!

Love,
Nora

Meet the Parents

Hey y’all,

I had a moment yesterday when I checked my email for the first time in weeks and realized that I had completely failed to notice the passing of July 4^th, Independence Day. Where was I on that day? Oh, that’s right; I was participating in a pentathlon-like competition in Pavlodar, a collection of events originally put together by Soviet youth groups in the 1930’s (according to my informants, at any rate). I had a blast doing things I’ve never competed in before in my life: rifle shooting, 100m swim, 100m dash, 2km run, and the ever popular grenade toss (?!). According to a complicated chart, every event earned points out of 100 for your overall score and for the team. Strangely, my best events were shooting and the grenade toss (not a real grenade, of course, just a wooden replica, but still). And equally surprising, our team improved on an 11^th place result last year to take the top prize among village entrants. Wahoo!

The summer has been a series of such adventures so far. I’ve done some rough riding on backcountry roads through the Altai Mountains to visit the extended family of a Kazakh friend. I’ve swum and fished in the Irtish River in multiple locations, starting at its alpine headwaters.
Done lots of cooking for my host family – when they ask me to cook, it’s their fault if they get unusual foods like stir fry, fresh tomato and basil sauce, and bread pudding.

And now the biggest adventure of the summer is about to begin – my parents are supposed to arrive in Kazakhstan in a few short hours. I’m currently sitting in an apartment in Astana, the relatively new capital of Kazakhstan, visiting the son and wife of my village neighbors. If everything goes according to plans, this should be a theme of the next two weeks with my American family – that is, being taken care of by a network of Kazakhstani friends and family all across the country. I was met in Pavlodar by a PC volunteer and was taken to the train by his local girlfriend, then was met this morning in Astana and promptly whipped away to the apartment. My host family is planning a side trip, relatives of my counterpart are helping to arrange our train tickets, and my former host family wants to show us Almaty just before my parents board the plane back home. Real Kazakhstani hospitality and the wonderful thing is they aren’t just doing this because we’re Americans, though that certainly helps. They would do all this for their own daughter, friend, or obscure relative. We just happen to make things a bit more complicated and exciting.

I am still in shock that I will see my parents today; I can’t quite believe this is happening. It’s been almost exactly 11 months since I boarded that plane in Minneapolis. We’ve kept in touch remarkably well, they call often and are wonderful about keeping me stocked with news and books (they often alert me to political changes in Kazakhstan that our Russia-based television channels don’t report). But still, there is simply no paper equivalent for hugs.

On a side note, it's funny, but my best correspondents over the past year have all been women – I cannot say enough thanks for the letters, books, chocolates, school supplies, etc. But men friends and relatives? Don’t feel you have to maintain the stereotypes, go ahead and send me some word of your continued existence. I know you have email, at the very least.

I’m off to wander the sites of the city and check out the Western style grocery store down the block. Wish us luck as we navigate, pray for quick jet lag acclimation for my folks and a quick tongue for me – there’s going to be a lot of translating!

Love,
Nora

Summer is a coming in!

Well, hello, dear friends, family, and parents of other Peace Corps volunteers who read all PCV blogs. A special hello to incoming Kaz-19's who might stumble onto this page, we're already looking forward to meeting you at the airport and welcoming you to the life.

So, were you worried? Did you think I had fallen off the face of the earth even more than usual? Wonder if I had pulled a Kurtz and cut off all contact with the outside world?

Well, fear not, the long silence came not from any trauma but simply from a lack of email access and the appearance of summer break. My host family's new Internet service doesn't seem to reach across the ocean and our school connection is also mysteriously down. So I went to a different city, 12 hours away by bus, just to write to you all. Not actually... I'm working/relaxing with some volunteers and exploring the picturesque East Kazakhstan Oblast. The city is pretty, lots of parks, fountains, and wide streets. Makes sense for a place founded in 1720, and I think it's fair to say that it is especially well-groomed at the moment, as the President is paying a visit in a few days. I'm indulging in some longed-for activities, like cooking with curry powder, going to the movie theater, and speaking English rapidly. Plus some raptor gazing (is that a hawk or an eagle?), staring at mountains, and strolling by rivers.

It is always a trip to hang out with other volunteers. At first, we trudge through the required questions: how's your site? Where are you again? Do you speak mostly Kazakh or Russian? What grades do you teach? What do you think of the new Peace Corps travel policy?

In our own way, we are as uncreative in our questions as the Kazakhstanis we work and live with.

And it's funny, because most of the stories that we can tell to make you laugh and gasp back home are becoming fairly routine. Everyone has a story about a dog encounter (though only a few can boast of bites), a hell bus ride, harassment from men (both male and female PCVs), and struggles with language. Even comparing bathroom stories has become blase.

So we are slowly remembering how to talk and act with Americans. Harry Potter has come up more than once. Baseball is a fixture on the television. We tossed a frisbee. We tell those stories that we can't to locals because they simply take too much explanation (for example, talking about college life requires a lecture in the education system of America, after which no one wants to hear about your friends' quirks). We can discuss history and politics and gender as well as Office Space, Homestar Runner, and Billy Idol. It's kind of nice.

What's next? More time away from site, this time travelling and visiting with some local connections. Has the potential to be a real adventure worth talking about -- I can see it going either incredibly well or becoming a nightmare.

If you want to contact me, don't let my lack of email stop you. Snail mail is always a joy and I can occasionally check comments on this blog. I still miss you all, even if I haven't always been able to find a way to say it.

Love,
Nora

Tall, fast, exotic, and famous

Kazakhstan has a funny way of fulfilling all my long-abandoned dreams. Here I am tall, fast, exotic, and famous – all things that I had mostly resigned myself to never be in America. These are the unexpected benefits of Peace Corps service.

The list of positive things I am learning about myself here goes on, of course, but this week brought out those four aspects. First, I competed in a volleyball tournament in Pavlodar as a new recruit representing our region. We didn’t play very well, but still, at a whopping 5’6” I’m poised to keep my spot on the team next year. Second, for the holiday on May 1st (used to be International Worker’s Day during the USSR, now is dedicated to national unity), I danced with a group of our teachers representing Uzbek culture. Organizations from around town took on a culture to present – ours involved national dress (hair in tiny braids, caps, tunics and flowing pants), dance (movement led mostly by wrist twisting and shoulder rocking), music (recorded horns and drums), and food (the ever popular plov – sort of like friend rice with mutton or chicken). Looking at pictures of the dance, I am the conspicuously tall, light-skinned redhead in a crowd of dark skinned, dark haired, round-faced dancers. And everyone in the crown seemed to already know me, I caught at least one “Americanka” spoken to a neighbor as we walked through the crowd. Such is my life.

You can’t help but encounter stereotypes of Americans here. Some are remnants of Cold War propaganda – one woman told me that her understanding of America was pornography and anarchy. More modern impressions come from film and mass media. And from these sources people have conflicting images; some see America as incredibly clean, trash free, and inhabited by movie stars. Others ask me if I’m scared to walk on the streets because of all the violence. Many think that there are no wild places left in America and that we all live in cities. Most believe that Americans don’t cook at all and only eat food prepackaged and factory made.

One student came to a harsh realization when I presented an “at the store” dialogue using dollars. “What, don’t you have tenge in America?” She was quite surprised to learn that we use only dollars. Her confusion makes sense, as here the dollar is often used to quote prices and the exchange rate is posted ever in our tiny two-teller bank. Saving money as dollars or euros is a natural reaction after the out-of-control inflation of the tenge during the 1990’s. So surely American banks must also display the tenge exchange.

Or the teacher, who when I told her that my parents bought tickets to come to Kazakhstan in July (yea!), responded, “It’s only May! Will it really take that long for them to get here?”

Like I said, I’m exotic here, with a very different understanding of the world than most people I interact with. It’s quite refreshing, even though I’m often bombarded with the same questions in every new social situation and it is a challenge to come up with new ways to explain who I am and why I’m here.

But it might be worth it all just to be fast: yesterday in conjunction with an upcoming holiday, the local government sponsored a track meet. School aged kids ran a relay and then the adults got to try their luck at the 1.4 km loop through town. Now, I’ve never run track or cross-county and at least once in my life I’ve renounced running for good and declared that I hate it, to the dismay of my marathon-running mother and sister. But I run here for exercise and may just have to start training more actively to keep up my reputation. Surprisingly enough I won the race for my age group, much to the delight of our gathered students, my friends from various sport events, and our school staff. Word spreads fast here and by the time we went out for a beer yesterday evening, the waitress knew enough to congratulate me on my victory. Not a bad first week of May.

In short, this can be a very difficult, confusing, stressful, sad, frustrating, and aggravating life. It is easy to feel angry, scared, and uncomfortable and want to bag the whole experiment and head home. There are certainly more pleasant or familiar places I can imagine myself, but even when things are the roughest, I know that there really is nothing else I would rather be doing and no experience I would rather be having.

Love,Nora

An exciting thing happened this weekend: the ice on the river broke. It happened literally overnight – we went to sleep on a Saturday with barely a strip of water visible between the river bank and the ice flow, then the next morning, the only ice left was floating rapidly downstream in large chunks or piled on the shore. Some people reported hearing a great wind in the night that heralded the melt. Sunday was the birthday of my host family matriarch (how old are you now? I asked in Kazakh that I tried to put a Tartar accent on to make it easier to understand. She thought for a long minute, and then replied: 83… or 84. The family eventually confirmed 84).

So after the now-routine Sunday brunch celebration in her honor, we all walked over to the river. This seems like a village ritual, and many people were strolling by with small kids in hand or bravely sitting on the edge of a sand cliff to watch the water. Everyone was sad that the break-up happened at night. One ex-teacher told about how they used to leave school on ice-out day with all their students to watch and listen to the big plates of ice scraping over each other or crumbling into the water. The tradition is to send all the bad things down the river as it melts – I decided to send bad health away. There have been some fun experiences these past weeks, including a sprained wrist from playing volleyball and some glorious stomach rumbles. The wrist helped me cement my reputation here as a “sportswoman,” which is useful now that I’m outside being active – no one questions what the champion skier and volleyball player is doing out running, they just cheer her on. So worth the pain, but I’ll have to remember at the big tournament we qualified for in May that volleyball is not Ultimate Frisbee and that indoor layouts are never a good idea.

That really is all the news at this point. The river melted and we can go outside with spring jackets and no hats. I know there are some big events happening/being processed in the USA right now – I pick up that much from my glimpses of the news. If you feel like being a news reporter, send me a more accurate version of events than what the Russian news media reports.

Oh, yeah, and I turned 22. Yippee! It was low key, but with lots of singing students and fun treats. And now the pressure is on: no one in this village wants to see me turn 23 unmarried... anyone in America want to volunteer to become my boyfriend/fiancée so I have a good excuse?

Peace,
Nora

PS – if you’re looking for more Kazakh info, my friend Jose’s blog looks strangely like mine (we seem to have the same formatting tastes). His address is on the comments from my last entry. And props to the RPCV that left a comment – I’ll be one of you at some point…

PPS – yes, packages have been getting through. Mostly pretty quickly, but sometimes they sit in limbo for quite a while.

I made it back to my village after a week in Almaty for a Peace Corps conference. I got to see those big ole mountains again, visit my training host family, get attacked by my old neighbor girls, and eat some foods that I missed (both national and international cuisine). Spicy food! Broccoli! No way! There were some wonderful moments.

But as good as it was to speak English full speed again, it was also really weird. I kept slipping in phrases of Russian and Kazakh when those languages better expressed what I wanted to say. And as useful as it was to recharge my batteries, remember that I am part of a larger organization, and hang out with a bunch of Americans, it feels really nice to be back here. Things shrink down to the day-to-day at site and I blissfully lose track of things like long-term development goals.

I get to listen to stories, too. From tales of organized crime and random acts of violence to the best time to plant tomatoes, listening is a pleasure. I had a particularly great day hanging out with three taxi drivers in Pavlodar waiting for them to gather enough passengers to send a car our. A Kazakh, a German/Russian, and a Russian, all sitting around their favorite bus station café, treating the American to coffee, pot roast, bad jokes, and their historical grievances. You’re not really even Kazakh, says one, look at you with your black hair, you guys are supposed to be light skinned with blue eyes. You’re just a Mongol mutt – one of that tribe that kept my Russians at war for hundreds of years and destroyed our chances of being a Western nation. The Kazakh replies with something about the horrors of Soviet occupation, collectivization, and drafting for WWII front lines. To which the German plays his trump card – he’s the one with Nazi POW blood in his veins that was sent to die out in a labor camp. The outpost Russian village in wild Kazakh territory turned prison town – that’s where I live.

Somehow, I never had this conversation with my friends in America. Race, nationalism, and history are things we tend not to talk about and like to pretend make no difference. Here, though, go ahead and invoke the 14th century Mongols – everyone will understand what you are getting at.

But history is, of course, always up for debate and revision. One facet of history is already starting to slip away. It’s there in the back yard of the local history museum, the one housed in a beautiful log cabin with overflowing ice dams and a padlocked door. Walking home from ski practice, a friend of my host brother’s put it right: It’s like a graveyard to communism. Isn’t that Pushkin over there? Well, no, I wanted to correct him, it’s Marx, but you’ve got the right idea. He and his three buddies (two busts of and one pointing Lenin) are tucked away near the rubbish heap. They must have been collected from various prominent positions around town. Most places in Russia also did this after the fall of communism; I believe there is an entire sculpture garden in either Moscow or St. Petersburg.

Or my 7th grade host cousin, who one day watching a television serial/bioepic on Stalin (there was another one going on when I was in Irkutsk; it’s a popular theme on Russian television stations) asks: What does repressed mean? And my host mother answers, it means punished. Which is a legitimate one word answer, but there is so much more in that word. It contains the experiences of this girl’s grandmother, who was a slave laborer on a state farm with nothing to eat for years because everything went to the front lines. And the stories of the German taxi driver’s family. And the tales of Tartar families relocated here trying to escape collectivization. And writers exiled, generals purged, war heroes sent away to freeze with Lenin tattooed on their breasts.

So, in short, there are still things here to fascinate me, and I can’t help but wonder at people who think they can know a place after a week long tour. I’ve been in this village for almost 6 months, and everyday I figure something else out. Like today, I found a new route home that bypasses the lake our road has become. Small successes…

Oh, and if you’re wondering, a great time to visit would be July. I’ll round up some students to sing “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” with you.

Love,
Nora

Skiing in Kazakhstan

The past few weeks have been a lesson in the openings and closings of a post-Soviet school system. Something about March, I guess, threw things into a whirl. We had school closed for a whole week due to flu quarantine, then a handful of days of shortened classes due to cold, then the school closed completely for another day because our classrooms were below regulation temperature. For two weeks everyone was just sluggish, myself included. Last week there was a holiday, so school closed again and our schedules were confused by performances and parties.

International Women’s Day (March 8th) is a big deal, though I have mixed feelings about it. Men and boys spend the day congratulating all the women and girls in their lives with nice words, flowers, and gatherings at cafes. The local government sponsored a concert and gave female teachers and government workers white scarves. I went out with friends and colleagues and toasted the afternoon away, then danced and ate cake all evening. Traditionally, women are not allowed in the kitchen on this day and the men do the vacuuming, tea-pouring, cooking, and dishwashing. Sometimes they have to ask for help, though, since they only do these things once a year. The women put their feet up, get the remote, and relax. For one day. It sort of reminds me of Black History Month in the US – we celebrate the lives and work of an exploited segment of the population for a little while and then return to our normal roles. Wouldn’t it be nice if everything, from historical representations to household chores, were evenly distributed throughout the year?

At any rate, things at school are returning to normal just in time for the end of the quarter, and I’m preparing to make the trip down to Almaty for a Peace Corps conference. Seeing other Americans again… I’m not really sure I’m ready for the shock!

It’s a Sunday, my day off of teaching, and I’m preparing to do my Sunday business – laundry in the tub, skis looking at me longingly. They assure me snow will be here through the end of March, but we’ve had some days that are almost warm enough to melt the icicles, so I’m not taking any chances. Time to get skiing!

Here are the things I love about skiing in Kazakhstan:

The people. No matter where you go, cross-country skiers and ultimate Frisbee players are just good stock. They understand that their sport looks ridiculous to outsiders and that makes them particularly patient and fair to their own kind. Even the uniforms level the playing field: no one looks good in full-body spandex or with snot icicles on their chin. Or in an 80’s prom dress.

The woods. Our groomed ski track is down by the river, and to get there you have to walk out of the village. Your companions are other skiers, horses and sleighs going for firewood or hay, and women with metal cans on sleds breaking the river ice for water. Birds, trees, frost, the occasional herd of horses… One day I checked out the river instead of the track, following the u-bend past the ice fishermen. It is surprising and wonderful how quickly you can get to a place where there are no humans or houses in sight.

The exercise. I feel very American in wanting to move. Kids play sports, but sporty adults (especially women or non-gym teachers) are rare here – people with jobs and homesteads to maintain don’t have the time or the extra energy. But there’s nothing like a good ski or a dance around the living room to bring back my optimism.


So get outside and listen for the spring bird song – it’s coming soon!

Love,
Nora

Nora sings at a wedding

 It’s hard to believe that January is almost at an end. Thanks to the holidays, work, and skiing, this month has flown by. People here warned me about January – usually this is the month of negative 40 degree temperatures. Last year was a particularly harsh winter in this part of the world; you may remember news clips of record cold temperatures across Russia, and this band of frost extended down into Kazakhstan. I was looking forward to experiencing new depths of cold, having school cancelled, and bunkering down. But climate change sent another curve ball this year, and yesterday I awoke to the first above freezing air in quite a while. It was a shock to see things melting, but our speculations about the early arrival of spring were short-lived. By noon the cold had returned, and fresh snow covered the newly-formed ice later in the evening. This morning I awoke to the kind of warm winter day that makes you want to play. But skiing down the frozen river an hour later, I watched a front of blue-grey clouds crowd out the sun. We may be in for more snow.

The wind in this village keeps the sky and the land changing. It blows from the south, from across the steppe, and enters our streets from the river banks. Most trees in the village show signs of the wind, with short branches on one side or a list to the north. Sometimes walking home is like heading into a wind tunnel or like standing on the top the Snake Mountain cliffs. One day on that mountain I looked over the edge and watched from above as peregrine falcons circled, never once flapping their wings. Some mornings here I walk outside and am startled to hear the birds – this is the first sign that the wind is taking a break. Things feel very still on those days, everything is tentative without the rattling signposts or the rush of the pines lining the path to school.

The birds here are new takes on familiar forms – sparrows with large brown cheek patches, chickadees accented with yellow, blue, and green (they must have tumbled with parrots at some point), and magpies with long, white-flashing tails. I am surprised by the rarity of crows, but rock doves are the same the whole world over. My hands-down favorite, though, is the Kazakh woodpecker. On still days, I like to listen for and track down the local pair. They like the stand of pines behind the school, the little groves of aspens by abandoned factories, and electric posts everywhere under the sun. Why are woodpeckers always some combination of black, white, and red? They all have the same blueprint of colorless patches accented with crowns, stomachs, and crests of red. It’s like all the versions of woodpeckers got together one day around a bucket of red paint. Some dipped in their heads, others slid on their bellies. The Kazakh version appears to have sat down on a bright red bench before noticing the “Wet Paint” sign. I’m sure it has some sort of official name, but I think it’ll always be the Red-Butted Woodpecker to me.

Work has settled down, my counterpart has returned, and the class load is manageable. The plus side of the experience of teaching alone is that I have learned a ton of names from a combination of fear, necessity, and sneaky methods. Sneaky method number one was having students “practice writing their names in English,” while making name place cards at the same time. I asked my fifth graders what they wanted to be when they grew up and had them draw it on a small piece of paper. The put their names on the back and I had a new stack of flashcards to memorize. But my favorite thing was having the upper grades pick new English names. They came up with them all on their own (though I insisted that Shakira was not an English name), and their choices will tell you where they get most of their information about America. I have two Britney’s, a Madonna, a Kelly, two Jennifer’s (one Lopez, one Aniston), a Bruce Lee, and a David Beckham. I almost had a Chuck Norris, but Almas picked Jimmy instead and I couldn’t convince him otherwise. I gave some suggestions when people were stuck and was rewarded with a Tony, a Megan, and a Paul. My family and friends have namesakes in Kazakhstan!

Yesterday I went to the wedding reception of one of my Kazakh colleagues’ son. The bride had already been stolen a few weeks ago (this means that the wedding was a love match, not a crime), and lived with her husband’s family, so it wasn’t a real wedding, but a big deal nonetheless. The bride, I learned, was 17. Her husband was probably her age or older, but he could have passed for 14 or 15.

Almost the full compliment of teachers and administrators from our school attended the wedding. The rest of the hall was filled with family from as far away as Uzbekistan and friends of the bride and groom – some of whom were my students. Needless to say, my face will stick out like a sore thumb in the wedding video footage.

Anyways, as usual, the guests were expected to give well-wishing toasts. We teachers all went together and each said two words or less. I was thrilled to have gotten off so easily (my Kazakh can handle a two word toast), but the MC and the DJ (both teachers) called me back up as soon as I sat down to sing a song in Kazakh. Now, I know a handful of Kazakh songs, but I don’t know any of them completely. Luckily, about a month ago the DJ and I sang a duet for the birthday of my Kazakh tutor. So we jumped into that song and he started the first verse. I stood looking pretty, trying desperately to remember one of the lines from my verse when a middle-aged guest I didn’t know (who must have had a few vodka toasts in his belly) came down, took me in his arms and started dancing. Between birthday parties and random social gatherings, I’ve come to enjoy the chivalrous slow dancing here – it ranges based on dancing ability from junior high swaying in place to full ballroom spins. But this particular dance with a short man while cradling a microphone and trying to remember lyrics quickly began to border on the absurd. But never fear, my dear Americans, I have once again managed to successfully preserve our image abroad and come out of this experience ahead. Other couples came forward to dance, helping mask when I butchered that one line of the verse and forgot that we were supposed to sing the last chorus twice. After the song ended, my dancing partner disappeared, and I didn’t see him again the whole evening. And my reward was the praise of the family and a pen from the MC

So, what are you doing, exactly?

 The people have spoken and demanded to know what their hard-earned tax money is being used for in Kazakhstan. The question is easy: Nora, what exactly are you doing in Kazakhstan, land of unimaginably large steppes and huge oil and natural gas reserves? The short version is that I teach English, but that doesn’t really cover it. It seems to me that most people can talk for a very long and boring time about their work… so I will try to do so with a minimum of Peace Corps jargon and a maximum of interesting stories.

There are three schools in my town, mine was finished only a few years ago and has the most up-to-date facilities. We’ve got two computer labs that American schools would envy, a pretty auditorium, nice cafeteria, gym, etc. We also have a museum stocked with Kazakh crafts (most of which were made by my Kazakh tutor) and a “winter garden” stocked with cacti. I have never seen students in either the museum or the garden. They are always locked, as are the computer labs. And while those computers are really nice, the printers have spotty ink and the only a handful of teachers use the equipment. My classroom is rigged out with individual head sets to listen to language CD’s (of which we have few), but they mostly go unused because I provide authentic pronunciation practice (often contradicting the British English on the tapes).

In theory I teach with a co-teacher, a local counterpart. This is great because she can do paperwork (grade books are a big deal here) and help with discipline (I’m reluctant to take the advice of my principal, that is, just give one of the kids a whack – pretty sure he wasn’t joking). But she has just left for a month to work on her university degree, so I’ll be on my own. The grand totals: 25 hours of teaching a week, 10 grades from 2nd to 11th, and around 150 students. It’s going to be a challenge, but as Peace Corps says, if the schools were perfect, we wouldn’t be here.

The school was built to accommodate a strictly Kazakh speaking program. In Soviet times, Kazakh was deemphasized in favor of Russian, and schools like this are part of the attempt to revive (or artificially create, but that’s a different essay) a Kazakh national identity. There are still huge repercussions for the repression of language. Many Kazakhs and most Russians speak little on no Kazakh and getting them to learn it, especially up here in the North, is a difficult task. Many Kazakh families speak only Russian at home, and the media is far and away in Russian. Our students generally converse with each other in Russian (though they are sometimes yelled at for that). A friend told me that when he first came to work at the school three years ago, only 3 of the teachers spoke fluent Kazakh. Teachers still ask each other for help in translating our Kazakh textbooks, and my counterpart often drifts into Russian during class. My Kazakh tutor says she routinely uses me as an example to rouse her reluctant students, along the lines of “If Miss Nora can learn Kazakh, so can you.”

Some don’t see the point of learning Kazakh, as even some higher-ups in the government don’t speak it. Peace Corps trained only 10 volunteers this fall in Kazakh and the remaining 60 in Russian, reflecting the needs of the schools in country and the practical needs of volunteers. You can get by with Russian, but knowing only Kazakh limits you to certain areas (though in those places you are a hero) There are signs of progress, such as the US ambassador beginning his Independence Day address in Kazakh, but it is a slow process. I try my hardest to only speak Kazakh or English with my students, but when they address me in Russian, my mouth automatically responds in kind. Often I’ll walk down the hall and be greeted in rapid succession by three different languages. “Salemetsiz be, mugalim?” “Strastvuite, Miss Nora!” “Hello, teacher.” It’s a good wake-up for my brain in the morning.

My biggest challenges at work are discipline, paper work, and learning names. I get along well with the students, but sometimes we are on completely different pages. Mostly the problems come from cultural differences and language barriers (the English level of my students in any given grade is pretty much null), but I am also a new teacher, which accounts for a lot. Grading is not a problem, except when all my students rush me at once at the end of class begging me to give them good marks in the little books they show their parents. That can get crazy.

Names are a serious adventure. First, I’m trying to learn about a million of them, from teachers and students to extended host family, neighbors, politicians, cross-country skiers, and local singers. Second, I’m ok with Russian names, but Kazakh can be a trip, as many of them sound both completely unfamiliar to me and very similar to each other. There’s Alibek, Aigirim, and Aksana. Botagoz and Ayagoz. Dana, Zhanna, Aidana, and Ainara. Serik, Berik, and Aibek. Gurnul and Nurgul. Galya and Gulya. Their names are also a vocabulary lesson, as each name has meaning. Sometimes I translate their names in my head to help with memory recall, but most often that just makes me feel like I’m on a commune. We’ve got Holiday, Love, Moonbeam, Moonflower, White-Thought, White-Soul, Flowerbeam and Beamflower. Not to mention the hoards I haven’t managed to translate yet. I sometimes get called “Nora-zhan” or “Nora-soul” as both an affectionate and respectful title.

On a side note, I recently made my second appearance speaking Kazakh on television. This came yesterday after traveling to Pavlodar with the regional teacher’s league ski team. We raced against all the best teachers from the oblast (basically, the state). Expectations were high, as our region has won the meet for the last few years.

To get on the team, I came in second at the regional ski meet (out of a total of two women). The next day, two women, three men, and out regional team manager traveled to town, strapped on our skis, and for two days alternated between sleeping, eating, and skiing. And we won! By almost 15 minutes! Mostly by virtue of our first place ski guru/coach, who waxed our skis perfectly and regaled us with stories about when he raced in the World Championships at Lake Placid. But I came in second among the women and was on the first place coed relay team, so I like to think I helped. Kazakhstan is helping me live out my dreams of being a fast skier. They want me to start going to shooting practice so I can become a biathlete. If I do, I’ll be sure to let y’all know.

Oh, and I ended up on TV by virtue of being the only American and one of the few Kazakh speakers at the event. I didn’t see the actual program, but my colleagues at school were full of praise yesterday, so I guess I didn’t butcher too many words.

Happy Belated New Years and Happy Orthodox Christmas (it’s today)!

Love,
Nora