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