NoraStan: Exploring Kazakhstan, Liberia, and Kyrgyzstan with Peace Corps and more!

Bishkek Hapenings

2012-02-12T03:22:00.000-08:00

It's been too long since the first post from Bishkek... That's a sign that things have settled into a routine, perhaps. Research is coming along slowly, connections are coming along quickly, since there are so many wonderful people to meet in Bishkek! Most days find me wandering the city a bit, meeting friends and colleagues, and snapping a precious few pictures. Here are just a couple shots of the city. I need to get them posted before all the snow melts and these become horribly out of date... Also, they are a bit hazy because coal fires and car exhaust keep the city warm.

Lenin waves "hello" on the way to the University where I am based.
Often there are small protests on this square.

Soldiers guard the flagpole, the warrior guards the square.
In the background is the national museum.

A highlight of last week was giving a presentation to International Relations undergraduate students on how to get into gradate school in the United States. The presentation was fun and the students had some great questions: for the record, if your email starts with BadBoy31@... you might want to get a new address before you start emailing admissions departments!

In just a few short weeks the routine will change again as research and travel pick up. Never a dull moment!

An empty building on the main drag, Chui.
Shows the reach of American advertising: Don Draper would be proud.

Me in the snazzy apartment! Had a few guests over a couple weeks ago (hence Jiselle in the background); yesterday friends came over to lead a plov-making workshop. Pictures perhaps to follow, too bad I can't share the delicious plov with you all!

Welcome to Bishkek: Ski Adventures

2012-01-15T05:49:00.000-08:00

Greetings, intrepid blog readers!

I’ve been in Bishkek a week now, and wow, have I met a lot of people and done a lot of stuff! It’s been a whirlwind. Happy to report that my apartment is great, the research looks promising, I have tutoring starting this week to brush up on language, and I haven’t eaten anything too weird yet.

This weekend was a highlight of the trip so far. On Friday I attended the opening of a new American Corner at a local library and got to meet the US Ambassador. That evening I went to a dinner hosted by a new acquaintance from the embassy – Bishkek is a small world in a lot of ways, and I met plenty of people at the dinner who either work at the same university where I am based or have interests similar to mine.

On Saturday I went to the ballet with my fellow Fulbrighter Ailey and some new friends, an American couple and a Kyrgyz doctor. The ballet was, as always, a cultural experience. In particular, the norms of cell phone use during a performance are quite different in Kyrgyzstan. But the dancers were great, the music was good, and the setting was fabulous. See the picture of the outside of the building below…

The opera and ballet theater in Bishkek with New Year's tree

We topped off the evening with a few beers and a ride home from a female taxi driver. I know that there are plenty of women drivers in Central Asia, but it was still unusual for me to see a woman hanging out at the taxi stand. A highlight of my night was negotiating a lower price for the taxi. I’m going to do my best to spend all of your hard-earned tax dollars right.

Today (Sunday) was another good-luck, met-the-right-person sort of day. A new friend told me on Friday about a trekking group based out of Bishkek. They run trips every weekend, rent out gear, and have a nice mixture of locals and foreigners. This weekend, they happened to be running a cross-country ski trip, so of course I jumped on the opportunity. Actually, my friend Sally jumped on the opportunity for me and made sure there was space on the trip.

Skiers are rarely serious

As you can see from the photos, I did manage to join the group. Right now I am tired, a bit sore, but very, very happy. It was wonderful to get out of the city and to see the mountains that I can usually only glimpse on a clear day. We wandered about a bit getting used to the skis and the snow, and then we came around a corner and discovered a sledding hill. There were kids and some adults sledding on giant tubes, horses towing more tubes to the hill, and cars bearing small cooking stoves for tea. Naturally, we had to try the sledding. I was only able to handle about a run and a half before I was reminded that I don’t have the best history of safe sledding. I stopped then, but not without a bruise or too…

Post-sledding. How many types of transport can you count?

We headed back to the van eventually and then the day got even more interesting. The spot that we went to ski turns out to have quite a bit of importance; it hosts a national memorial complex. The story goes like this: in the 1930s, during the Soviet repression, 137 political dissidents were taken to this remote location and shot. They were buried in a mass grave that was hidden under a brick factory. The atrocity was witnessed by a young girl, whose father told her to never speak of what she saw. When the Soviet Union fell, the young girl have become an old woman, but she remembered the story and told about those that had been killed. The grave was exhumed, and the bodies were given a proper burial. Now a monument stands at their grave site; the original mass grave has also been preserved. It is a reverent but unsettling place.

Amongst those killed was the father of Chingiz Aitmatov, who is considered to be the premier figure in Kyrgyz literature and activism. He was well-known throughout the Soviet Union. Aitmatov died in 2008 (I believe) and was also buried at this site, not far from the new grave of his father.

A memorial statue for repression victims; in the background is the 2010 monument

As if this weren’t enough sorrow and remembrance for one spot, the complex also holds a memorial to and the graves of many of the individuals who died on April 7, 2010 during the anti-government protests. Of course, this meant that I had both a humanitarian and an academic interest in the site. It was a moving place. As we stood there, fog began to roll up the mountains, making everything just that much more eerie. The mountains disappeared into the clouds as the day wore on.

Visitors to the monument for the April 7, 2010 victims

I will admit that after looking at all these sites, we returned to our skiing. Heading up the hill at one point, we heard the call to prayer echoing from a nearby village. It was one of those classic incongruities of Central Asia: cold air, snow, skis, the mountains, and the lilting song of Arabic prayer.

The foothills where we skied today

To leave things on a slightly lighter note, I would like to report that the belief that women should not sit on bare concrete is alive and well in Kyrgyzstan. No matter that we were out skiing in the cold. No matter that we are hearty women. As soon as we sat down on a narrow concrete slab for lunch, the driver came over worried about our health. He brought one of the cross-country skis and insisted that we put it down between our butts and the concrete. Glad to know that a ski is proper protection for our ovaries.

Week two looms, I can only hope that I will have something as interesting to report next time.

Life-list with Dima Bilan

2010-07-12T00:56:00.000-07:00

It’s not every day you can check something off your life list. Climb Devil’s Tower, run a marathon, go to New Zealand, see Dima Bilan in concert… they all seem so out of reach.

BUT WAIT! Dima Bilan, you say? THE Dima Bilan, of glorious Eurovision Awards fame? (If you don’t know what the Eurovision awards are you have some serious Googling to do) The Russian King of Pop? The man who made the mullet into the glorious fashion statement we all know and love? The man who is so cool that Evgeni Plushenko chose to appear in his music video, doing quadruple axels along to the schmaltzy pop tune?

Yes, my friends, the Dima Bilan. Who just happened to be in Almaty giving a FREE concert in one of the central squares on a gorgeous summer night between rain storms. That’s right, I have placed a big check mark next to the most ridiculous point on my doesn’t-really-exist life-list. And I also officially have one more reason to love Astana Day/the President’s Birthday. The celebration has continued all week!

I wish I could say that I am too cool for Bilan, and that I only went to the concert because it was there and my friends were going. But really, I was the one that made my friends go… and yes, I may have squealed just a little bit when I saw him walking to the stage. Many people love to hate Dima Bilan, and to be honest I probably wouldn’t really have much to say to him in person besides, “Who chooses your clothing?!?” I have never owned any of Bilan’s music, mostly because the lyrics in the English versions are so painful, see for example: “Believe! As long as I’m breathing, there is not a limit to what I can do!”

However, by easily quoting the above lyric I have revealed the truth. I have been in enough buses in enough countries and watched enough music-TV in post-Soviet countries* to know a lot of Bilan songs. On Saturday night at the concert, I was singing along. A lot. And dancing along with the grooves of the back-up dancers and Bilan himself. Ridiculous. It was a good show, I think even Bilan-haters would admit that. Plenty of lights and smoke and streamers and large screen projections of the action and spurts of flames coming from the stage.

Lots of people turned out for the free show, but it’s still Kazakhstan and there still aren’t that many people in the country, so there was plenty of space for everyone. During the opening (local) acts there were more police/security officers than spectators. Among those in the crowd were young Russians, old Kazakhs, and, inexplicably, a man with a very large live boa constrictor around his neck. He tried to insist that I really wanted to pet the snake. I declined. We tried to imagine what his conversation was like with the police officers who were checking bags at the entrance to the concert (“No, officers, no weapons or alcohol. Oh, the huge snake? She’s no big deal, really").

At any rate, having now outed myself as the Dima Bilan freak that I apparently, I will leave you to your Googling. I am sad to report that the mullet has been replaced by an appropriately sleazy ponytail, complete with pencil mustache and patchy beard. Bilan can still dance, and he can still sometimes sing/sometimes lip sync with the best of them.

*Funny moment, today Kimberly referred to the FSU (aka the Former Soviet Union), and I couldn’t understand how she knew my favorite frisbee cheer (aka F--- S--- Up). I should try to get my academic and athletic worlds sorted out one of these days…

Blog fail

2010-07-08T01:13:00.001-07:00

Had planned to post about the trip last weekend... but my free word trial ended so there goes that file for now. :( If you are on facebook, see pictures there.

Instead, if you really want a treat, check out http://www.kok-tobe.kz and look for the section on the Fast Coaster (there is an English translation that will rock your socks off). We rode it last weekend, and it was amazing. The English at the zoo was also quite fabulous.

Hugs!

Nora

Bus 63

2010-07-01T20:36:00.000-07:00

Bus 63 is my go-to bus in Almaty. The route takes me up to class everyday, and on the days after work when it is too late to walk, bus 63 takes me home again. It also goes past the Peace Corps office, which I’ve taken advantage of twice so far on this trip.

It’s not a particularly convenient way to travel. For the first couple of days I underestimated how long the trip would take; now I know to plan on a solid 45 minutes on the bus, about an hour door-to-door to class. When I first get on the bus, it is usually packed, standing room only. But after a few stops it empties out and I can snag a seat (though of course I am always ready to give up my seat to more deserving riders). Often we pause for a long while at the Green Bazaar, a major transit hub for the city. Sometimes as we approach this stop, the bus conductor will yell, “Ok, everyone off! There’s another 63 bus up ahead!” And everyone pours out of the bus at a frantic trot to switch vehicles. When this happens, everyone checks to make sure that they have their tickets in hand to avoid having to pay the 30-cent cost per ride again.

The Kazakhstan bus system is a complex universe. City buses, private buses, mini buses… each have their own conventions. Bus 63 is a well-run route. The drivers and the conductors, who wander the bus collecting money and giving out tickets, work together to regulate the bus, sometimes yelling back and forth to coordinate door openings and length of pauses at stops. Monitors stand at specific stops along the route noting the times that buses come and go. They help space out the flow of buses on the route.

I would like to know more about the schedules that the drivers and conductors keep. I’ve had the same conductor almost every morning this week, a blond Russian woman about my age who smokes pink-tipped cigarettes during the long stop at the Green Bazaar. At least once she has been the one to initiate the bus switch, meaning she gets to go on break, but clearly her schedule is irregular, as she doesn’t get that break at the same time everyday… Today I switched on to her bus, and it was the same bus as yesterday (same interior decoration of half-dressed women and football pennants) but I swear it was a different driver…

A couple days ago I ran for bus 63 at after a delightful dinner of shashlyk, plov, and beer. I’d gotten a ride as far as Furmanova and could see the bus trundling along. I dashed down the hill and into the bus just as it began pulling away. We started up and then began barely creeping down the road. One woman, with a bunch of grocery bags on the seat next to her, eventually put her foot down. “Hey,” she yelled, “Are we going to go or not? Some of us are trying to get home here!”

The conductor, a young Kazakh guy who is becoming familiar, was sitting up in front with the driver. “Sorry,” he called back, “There are just some really beautiful girls walking by…”

The whole bus smiled, though we tried to hide it from each other because no one smiles on a bus in Kazakhstan. Even the grumpy woman smiled. The conductor came back and apologized to her in person, and the driver picked up the pace.

It was a nice moment, and as the ride continued I began to suspect that our young conductor had probably had a drink or two on his last break. He was certainly not as diligent in his calling out of stops as he usually is, not to mention he seemed to have a bit of trouble navigating the floor of the bus.

Ready, ready, ready for a long weekend. 4 days off, with two holidays! Working on plans for travel or hiking. In classic KZ style we have not at all planned in advance.

Week 2. Check.

2010-06-28T00:17:00.000-07:00

Friday when I got home from class, via an ecotourism agency where we scoped out the possibilities for a mountain adventure next weekend, I was put straight to work. To be fair, I did walk into the kitchen bearing a bag of strawberries and asking if I could help. In short order I was slicing pickles and carrots and potatoes for soup. Host mother, host sister, sister’s friend, host brother: we all jostled for counter space and the stove. It was an amiable mess, with some moments of concern, such as when the oven door opened inches from my leg…

Hot oil, boiling soup, steaming oven. Good thing it was such a cool and beautiful day in Almaty. We’ve had a couple days of rain and cold (I’ve been vindicated for bringing along a few articles of warm clothing), so it was a joy just to walk home from class in the sun. Almaty is oriented with the mountains as compass rose. The whole city is on a slant. Class is “up” from where I live, so I take the bus. Coming home is all “down,” which makes for a pleasant walk through the heart of the city.

Of course, living on a mountain slope has its disadvantages. On Tuesday I was caught out on a walk when it started to pour. There have been a couple of thunderstorms so far, but this was a riot of rain that quickly turned into a flash flood. Rain in the city means it’s been raining for a while up above, and all that water has to go somewhere. Most of it seemed to end up in my socks.

Fortunately enough, the place I was going for an interview was not deterred when I showed up soaking at their door. From here on in, I’ll be spending a few hours a week with the Eurasia Foundation of Central Asia. There are quite a few interns on board this summer and currently we are all housed on the fourth floor of the building around a conference table. We are basically a secretary corps; my current task involves translating cross-tabulated data sets (don’t tell my Kazakh teacher that most of it is translation from Russian to English…). I am enjoying the chance to see how the organization works, and also the chance to shake up my schedule a bit!

Kazakh is difficult, but it is rewarding to be starting to recognize new words. Watching television is no longer quite such a mystery; I’ve even glimpsed a Turkish soap opera dubbed into Kazakh, which was my favorite way to learn Russian, so maybe I should re-develop my addiction. Speaking Kazakh in Kazakhstan is still a magical key. Yeah, people will stare at you like you are even more crazy than usual, but it’s fun to watch the reactions when they match your face to your words. I like to think I brighten the day of the two young people working in the samsa stand near the university when I make it to the front of the line and order my hot pastry puff filled with salty cheese. Russian is still far and away the lingua franca, but there is more Kazakh on the streets than I remember from two years ago.

Did you know that just last week in Ankara, Turkey they unveiled a new statue of none other than Our President? Whose birthday is on July 6, which just happens to be a national holiday (ok, so technically it‘s a holiday for Astana…)? Who was referred to in a poem in the state newspaper as “Ata-Kazakh”?

Really, I have no comment, just wanted to frame some rhetorical questions.

Also, for those who are concerned, we are keeping our eyes on Kyrgyzstan, though there hasn’t been too much in the local press about the on-going situation in the south. Osh and Jalalabad are both very far from here. I met an fellow ex-pat last weekend who drove through the region sort of accidentally (he had been out of contact for a few days before driving from Tajikistan north to Almaty). His report involved being shot at while driving around a road block; I’m sad to say this is probably the least harrowing of the stories coming out of the area. Let’s all just keep hoping for peace, and maybe for some answers.

My homework this weekend involved writing a 5-page paper in Kazakh. The theme was Human Relations. Somehow the length was both too short and far, far too long, especially after I spent two evenings in a row at Kazakh theaters.

Week 1

2010-06-21T01:13:00.000-07:00

This past week, after three days of the Kazakh language reminding me that every word is a tongue twister, I met up with some current Peace Corps volunteers. They are a part of the group that I worked with during training, way back in the fall of 2008. I remember them in their worst possible moments (just getting off the plane, during their first round of vaccines from doctors with Russian accents, struggling with their experiences in front of Kazakhstani classrooms); so it is wonderful to see them accomplished and feeling comfortable in this country. Their experiences have been very different from mine, yet I understand how they feel right now with just a few months left of service. Ready to go home!

They had plenty of gossip to pass along and also plenty of recommendations: a new Mexican-American restaurant, couches to surf around the country, and the marine-hosted Fourth of July party in Astana. It made me smile -- I remember well how it felt to have Almaty (and the Peace Corps office lounge) as a haven. How astonishing and wonderful it was to find carrot cake or a real pizza.

I tried to explain that, really, I have just come from America. That I’d lived another couple lives between my last time in Kazakhstan and now. That two weeks ago I was at the Ultimate Frisbee nationals tournament and spent an hour eating bratwursts and riding carnival rides. That I’m only in Kazakhstan for a few precious weeks. And that all I really want to do is stuff my face with laghman, manty, and cups of hot milky tea.

I am living with a great family near the center of Almaty. Our neighbor is the Esperanza café and discoteka. The family is helping me with my above food requests and has in general been very welcoming. Adizhan, the four-year-old youngest child, provides me with constant entertainment. I like to think we find each other equally fascinating. I’ve recently, at his mother’s urging, taught him to ask “May I?” with a good American accent before barging into my room. My first night here, blurry with jet lag and already falling asleep in bed, he came in to give me an impromptu goodnight hug. On the less fun side of things, I made him cry yesterday by telling him that he could not continue to play ping-pong against the wall (he lost the ball multiple times under the bed/couch). We do appear to be friends again today, though.

It is more than a bit strange to live in Almaty. For a recent Kazakh assignment, I produced the following sentence: “I think that the foreign students studying at KIMEP are not seeing the real Kazakhstan.” This is a bit harsh -- Almaty is certainly a part of Kazakhstan (though KIMEP, a regional powerhouse university, raises serious doubts), and city life in general is found throughout the country. But there is just something so unreal about being here. The traffic is crazy, but people still stop for pedestrians at marked crosswalks. Strangers on busses offer up their laps for the bags of standing passengers. The Mc Burger restaurant is near the bubble tea cart which is near restaurant with free wi-fi. Almaty is not an intimidating city, I don’t think. There is a sense of law and order, there are those looming mountains with their dramatic weather, there are fountains and many parks with rows and rows of blooming roses. I am enjoying having the time and motivation to wander.

One of my favorite things about Almaty is that no one ever seems to know where anything is located. I have already been asked for directions more times that I can count, and I was even able to help once. People ask what the next street is, where the bus stop is, how to get to the nearest pharmacy. Asking strangers is standard operating procedure, even for people who have lived in Almaty all their lives.

Then there are the wonderfully bizarre moments that I love. The bar, for example, with numerous prominently displayed signs reading “Smoking is strictly forbidden” that brings its patrons ash trays and makes no comment when cigarettes appear. The conductor who collects bus fare and passes out tickets while wearing a t-shirt that reads in large, friendly, pink letters: “I’m student. No money.”

I’m working on my collection of great t-shirts, by the way. Let me know if you have any to add. Personal favorites so far are: “I make boy cry” (so close!) and “party ou of bound” (and also out of space). There is a fabulous fake-newsprint plastic bag that I’ve seen a few people carrying on the street. I think it might be the Holy Grail of fake English, even better than the cartoon print shirts Jeff and I bought. Wish me luck finding one of my own the next time I go to the bazaar!
I’m spending plenty of time studying (3 hours of one-on-one Kazakh 5 days a week is motivation enough to do my homework), and I’m also catching up with friends. Saturday was my former co-teacher’s wedding, which came as a huge surprise when I called to tell her I was back in country. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get away or the tickets to make the trip to Zhelezinka this weekend. Last Friday was the circumcision ceremony for the Hooligan, who is now an astonishing 5 years old. Still not sure if I would have gone if I had found out in advance -- we had tickets to a concert at the grand Abai Ballet and Opera Theater, and the ceremony seems a bit, well, personal somehow. Might get a second chance if I’m still here in August, as Adizhan is approaching 5. At any rate, I’m hoping to get out to see my first host family soon.

That’s the news for now! Hugs to you all.

Almaty!

2010-06-11T23:41:00.000-07:00

Made it.

After two long, but not too terrible, flights we are here! Got in around midnight, made it through passport control, and then had that wonderful sinking sensation of,"Uh, where is my bag?"

Luckily, the rest of our small group (just five students, all graduate) got their luggage without any trouble. When I went up to make my complaint, the Lufthansa people had already been notified that my bag was left in Frankfurt. So it should be in either late tonight or early tomorrow morning. Not really a problem, not really unexpected, but here's hoping that everything arrives intact!

I'm staying with a family in a downtown apartment. It's pretty luxurious to be able to walk to a cafe with wi-fi. Our next door neighbor is a large diskoteka. Should make for some entertaining evenings. The family hosted a student last summer, which makes my job easier. They have some expectations already of what this experience will be like; so far their ideas line up with mine. I'm getting in some good Kazakh practice with their four-year-old boy. No huge communication mishaps yet, but I'm sure they are on the way.

Classes start Monday. I'll have three hours a day of one-on-one Kazakh language class. That sounds a bit intimidating to me, but I am looking forward to some serious language improvement.

No phone yet, but I am happy to report that the accordion player with the music stand and the pleasant voice is still sitting on the same door stoop that he was two years ago. And there are still doner kebabs and hot samasa on every corner.

Now the real test: can I wander back to my new home?

Hugs,
Nora

Return to KZ

2010-05-19T12:26:00.001-07:00

That's right, folks, I'm off to Kazakhstan again!

Rumor has it that blogspot is difficult to access in Kazakhstan (thank you, KZ government!), so posts may be sporadic or non-existent. "How will this be any different from your blog track record in the past?" you ask. Good question.

I'll be in Almaty, arguably the most lovely city in Kazakhstan, from early June to early August. The academic program is focused on Kazakh language acquisition -- I'm looking forward to being able to put together a complicated sentence again. I'm guessing there will also be ample opportunities to brush up on Russian.

My hope is to travel back to all my favorite haunts (Pavlodar, the village, Turkestan, etc.) and add some new ones after the program ends (maybe an Uzbekistan visa will come through this time... or Georgia!). So if you are in the area and itching to travel, let me know.

More as soon as I've got it...

Nora

PS -- Minneapolis and Madison kids, I'll be around for a bit between Bloomington and Almaty (May 22 - June 7 ish). Let's catch up!
PPS -- DC kids, I'll be around from June 7 - June 9 ish. Ditto the catching up bit.

One Year Back

2009-11-11T18:32:00.000-08:00

A year ago, I came home from Kazakhstan.

Honestly, the exact day escapes my memory. I remember that it was snowing in Almaty the day I left, and the streets were dark as we drove away from the Peace Corps office so early in the morning.

It is good to be back in America. I am throwing back on the personality I once had -- the person who has a full day, every day. Graduate school, work, and other obligations will make a person busy, and these are the aspects of life that I have chosen.

Sometimes I am shaken and I see my life through Kazakhstan eyes. What am I working for? Where is my family? Will I catch a cold from that open window?

There is not a day that I don't think about Kazakhstan or Liberia.

Part of that is a factor of this life that I am choosing: I work in an office draped with Central Asian paraphernalia. I got to colloquium lectures about the evolution of steppe pastoralism. I discuss public service reform in class and think about Liberia. I study the effects of language and educational achievement and think about my students.

I still find it hard to talk about. Yesterday I gave a video conference presentation to 7th graders in Ohio about the Silk Road (my job has included stranger things...). At the end, one of them asked me, "Was it difficult to live abroad for 2 years? What was is like?" How do you answer that? Of course it was difficult. But leaving was the scariest part.

It is so good to be home. I am learning how wonderful it is to be able to call people. I can think about someone, and then talk to them a minute later. This is an amazing thing after those long months of wondering, of having my weekly phone calls with the parents and the beautiful letters from friends as my only lifelines. It is incredible to feel like I am again a part of the lives of the people I love.

Sometimes I forget, though, and I let myself get sucked into this daily grind. I am trying to honor where I was and what I was. But I forget that for hours a day, for months at a time, I was a teacher. That my life was students and crazy English textbooks and a cold school building where I did squats between classes to stay warm.

I miss it. I miss the language, the banya, and I even miss the food. My first Kazakh teacher was here for an exchange program this fall -- we got to meet and talk for a few hours last week. And both of us complained about how American food lacks soup. Our other mutual pet peeve was shoes on carpets.

Mostly, seeing him reminded me of the people I miss. I get emails from my former host brother, who is now studying in Russia. His phrasing makes me laugh out loud. And berate myself for not properly teaching him: he still writes like a gangster (sista instead of sister, lil' instead of little). When I go back, if I go back....

In any event. I've survived the past year. I've lived in Almaty, Kazakhstan; Minneapolis, MN; Zwedru, Liberia; Minneapolis again; Montpelier, VT; and Bloomington, IN. I guess I'll recover from it all soon enough.

Stumping for Discs

2009-05-05T09:01:00.000-07:00

In the summer of 2008, six intrepid Peace Corps volunteers gathered in a small town in northern Kazakhstan. Their mission: to teach thirty 5-9th graders the fundamentals and joys of Ultimate Frisbee. Meeting every day for a week, the camp exceeded all expectations and a royally good time was had by all. We formed four teams, each with a volunteer leader, and throughout the week, calls of "Superstar Monster forever!" "Alright, Counterstrike!" "Yeah, Flying Crocodiles!" and "G-unit!" rang across the steppe.

Girls love Ultimate

Ultimate is a wonderfully addictive game, and soon these kids were hooked. Their leaders, older and a bit more prone to wear and tear, had to drag them off the fields at the end of morning practice. Afternoon activities included designing team logos, video clips of Ultimate, and one amazing project:

It would not be Ultimate without some tie-dye!

There are more photos and camp commentary on the June 28, 2008 post of this blog. Check it out!

Recently, my site mate Jeff told me that he is resurrecting the camp this year. Sounds like there has been a lot of interest from both the community and other volunteers. He is hard at work organizing and scheming for funds -- I'm writing here to get you all to help!

You can't have an Ultimate Frisbee camp without Frisbees. And discs are impossible to purchase in Kazakhstan. Last year, Discraft sent us some free reject discs (we covered shipping costs) and family, friends, and teammates came through with some beautiful new and almost new discs. THANK you for everyone that helped out.

This year, Discraft has said no more -- they have sent as many discs as they will to Kazakhstan. So I hope that loyal readers and passionate Ultimate stars will step up to help us out. Bring a disc to give away to Get Ho, or toss a few bucks my way to help purchase discs and mail them.

Just to head off the inevitable question of, "Hey, what happened to the discs from last year?" We made a rookie mistake and gave the discs away to the participants. Great idea, right? They could keep playing all year, remember the summer fun, etc.

One problem: all the Americans signed the discs and we used them as awards for participation. This turned the discs into precious mementos, not sporting equipment, and none of the kids want to use their discs, for fear of erasing those signatures and accolades. This year, in light of the growing interest in Ultimate, donated discs will be kept, either for future camps or for school sports programs.

Let me know if you are interested in helping out -- we would greatly appreciate discs, cash, cones, cleats, or any other Ultimate-related sports gear. I will ship what we've got in mid-May: every little bit helps.

Peace,
Nora

norawebbwilliams@gmail.com

An end to a journey

2009-02-08T15:06:00.000-08:00

Most of you loyal readers likely already know the latest news: I've returned home to the good old USA after almost 8 weeks in Liberia. This is more short-term that I'd originally intended. And let me say first that I am in good health and was mostly safe for most of my service in Liberia. I came home voluntarily for many reasons; the two easiest are that my work was not what I expected and that personally I felt it was time to reconnect with America. Regarding work, there was no job ready for me... I was assigned to teach English in a high school, but with scheduling issues I would have ended up teaching 6 classes in 10 weeks. This is frustrating because I went to Liberia expressly to work, to share my expertise, to really be of use. What is hard is to think of the students I left -- bright 10th and 11th graders who need all the learning they can get so that they might rise out of conflict and into wisdom. The classes were between 90-120 students each, a challenge certainly, especially as most were young men and some were older than me. I feel that I was up to the task, however, and I think that we made the most of the 3 classes we had together. It was curious to be addressed as "Madam" by students, but as the only female teacher on staff, it was understandable that they didn't take easily to calling out "Ms. Williams". I wish that we could have had more time; they deserve a long-term educator. Preferably one who knows the curriculum they are expected to cover and is paid by the Ministry of Education (as in the Soviet reconstruction period, most teachers have gone months without pay).

The second reason for my resignation from Peace Corps was personal. In Liberia, I had many interactions with international workers -- experts from the UN, consultants, NGO staff, etc. One unifying theme they all shared was a distance from their families and home cultures. Yes, it has always been a dream of mine to travel, to live abroad and feel the rush of being foreign, but not at the expense of my family and friends back home. I would like to be a better friend, sister, daughter, or if not better, than at least closer. I may still be awful about picking up the phone to chat, but at least now I have that option.

Liberia itself is a country still struggling, still trying to recover, still trying to hold onto peace and rebuild. Never before have I lived in a place where humans and nature were so bolding interfering with one another. The bush reclaims fallen homes; farmers and road builders burn the bush. The termites and cockroaches believe they own everything; humans try to convince them they are wrong. In many ways it feels like a losing battle: at times I wondered if it wouldn't be better to just leave this land of malaria and mold to the birds and spiders and jungle vines.

Of course, I had the option of leaving. The people of Liberia are boldly choosing the other option: they are coming back. Back from Guinea and the Ivory Coast, back from Sierra Leone and back, even, from the USA. They are brave, they have struggles, and I have nothing but hope and prayers for their success. I wish to see the day when, eventually, the UN will leave, the international NGOs will trickle out, and Liberia will try to stand on its own feet.

Peace Corps will probably still be there on that day, and probably will be there for as long as the government will have them. It was very inspiring to be in a country with such a history of Peace Corps -- former volunteers and FOL, you made some big impressions. My favorite landmark on the drive to Monrovia was a sign in Saclepea boldly proclaiming that they had a PCV from 1963-1965, "mentor, teacher, coach, you will never be forgotten."

Thanks for reading, let you know where the next adventure leads!

On the road again

2008-12-09T08:27:00.000-08:00

I was never really sure that I would be in this position again.... that is, sitting and humming with anticipation, ready to go back over the ocean. The bags are packed, the visa is attached, and the tickets are in order.

It is hard to imagine a more different country from Kazakhstan than Liberia, and yet Peace Corps is ready to take me to both. This time around, it is education from a more administrative position (at least as far as I can tell). I don't know much about the assignment or the organization I'll be working with, but I am comforted in knowing that this is just how the Peace Corps works. Anything that they told me now would be outdated by the time I arrive. We'll just have to wait and see and learn as we go! I'm most excited by the children's books I'm bringing. It was great fun to sort through all the books from my childhood and pick out a few.

There is a group of Volunteers (technically, we are Peace Corps Response Volunteers, or all returned Volunteers coming back for more -- this time in short term, high impact assignments) already in country. I'll be arriving with just one more gal. She is working on the midwifery project, which sounds like quite the job. After just a few days of training, we'll be out in the field!

As always, for safety reasons I will not identify where I'll be working or living by name or exact address. For that information, you can email me.

Well, time to go get the rest of my things in order. Wish me luck and traveling mercies!

Love,
Nora

Home, where my thought's escaping...

2008-10-27T22:01:00.000-07:00

I'm just going to put this out there once: two weeks from today, all things willing, I'll be on a plane, winging it home to Minneapolis... So anyone in the Minneapolis area, I expect to see you soon!

There's been a huge shift in my thinking from last week to this; suddenly the end seems so close and my energy is moving away from the new trainees and onto more serious questions like, "how many beautiful pieces of embroidery can I carry on a plane?" The trainees themselves are restless, itching to get out from under the watchful eyes of trainers and teachers.

The culprit that prompted all this distraction is site visit, the week long trip that trainees take to check out their new homes. I used this time to travel to my site, too. Only mine was a farewell tour, a last chance to see the people I've grown so close to. A lot got packed into 4 days: a birthday party, Republic Day concert, the Fall Ball beauty competition and school dance, a good-bye concert and tea at school, a good-bye cafe evening with my host family, a small but important send-off at the train station...

I snuck into my favorite classes at school and sang my favorite songs with students, made cookies with Jeff, helped the new volunteer who is replacing me settle in, got many, many, many presents...

In short, we wrapped things up and I finally feel like I have done good here in Kazakhstan. It was a very affirming week. Thank you, KZ.

Maybe more coming, maybe this is the end of the KZ blog? More stories, of course, but I can share them with those that want to hear face to face in just a few weeks!

19, 31, 53

2008-09-18T23:11:00.000-07:00

19, 31, and 53... Not only are all three of these numbers prime (I've been studying for my GREs, can you tell?), they each have a particular significance in my life right now, and they each represent a number of days. Curious? Read on!

31 is easy: that's the number of days the new trainees have been in country. They have started their teaching practicum and soon will find out where they are being sent after training. How exciting! I'm still enjoying working at training, though I miss my own site every day and can't wait to see them again in October (I'm going for a week to say my goodbyes).

19 is the number of days I've been observing Ramadan. Ramadan, the most holy of months according to the Islamic calendar, is known as Ramazan or Orazai in Kazakhstan. Kazakhs, like most other Central Asian ethnic groups such as Uzbeks, Tatars, or Kyrgyz, are nominally Muslims. They consider Islam to be a cornerstone of their ethnic identity, but they practice a strikingly secular version of the faith. Most Kazakhs rarely go to the mosque, don't know the words to Arabic prayers, and have never read the Koran They are similar in their practices to people I've heard referred to as "Christmas/Easter Christians," meaning they are moved by a faith and enjoy fun celebrations and joyful moments without the rigor of real religious structure. Perhaps needless to say, this means that very few Kazakhs observe the traditional Ramadan fast, in which it is forbidden to eat or drink anything from just before dawn to sunset. Besides the fast, throughout the month of Ramadan devout Muslims try to make peace with enemies and avoid conflict and be particularly careful around the always forbidden alcohol and pork.

I've known select people throughout my two years who have kept the Ramadan fast, including teachers, students, and fellow volunteers, but I've never lived with anyone who is keeping it before. This is the third time I've been in country for Ramadan, and in my third host family there are three of us keeping the fast: grandmother, oldest granddaughter, and myself. The first four days were rough, I tried to limit my physical activity, but my job involves travel and lots of presenting, not exactly conducive to saving energy. I whined about how lucky Muslims are in the Middle East: they are blessed with a late dawn and an early dusk, whereas we had to rise at 3.30am to finish eating by 4 and were not allowed to let anything pass our lips until 7:45 in the evening. Really, I'm just lucky the fast is in September: it moves back every year, so next years' fasters will have an even longer day. Somewhere around day 5, though, my body got used to it. There are still the occasional grumbles in my stomach and thoughts about a nice cold drink, but now the difficulty is mostly in reminding myself not to accidentally taste anything. As the days go on, breakfast tea gets later and dinner happens earlier, and I've only had one day where I felt I might faint. The culprit on that day? Not lack of food but lack of tea: I'd forgotten to have anything with caffeine at the pre-dawn meal and was hit with the corresponding symptoms of withdrawal as soon as I woke up for good. My 7.15pm emergency bottle of Coke on the ride home instantly erased my headache and nausea. I'll have to get over my caffeine addiction, but quitting cold turkey doesn't appear to be the way to go.

53 is.... the number of days I have left in Kazakhstan! Really, I've never been one of the volunteers with a daily countdown till the end of service, and I had to think pretty hard to come up with that number, but now that I look at it, that's a pretty small number. Less than two months... Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and globetrotting adventures will just have to wait. I decided last week that I'll need some recoup and recovery time back home once training ends. Seeing my name on a flight listing to Minneapolis was a heart-pumping moment: I'm not done with Central Asia yet and just thinking of leaving KZ brings tears to my eyes, but to see home again.... to speak to my family in person.... to have hugs.... to laugh with friends.... to eat all those foods I've missed.... It will be a joy to be back.

So plan a trip to Minneapolis in November! I'll be sitting in a coffee shop wrangling with the question of what comes next and planning my own trip around the country to visit you all.

Lots of love,
Nora

Round Three

2008-08-25T04:28:00.000-07:00

Quick, who can tell me how many gold medals Kazakhstan won in the Beijing Olympics? First person to answer correctly gets a free cheap ice cream cone dedicated to them before I eat it!

I won't ruin the surprise of your frantic Google searches, but I will say that I have watched Kazakhstan win gold, and it is an amazing thing. Kate (the other volunteer working at training) and I were literally jumping up and down in the Peace Corps lounge with tears in our eyes. It was a moment that attested to just how assimilated we two are; it really was like our country was winning. Or if not exactly our country, at least our cousin-country that we can't help but root for.

Peace Corps has long told us that our final three months in country would be our most productive, the time when we feel the most at home, and there have been other signs these past weeks of our final acceptance of Kazakhstani culture before we head home. Both of us have moved into new host families for the duration of training; mine is a couple with a large extended family and a good deal of respect/power/money in the community. To be honest, even after Kate and I were presented as the experts in host family living to the new trainees, I am surprised by how fast I've been adjusting to this new environment. Already grandmother is treating me as her oldest granddaughter, chores and treats included. Yesterday was a big party for almost the whole family; a bit of people overload but again, I felt adjusted. I was aware enough of traditions to know that I was not being tested but rather honored when they presented me with a large chunk of gelatinous sheep face to chew and an entire leg bone of mutton to pick apart. I felt especially respected, not especially repulsed, when the elders offered me a tidbit of brain and a cut of the hip bone meat.

There are different ways of showing love, respect, and affection, to be sure. Consider the event for which we had all gathered: a circumcision. This is an important moment for Muslim men in Kazakhstan, but I think every man I know in America will cringe when I say how old this little grandson was... the ceremony is usually performed for boys between the ages of 3 and 5. Our guest of honor had the surgery done Wednesday and the party Saturday to give him some time to recover, but he still walked bowlegged in a pair of pants with the crotch cut out. A wise parent safety-pinned a brown derby hat onto the hem of his shirt to keep him from bumping into anything.

Our new trainees are just starting out in Kazakhstan; they had a rough first few days with jet lag and a tightened schedule due to a flight delay, the toughest part of my job was staying awake myself and holding hands as exhausted trainees sat through a barrage of vaccines. Now they are starting their on own long paths to adjustment. I'm trying to get used to my new role as expert and guide; I'm also trying to stay out of their way. So far they are still humming with the new and problems have been small. However, there are a few who are already ending their time here. This is hard to see, as we have tried so hard to prepare for their arrival and there are so many sites waiting eagerly for a volunteer.

On a happier note, I'm preparing slowly for my own departure. In the works: Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan (visas willing), GREs (who knew you could take them in Almaty?), grad school aps (Central Asian Studies, Russian Language, Creative Writing?), and the holidays at home. Less than 3 months left! Can you believe it?

Love,
Nora

Time flies when you're having fun...

2008-07-22T00:30:00.000-07:00

Truly, it is incredible. After almost 21 months, I'm leaving my village today, still in shock, heading down to Almaty where I'll be working for the next few months. The new job is helping the next batch of Peace Corps trainees get through training and become real volunteers in November. After that, I'll be on a plane home, somewhere around November 11th. I considered staying here in KZ for a third year long and hard before realizing that if I stayed any longer, I would never get over my black tea addiction and would soon be wearing a full-fledged mullett.

My good friend Em came to visit recently; now my sister is lounging on the bed reading and waiting for me to get off my butt and make her some more local delicacies. Both visits have been so good; sort of easing me back into the world of English and Americans and backpacking and coffee. Em and I ended up bumming around Kyrgyzstan for around 10 days; it was my first and only time outside of the Kazakhstan border during my service, I am both proud of and embarrased by this fact. We met many other foreign tourists, great people travelling for months or even years around the world. Sometimes we met people wedded to their Lonely Planet guidebooks; in jest we began to refer to ours as the Bible, aka, the Good Book. Mine, from 2004, was clearly the Old Testament; 2007 is the New Testament; anyone still trying to use 2001 might as well be using the Dead Sea Scrolls. Only once did someone overhear us and think we were missionaries...

In my role as both fellow tourist and translator/guide (Kyrgyz sounds a lot like Kazakh, Russian is still widespread, I know how to handle my fermented mare's milk), I felt between the worlds of tourist and local, but mostly I was a tourist and mostly I had a wonderful time. Em has written about the trip on her blog, there are also a few links to pictures and blogs from people we travelled with listed on the right.

This village has been so good to me, I can say that without hesitation. Last night, over a few beers at a cafe with Evie (my sis) and my host parents, my dear Tatar mother looked straight at me and sprang the question: "Do you at all regret coming to Kazakhstan?" The answer was, and is, an unreserved absolutely not. The truth is, I know other volunteers who do regret coming here; life is not always easy, service is not always what we expected, we have sacrificed much from our lives in America. But I, for one, would do it all over in a second. Now, ask me that in half a year, when I'm dealing with the brute force of reverse culture shock and we'll see what I say...

In evidence of my luck in finding this village and this life and this work, witness how many people in the last three days have called me their daughter, their granddaughter, their girl. I've been taking Evie around town and picking up compliments like daisies; how I teach, how I'm active, how I sing... but these daughter comments still surprise me. What did I ever do to deserve such acceptance from women as talented as my Kazakh tutor or as strong as my Tatar host grandmother? Who ever said that my dear host parents had to adopt a second American into their home and support her so completely?

Oh, nostalgia, you're a dangerous thing. Some day soon I'll think objectively about my work, my teaching, my challenges and successes. But for now, I think I'm allowed to enjoy the positive spin on the past that comes with leaving. I will return for a few days in October for a proper good-bye. I must; I'm leaving my fur hat here as a guarentee! Until then, it's back on the road and hello new trainees.

PS -- Henry, thanks for the response to the Frisbee post, by the way. I think you contributed to the discs, right? Thanks; good luck spreading the good word around the continent!

Ulimate Frisbee in Kazakhstan

2008-06-28T21:56:00.000-07:00

Oh, those silly hippies... these are the kids that wore their shirts the last day; not everyone.

This is my Kazakhstan doppleganger, she even has the same catches

I almost subtitled this entry "The Revolution Begins;" that would be an overstatement, but it would also express just how excited I am after the Ultimate Frisbee camp we had last week at my site. Six Peace Corps volunteers taught thirty six kids from 5-9th grades the basics of Ultimate, from throws and catches to fouls and self-officiating. And while our success on that last topic is debatable, our kids were able to play without our help by the end of the week. More importantly, they loved it and it took a real effort to get them to stop playing and go home! They ran us into the ground; at every break the volunteers would collapse onto available flat spaces and fall asleep.

Oleg, Disc, War Memorial

There were problems. The first host family I placed volunteers in turned sour, so I ended up with 3 guests at my house (the fourth visitor stayed with Jeff). This was a blessing in disguise, as this group of volunteers, most of whom I'd met only through email, ended up being kindred spirits. I knew I was in good company on the first day, when Aaron, an NGO volunteer, began giving out nicknames. This is a surefire way of intenfiying an Ultimate officianado. I usually have the ability to shuck off nicknames like corn husks, but at least for this week I picked up a couple: Nora the Explorer, No-no, and Toys R Us (you'll have to ask Aaron about that last one, I'm still confused as to where it came from).

Nora, Jeff, Justin, Aaron, Nathan, Mary

To compliment and complete the hippie spirit of the camp, we made tie dye shirts, like the one I'm wearing in the above picture. This was probably the aspect that my school administration liked the most; something no one had ever seen before that we could show as tangible proof of the camp. Thanks to Jeff's parents for the dye and t-shit kit.

Nora and Erkin talk attendance and strategy

There's not much else I can say about the camp; partially I'm in shock that it's really over after months of planning and stress. I think I fulfilled my camp director role well and was able to solve most of the glitches that came up, from bloody noses to rehearsing
cultural centers that wanted to kick us off the fields. Enjoy the photos, especially those of you that are either Ultimate addicts or enablers.

Rosham (rock paper scissors) for pull (kick off)

Thanks to everyone that sent discs (Eli, Jill, anyone that contributed to the box my dad sent). With a last minute addition of cheap Discraft discs (they have a sweet deal to send Peace Corps volunteers rejects), we were able to give away about 25 discs to our most active campers. They were thrilled and when I saw one of the girls yesterday, she said she was already schemeing with friends to meet up and play. Viva healthy living! Viva sport! Viva Ultimate!

No! Albert! Don't huck it away again! Gulmira, nice mark.

Now off to Almaty, Em is coming to visit and I need to get us into Kyrghizia. She's blogging about her adventures here.

How can you not love this picture?

School’s out for summer!

2008-05-30T22:13:00.000-07:00

First, a huge thank-you to Jill Morrison, Prankster and brand-new Middlebury graduate. She sent me two beautiful discs. This is truly miraculous, not only because I need discs but also because they took only an unbelievable 7 days to get here. Nothing takes 7 days to get her from America, not even letters! So either Jill is magical (possible) or the Kazakhstan postal service rushes discs (not likely, but who knows?) or there is a quick direct mail line from Middlbury, VT to Pavlodar Oblast, Kazakhstan…. Thank you, however it happened.

School is out, and so are the clouds of gnats. We’ve had our final day of classes, our final big ceremony for graduates (called the Final Bell), and almost all our final exams. All that’s left is the big national test, called the ENT, for graduates. It’s a bit like the SAT or ACT in that it determines university eligibility, but the ENT is a much bigger deal than the SAT. It happens at the end of the year and is really the only factor universities look at for admissions. Your score also determines whether you will receive a grant to study. There are four required subjects (Kazakh language, history of Kazakhstan, math, and Russian language) and the fifth is chosen by the students. Many choose biology, physics, geography, or world history.

In my town, there is only one student I know of that has chosen English as his fifth subject. And though technically he goes to Jeff’s school and is Jeff’s student, he’s the son of the local ski guru who I’ve traveled and trained with, so I was recruited to tutor him (with Jeff’s blessing). This kid, Vitya, is probably the top athlete in the village; he’s placed well in both oblast and national level competitions for skiing, biathlon, and winter mnogoborye. We used to meet up fairly often down at the ski trail, he’d get in a few words of English as he lapped me, again. Last winter he was invited to compete in the Junior World Cup competition in Germany but had to turn it down; not enough time to get the visa. Naturally, I think he’s swell and wish I was in high school myself so I could date him. But I’m not, so instead we just get to hang out to discuss the finer points of Present Perfect Progressive Passive and laugh over all the errors in the English of the ENT. One memorable question asked students to find the correct word to describe “the flavor of the English national emblem.” Since the multiple choice answers were all about roses and thistles, not cinnamon and cayenne, I think we can assume the test writers meant “flower” instead of “flavor.”

Unfortunately, I won’t be in town for the actual testing. Fortunately, the results become available the same day (none of this wait three weeks for SAT nonsense) and I made Vitya promise to call me and tell me how he does. I’m impressed that someone from this town wants to become an English translator, especially a boy, as this is considered a more feminine profession. So send smart thoughts and prayers to Vitya on June second!

And if you have extra room in your prayers, send me some travelling mercies. Tomorrow I begin the long road to visit friends in western Kazakhstan, near the city of Aktobe. Officially I’m helping out with a camp, teaching English and games to eighth graders; unofficially I’m finally going to see what it looks like when Roman-agai, the first Kazakh I met in Kazakhstan and my language teacher during training, is in his home element. He is a fine man, a good musician, and he taught me so much. I can’t wait to meet his family and sing with his band!

Tomorrow evening I get on a bus to Pavlodar, then board a night train to Astana, then wake up and try to find a bus to the airport so I can fly to Aktobe. Train, plane, bus… it’s a nice trifecta. I’m hoping to add a car or boat if possible.

But for now, I’m going to pop over to the auditorium for a round table discussion. Today is a holiday of remembrance for victims of political repression. With all the Germans, labor camps, and state farms around, there ought to be plenty to talk about.

Post script: There was indeed a good deal to be said, especially by ethnic Germans from the area. At the end, the vice-governor of the region noticed me in the back and put me on the spot: “Oh, hey, I see Miss Nora back there! Miss Nora, tell us, would this ever happen in America?” And I got to give my two cents to the group of bored middle school kids and politicians, which was this: “Actually, you know, we did the same thing to people in America during the war. You had camps for Germans and we had camps for Japanese. So even though you students just said that today this could never happen in Kazakhstan because now Kazakhstan has a democracy, be careful and listen to these stories. It happened in America with a democracy, it can happen here, too.”

And now I really will sign off. I’m meeting some 9th graders to play Ultimate Frisbee in a minute. We’ll try to run faster than the gnats.

Love,
Nora

Wowie!

2008-04-27T02:48:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, I just posted last week and so it's unreasonable to expect any of you to check back in so soon for an unprecidented note, but this is just so exciting that I have to tell someone back home.

April 22nd was Lenin's birthday, and in honor of the holiday I sent a message to my buddy Jose down south. This is the same friend I visited a few weeks ago for the kokpar and camel tour. His site is very remote and quite conservative, and even though we stayed in different homes and took pains to inform everyone that we're just friends, the rumors still flew that we were a couple.

Anyways, a few hours after my text, Jose called.  "Guess what?" he said, "my Kazakh tutor's cow
gave birth to a new calf today!" When I was in town we spent lots of time with this man and his family, singing songs and eating with our hands.

"That's awesome," I replied, "Did they name the calf Lenin?"

"No," he said, "they actually named it Nora..."

Naturally I thought he was kidding, but then his tutor got on the phone and confirmed that, yes, the new calf was indeed named Nora. "Don't be offended, ok?" he asked in his quick Kazakh.

I wasn't fast enough to respond to him, so I passed my response along through Jose, "Tell him this is probably the coolest honor I've ever received in my life!"

And truly, it is. There is a little calf, a sign of spring and a source of milk and wealth, named Nora! Wow. Jose reports that calf-Nora has a mother named Micah and almost reddish hair.

When we were in training, our acting Country Director told us many stories about her 4-year service in Indonesia. Ten years later she returned to find the kindergarten/feeding program she started still up and running, and even more astonishingly, that there were three children named after her. One of them, unfortunately, was a beautiful girl named Schmidt.

I may not be the super volunteer worthy of children named Williams, but there is a special cow!

Love,
Nora

PS Happy Orthodox Easter. Last night I stood at church from 10.30pm -3.00am for the Easter vigil.  It was quite an evening.

Happy Birthday Abeeka and Hopa!

2008-04-18T04:34:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: I am not writing about my birthday as a means to guilt trip those of you who forgot. Really, please don’t send me belated wishes. If you do, it will just make me feel guilty, because unless you are one of my immediate family members, there’s about a 99% change that I don’t even know what month your birthday is in, much less the date. If you do insist on sending greetings, please accept my advanced/belated sentiments for all your past or future birthdays.

It was my birthday last weekend, I turned 23. This is not a huge milestone for most, just a pause on the way to 25 and a source of pleasant memories when scary 30 comes around, but for me it marks something big. When I joined the Peace Corps I was 21, the second youngest in my training group by about a month, and I was pestered by comments like, “oh, man, you’re only going to be 23 when you get out!” as though Peace Corps were a jail sentence and the faster you get through it the better. And now that I am 23, I am very aware that my service in Kazakhstan will soon come to a close. Yesterday I received a form in the mail asking for my banking information so Peace Corps can send my Readjustment Allowance when I leave. That’s scary because it means that a) I’ll be leaving soon and b) I have to find my banking information again. Haven’t touched that in two years…

To celebrate the big two-three I took my younger friends out to dinner/dancing at a local café the night before. It is considered bad luck to wish someone a happy birthday before the actual day begins, so we called it a “Good-bye 22” evening instead of a birthday party. All ten of us had a good time, I think, toasts were made, presents given, and we finished off lots of mayonnaise based salads, steamed meat/potato dumplings, chicken pie, and sweets. I even got cake and ice cream with candles! I don’t think I’ve done that since high school. I can’t help but laugh as I look at the presents in my room from the weekend; they reflect how well (or not) people here know me, from a silver necklace, a shawl and roses to an oversized stuffed rabbit and fake designer wallet. My favorite is a pink t-shit/tank contraption with both “Team International Cheerleading Team Meeting Official” and “Redwood Ranger” printed on in among other less intelligible phrases.

At 1 am, I slipped into a still warm banya and washed away the make-up and stress of hosting locals on their own turf – I think I got through without too many gaffs.

On the actual day, my host mother invited extended family and neighbors over to celebrate. As always, her cooking was delicious and the table was packed with salads, potatoes, stuffed cabbage leaves, my favorite dish of duck-in-dough with a goose substitution, and more sides than I can remember. And then, the coup de grace, I got to blow out the candles (again!) on a cake with “С днем рождения Нора!” written in frosting.

For birthdays in Kazakhstan and Russia, the gathered guests are asked to give well-wishing toasts. It is embarrassing to be praised so publicly but always fun to hear what people think you need. “May you find your soul mate,” “May you complete your work well,” “Health to you and your parents,” and “Love,” were repeated multiple times in three languages (or four if you consider Abeeka’s creative mix of Kazakh, Russian and Tartar to be unique). One aunt said, “Through you America has come closer to us; we are glad to find Americans are just like us.” Two toasts later, a neighbor begged to differ, “I disagree. Nora can’t have brought America closer because she’s not really American any more. She’s ours!” Thank you, dear friends, for your acceptance, if not quite as I am, then at least as much as you can.

As we finished our tea, Abeeka (that’s Tartar for grandmother) had the last word, pronouncing that, “when you get married, I will come and sing a special song for you and you will dance.” We had a practice session right there and then, turned out pretty well, so now all we need is a groom and the deal is on.

Two nights later on Abeeka’s birthday, I referenced her promise in my toast, “Abeeka, even though I am new to this family, I am still very proud of you. You are a window on history for us. Thank you. I wish you health and long life. May you live to come to my wedding!” She nodded her head, saying she fully expected to keep her promise. “Abeeka,” said one of her daughters, “you do realize you’d have to fly 22 hours to get there?” “Ok,” Abeeka said, “no problem.” We all laughed, but I wonder if she’s ever even been in an airplane; if she has, it was probably many years ago in the USSR.

Abeeka was turning either 84 or 86, depending on which source you choose. Her documents say she was born in 1922, her family says 1924. If you ask her how old she is, she’ll wave her hand in the air and scoff. Really, who has the time or memory to keep track of such things? She tells stories of coming to Kazakhstan in 1937, her mother having just died and Tatars migrating east to avoid collectivization. Her trunk was full, jewelry and clothing and head dresses all lost in the years since. On her birthday, her oldest daughter, acting as toast master, asked Abeeka to relate how she first met her husband, the father of this brood of 11 children. Abeeka thought for a few minutes then took us right back to 1937: she was married in 1938 when she was 16. Curiously, the rest of the family seemed equally intrigued by the story; from their reactions, this was a part of their history that they hadn’t heard before. Eyebrows went up, and we looked at each other in surprise.

The gist of the tale is this: Abeeka had never seen her husband, never shaken his hand or even said hello before they were married. She didn’t even know it was her wedding day until it was over. It was a first degree arranged marriage, if not a complete bride-napping like that common among Kazakhs.

“We were in a packed house,” Abeeka remembered, “no room for everyone, so we were sleeping by the corrals.”

“What did you think of Dad?” one daughter asked, “Did you think he was handsome?”

“Well,” Abeeka replied, “after two days they put up a curtain and then I liked him alright.” She’s got sass, this lady who prays five times a day, even if she doesn’t realize it.

In the middle of Abeeka's dinner, a friend from Middlebury called. It was the first time I've talked to non-family in almost 2 years. Letters and emails, yes, but what a strange moment to be talking to him!
Guess I should get used to it...

Love,
Nora

Where is the women's league?

2008-04-04T19:56:00.000-07:00

There are only a few times when yelling “rip it in half” is appropriate at a sporting event. Maybe at an origami competition or a paper snowflake demolition derby? And yet, last week I found myself yelling just that. My friend Jose looked at me sideways on our bleacher bench, saying, “Wow, I didn’t think you’d get this into it…”

But how could you not get into kokpar, dubbed goat carcass polo by English speakers tying to simplify the event? How can you not be thrilled by two men on horseback, each holding onto one hind leg of a headless goat and trying to gallop away in opposite directions? Wouldn’t you, too, cheer for them?

There are not a whole lot of rules to kokpar, though there are two versions: team kokpar, where four riders from each side battle over the goat, and individual kokpar, aka a wild free-for-all with upwards of a hundred riders possible. We were watching team kokpar at the Shimkent hippodrome. I’d ridden a train 36 hours south to get to Shimkent, along with a whole crew of other volunteers, for Nauryz, Kazakhstan’s spring festival. Theoretically, I was there to visit with Americans, warm up after winter, drink some beer, practice my Kazakh language, and explore the rich culture of Kazakhstan. In reality, I’d been hearing about kokpar for almost two years now and the temptation to finally see it was just too great. The irony being that yesterday the head of our local sport school told me that our town was chosen to hold the annual oblast-wide kokpar festival this summer. I guess I didn’t have to go that far after all, though I like to think that northern kokpar will be a very different event. And while I was south, I did get to see and do some other cool things, like visit Kazakhstan’s holiest Muslim site, a gorgeous mausoleum to a 14th century Sufi, and drink fermented camel's milk.

Kokpar came at the end of an afternoon of riding events, most of which focused on skills needed to be a great kokpar player. Wresting on horseback (trying to wrench your opponent out of the saddle, a useful skill in the tight scrums trying to get to the goat), bareback races (you’ve got to be able to ride fast if you hope to make it to the goal), scooping scarves off the ground (quite a trick of balance and trust that riders must execute every time the carcass falls), and jumping (kokpar doesn’t stop if a horse or rider goes down; you need to work around obstacles). These events were all fascinating in their own right, of course. Especially kyz kuu, which translates as “kiss the girl,” and involves women on horseback trying to outrace a male suitor. If she’s faster over a set distance, she gets to whip her opponent on the way back. If he catches her, he throws his arm around her shoulders (still at a gallop) and tries to steal a kiss. People debate over the true rules or intentions of kyz kuu, but whatever the origins, the modern incarnation is fast and hilarious. My favorite was the confident young lady who not only won her race but managed to blow kisses and wave to the crowd as she rode; she was a cross between Miss Kazakhstan and Annie Oakley.

By the time kokpar rolled around, most of the Americans were already petering out of the stadium; it was hot and there was a basketball game scheduled between rival factions of volunteers. I made Jose (my guide for the rest of my southern tour) stay till the end of the first game with me. I if I had known there was going to be a second game I never would have left.

The best moments of the game were the beginnings of each new point. The carcass (soaked overnight and so less likely to fall apart) was placed on one side of the field and at the signal of the referee, all eight riders galloped at it from the other side, each trying to be the first to reach and snatch the goat. Much of the rest of the game was taken up in scrums as knots of riders fought for a chance to break away towards the goals. To score, a rider must toss the goat (cleanly, no points if there’s a leg hanging out) into the center of a large ring, which lies flat on the ground and is surrounded by a moat of old tires. If a rider takes the goat out of bounds, the carcass is brought to the middle of the field perpendicular to where it went out and both teams send one rider for a face-off.

Those are basically the only rules.

Substitutions are on a tag-out basis, unless someone falls from their horse, at which time their team can immediately send in another rider. This happened once and watching the team try to capture the rider-less horse was almost as exciting as the game. The last I saw of it, the horse had slipped through a loose net of riders and escaped into the parking lot.

Pictures of the game are not sufficient, of course, but I’ll try to get some up soon. And maybe of some of the other sights, like the mausoleum, Jose flying a kite on the steppe (a very Peace Corps moment), camels, and me sipping on fermented mare’s milk (kumis, not to be confused with shubat, the camel version).

Happy Spring!
-- Nora

One Thousand Words

2008-03-17T02:18:00.000-07:00

This is my 5th grade class on the 8th of March (International Women's Day). I'm the redhead.

A hoar frost day last January. These pines are on my walk to school and outside my classroom window. Gorgeous.

My Day So Far

2008-03-08T22:45:00.000-08:00

If you accept that a day starts at midnight, mine began at a cafe out with two girlfriends celebrating International Women's day. We danced, they filled me in on all the gossip surrounding our fellow cafe-goers, and I got in a debate about Barak Obama's presidential hopes with a complete stranger. In other words, the usual.

We left before everyone else in the place -- it's a pretty serious holiday, especially when it falls on a Saturday. I walked home through slushy snow, got together my things for a trip to the city, and fell asleep. But wouldn't you just know it, something at the cafe got my guts hard, and I woke up at 2 am to regurgitate, as it were. Not the first and certainly not the last of my food poisonings in Kazakhstan; it's a reality, however unpleasant.

I was up again at 6:30 to wait for a taxi to town. But, just my luck, I fell victim to a miscommunication. The taxi driver I'd called hadn't gotten any more passengers, and so cancelled his trip. To let me know, he had either left a message that didn't reach me or called while we were out. Needless to say, he was not happy when I called him at 7:30 to figure out what was going on... Once that was cleared up, I took a walk in the grey morning to our tiny bus station. No problems there, tickets available and bus on time and everything!

The purpose of this trip is to get train tickets for me and Jeff and to coordinate a vacation down south with the other Pavlodar volunteers. We tried once already two weeks ago to get tickets, only to be told that the schedule was changing. Today I went straight to the train station from the bus depot, but luck is just not with me, and the ticket lady said due to a change, there were no kupe tickets (which you can reserve far in advance) and platzcart (or cheaper, fuller train cars) will only go on sale 5 days in advance. Foiled again! Frustrating to have to take a 3 hour bus ride in to find that out. On the bright side, I can leave money and documents with volunteers here and hope they are more sucessful at negotiating for tickets.

Now with 7 hours to kill till the return bus, I got on a tram to get to the Internet center. Not two minutes into the ride, the trolley stopped and our conductor said that traffic was stopped for trams on the next street, we were all going to have to get off. Half of the passengers stepped meekly off, the other half was up in arms, insisting on a return of their 30 tenge fare (roughly 25 cents). I cut my losses and braved the messy melting streets to walk here.

Whew. And now heading back onto the streets to track down another visiting volunteer.

The moral of the story is: travel is difficult in Kazakhstan.

Love,
Nora

2008-02-25T02:52:00.000-08:00

I appoligize for any spelling/grammar errors in advance, this is a rushed entry.

This past weekend I had the great pleasure of travelling to Pavlodar for yet another sports competition: the winter mnogoborye, aka the winter equivalent of the multi-event competition I reported on last summer. Only three events this time around, but equally curious: skiing (3km), shooting (10 shots on a bullseye from around 10 meters), and push-ups (not wussy push-ups with arms going sideways, but serious, elbows-back, nose-the-floor, on-your-toes monstors).

Our team, as to be expected, took first among the rural teams. Yea! I personally earned the team 135 points (each event is worth 100), which is pretty damn good for a beginner. If I'd earned 200, I could have become a Candidate for Master of Sport. At 230, you earn the title Master of Sport, I think. Every sport, from basketball to chess, has its own benchmarks for Master of Sport. From there you can earn Master of Sport titles on the national and international levels. Perhaps these titles were good for bonuses during Soviet times; now they simply indicate to your competitors that you are not to be messed with.

Unfortunately, I wasn't quite good enough to be an individual medalist. This is mostly due to the fact that all three women from our region fell into the same age bracket, and the other two are both Masters of Sport, so they and another woman kicked my butt and I took fourth. Curiously enough, shooting was again my best event, though I was disappointed -- I've shot close to 70 at practice and only managed 55 in competition. Skiing was decent, I earned 44 points on an icy track with a strong wind (points are given based on finish time). But push-ups...

To be honest, I'm pretty pleased: three weeks ago I couldn't even do a singe one of these arm busters, and on Saturday I managed 11 in a row. The set-up was pretty grim -- we were doing push-ups straight after shooting on a cemet floor covered by a thin oriental carpet, seperated from the metal pings of the range by only a thin curtain. Our judge (also my coach...) placed a wooden box about 2 inches tall on the floor. "This box has one loose board," he informed us, " so I'll be able to hear if you really get low enough." And he could, also disqualifying any attempts at push-ups with poor form.

After I did mine, the judge watching the guys doing pull-ups asked me why I wasn't breathing right. "How are you supposed to?" I asked, "and why are you telling me this now?" "I thought you'd know physiology," he replied. "No, I teach English," I said. "Yeah, she's our American. Speaks Kazakh fluently, too," put in our coach (I'm fluent in Kazakh to those who don't speak it). "Yeah," chimed in one of my competitors from another region, "I saw her picture in the paper in full Kazakh costume!"

Celebrity that I am, I was blown out of the water on those push-ups. One woman from my region has a new baby and hasn't trained seriously in two years. She did 26 push-ups without thinking twice. And my other teammate who trains seriously and is studying to be a coach did 51. A few years ago, our coach's wife (also a Master of Sport) did 126 in under 4 minutes at a competition. She's in her forties. How many can you do?

Later, I was sitting in a very focused room filled with athletes waiting either to shoot or push/pull. My phone rang, loud in the anticipatory atmosphere. Why is it that other volunteers always call me at the worst possible time? I answered, because volunteers are cheap and there's no guarentee that this friend would ever risk the cell phone minutes to call again, and began speaking hushed but unmistakably English. Usually my strategy is to never speak English in public. That way strangers can choose to believe that I'm ethnically German but still Kazakhstani, even if they've heard rumors of an American in their midst. And this is why: as my teenage teammate later reported,"it was amazing! Everyone in the room turned and stared at you with these huge eyes and shocked faces!" Needless to say, it was a short conversation under that kind of pressure. But when I hung up, my teammate couldn't resist rubbing it in: he nudged one of his acquaintance competitors and said, "She speaks fluent Kazakh, too!"

This weekend I also hung out with some other volunteers in between events. I think Jeff is reporting on those discoveries, so check with him for news of pickled watermelon, the bunker bar, and the man in the hip coffe shop we knew was foreign and guessed to be German, Italian, or Danish. When we worked up the courage to ask him, he turned out to be from Michigan. The only other American in Pavlodar, and we couldn't even recognize on of our own! Though he worked for a German/Italian company, so we were partly right.

Sometimes, through all the fun and excitement of this life, real horror creeps in. Coming home to the hostel where the team was staying, the woman on door/key duty made sure that I knew that I was coming in late (it was 10:30), and that there was no way she was going to let in the young man accompaying me (it was another volunteer making sure I got there safely). "I recognize my own," she said. I explained the situation and she was quite surprised to learn that I was foreign ("don't be offended, but I thought you were German with your pretty round eyes"). Within 30 seconds of her discovery, she asked me to do something for her and invited me in to her lounge. There she took out her wallet, opened it to three pictures of a beautiful blond woman and two of a young boy. Her grandson, she explained, and her daughter. "I just thought," she said, " that maybe you'd seen her in your travels, see how she looks like Alla Pugachova's daughter?" It slowly became clear, as my host began crying, that this daughter was lost. "Look at her nice breasts," said this mother, "You can understand why they would take her?" Human trafficking, she said. Words that aren't meant to go together. In the sudden tears and my shock, I missed most of the details, but the essence remains. I promised I would keep my eyes open for this seven-years-gone woman, and also that I would pray.

The next day, she was ending her shift as we went to breakfast. She greeted me as "her beauty," answered my awkward questions about the hostel, and we said warm good-byes. And I will pray and hope. What else is there left to do?

Love,
Nora

Tri-lingual All-star

2008-01-29T05:16:00.000-08:00

Last week a friend of mine came by for help (he bought a new phone and all the instructions were in English) and mentioned that my name came up in a recent all-region meeting with the akim (the local governor). To my surprise, I was not held up as a model teacher or praised for my active involvement in local sports and music events. Instead, my name was raised regarding the tri-lingual society that Kazakhstan so dearly craves. Most people in Kazakhstan are on their way to being bilingual – kids from Kazakh families learn English or Russian to competent levels in their school, and Russian kids, though they struggle with Kazakh, seems highly motivated to learn English. The trick is convincing Kazakh students that just Russian and Kazakh are not enough and convincing Russian students that it is their best interests to learn Kazakh. I speak all three languages daily, which I guess means I’m living the dream, and the locals like to talk that up.

Kazakh is an easy language, don’t let the Russians tell you otherwise. It has a few funky consonants, yes, and a wide range of vowels that all sound about the same, but the grammar is a breeze compared to the convolutions of Russian. Russian usually makes the list of most difficult languages to learn for three reasons. One, pronunciation is darn tough: stress changes, hard and soft ways to pronounce most consonants (which still trips me up and is a prominent feature in the American Russian accent). Two, the grammar is ridiculously complicated and mastering it involves a brutal amount of rote memory or a long stay abroad until you start to feel that here one ending goes and there a totally different one. Three, exceptions to the rule are the norm.

In Kazakh, exceptions are rare, almost nonexistent in the grammar and only occasionally appearing in pronunciation. I appreciate that. Plus it has some very neat linguistic tricks, like borrowing phrases from Arabic and sticking Kazak endings on Russian words. And it’s logical. Take the cardinal directions in Kazakh, for example. East is shughus, which is similar to the word that means to go out, or leave. So imagine you are the sun, and naturally you leave from the east. And where are you going? West, or batus, doesn’t really mean “to go to”, but it has the same first syllable as that verb and is only one letter removed from batir, which means warrior, and who usually rage from East to West. South and North are a piece of cake, too. If you are the sun, with your back to the East and walking towards the West, what is on your right side? North, or ongtustik, which in my totally unscientific etymological breakdown means “right-colored-place.” South, similarly, is “left-colored-place” or soltustik. It’s brilliant.

Don’t get me wrong, I love breaking down Russian words, too. I hope I’ll long remember the day I reasoned out “inevitable” without using a dictionary. The word in Russian looked like “un-run-away-able.” Makes sense, in its own way.

Still cold, but life goes on. My second and third graders still cheer when I enter the room and my fourth graders squabble over who gets to carry my materials to class. And planning for Frisbee in the summer warms my thoughts and gets me motivated.

Speaking of which, those lesson plans won't write themselves...

How cold is it?

2008-01-04T22:26:00.000-08:00

New Year’s in Kazakhstan is a blend of three American celebrations. Like Christmas, it is considered a family holiday. Everyone gathers together at home around the glowing tree, especially as the clock turns midnight, to eat, drink, open presents, and set off fireworks. At school in the week before the holiday we decorated an evergreen with lights and ornaments and had numerous New Year’s celebrations – as ritualized as any Christmas pageant in America. Father Frost came with his helper the Snow Maiden and watched as children, parents, and teachers held hands and danced around the tree singing familiar New Year’s carols. Brave children recited poetry or sang for Father Frost and were rewarded with candy or small gifts. Some danced or played games for prizes. For some reason, doing the bird dance is also quite popular at these events. Other aspects of almost every celebration included banishing some form of bad guy – usually a devil or Baba Iaga, the witch of Russian fairy tales who flies using a mortar and pestle – and welcoming the New Year in its Chinese zodiac incarnation. This year is the year of the Rat, in case you didn’t know, so when we set the table we made sure to put out nuts and cheese for him.

Can you picture this scene? Lots of little children holding hands and dancing around a giant Christmas tree. It’s like the Whos down in Whoville out of Doctor Seuss, except that these little Whos are all decked out in Halloween costumes. Apparently someone at some point suggested that New Year’s should involve a Masquerade Ball, so every year kids dress up to meet Santa. Some follow the theme and come as winter queens or harlequin jesters, but there were a good number of boys of the Batman persuasion, as well as a few bears, lions, and one spectacular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Girls use the opportunity to put on fancy dresses and wear makeup, claiming to be gypsies, Arabian princesses, and the like.

Halloween, Christmas, and New Year’s are all rolled into one. It’s no wonder this is everyone’s favorite holiday.

Last year I was so new to the area that I barely participated in any of the festivities. This year I attended parties at the sports center (Father Frost burst in on rollerblades with a rifle strapped on his back, congratulating us with the holiday and claiming to have just beat O.E. Bjorndalen in the biathlon), the local theater/music hall (good music, great dancing), and a dance at the theater just before midnight. Plus plenty of host family bonding. I’ve spent the last few days eating holiday leftovers, skiing when it’s not to cold, and theoretically planning for the next term, which starts much too soon.

It is, in fact, quite cold at the moment. Colder than last year, but I was reprimanded today for saying that it was really cold out – wait till the mercury hits -50, they replied. Granted, that would be a new level of frost, but I personally think -30s in the middle of the day is pretty chilly. It’s so cold that not only do my nostrils freeze together, my eyelashes freeze shut and at one point got stuck to the fur brim of my hat (I had the hat pulled way down – that baby is the best purchase I’ve even made. My head and ears are never cold). Forget Jack Frost drawing pictures on the windows. Our doors are rimmed in thick frost --on the inside. We have to use a hairdryer on the locks to get the keys to turn in the mornings. Outside the dogs are laying low; birds are fluffed up to twice their usual size, and a short walk becomes a mad dash to warmth. It’s so cold that your legs start to ache as soon as you walk outside. It’s so cold that I frostbit my nose. It’s so cold that our super hardcore local high school ski team has to train inside and local races are cancelled. Brrrrrrrrrrr!

Hope things are warmer where you are (they must be… I don’t know anyone living in the Arctic Circle at the moment, do I?). Take care and happy, happy, happy 2008!

Finally, some pictures

2007-12-15T20:38:00.000-08:00

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:

2007-11-23T03:59:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-08T23:13:00.000-08:00

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

2007-10-19T21:49:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-02T04:11:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-27T05:26:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-16T02:00:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-06-13T04:26:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-06T01:09:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-19T05:46:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-04-05T06:45:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-10T22:00:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-28T03:36:00.001-08:00

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?

2007-01-06T23:22:00.000-08:00

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

Another post so soon? No way!

2006-12-05T05:44:00.000-08:00

Hi to all the faithful followers of foreign cultural experiences. I hope in reading this you successfully put off whatever it is you should be working on, whether that be a paper, this week’s bulletin, or a financial report.

Work continues with ups and downs. It would be too long to go into those right now, so let’s skip to the good stuff.

My high for the week has to do with cultural adaptation. There are a couple of signs that I’m fitting in well. I went to my first choir rehearsal and have been encouraged to keep coming to play volleyball even though I am far from the best player. I keep trying to explain that my game is Frisbee, but it might be better to wait until spring to demonstrate!

And I’m fitting in well with my host family. This is a family in transition, much as my family back home is. Two daughters are studying away from home, leaving a high-achieving brother close to graduating high school and parents settling into new roles. My host mother comes from a family of 11 children, many of whom are still living in this same village. Their great-grandmother matriarch and my host father’s parents are frequent quests. So what with husbands, wives, and children running around, things can get pretty busy here, especially on Saturday nights when everyone comes over to use the banya.

Disclaimer: this next passage contains blood and guts. Not for the faint of heart.

Last Sunday was a particularly large gathering: if Ait Kuni is the Kazakh equivalent to Trick-or-Treating, Sorghum is Thanksgiving. Sorghum is a day of preparation for many cold months. It is also a Muslim holiday to celebrate the year’s successes, measured by what animal you are able to slaughter, from the poorest chicken to the common sheep. We, being well-off, slaughtered the very best: a horse. And I got to help. It was one of those things that made perfect sense at the time until one of the sisters turns to me and asks, “So, what really are the differences between America and Kazakhstan?” And I could have said, “Well, in America, I would not be sitting here, blood under my fingernails, hacking with a dull knife at still-warm horse flesh.” But instead I said something about Americans valuing the individual over the communal. To which everyone shook their heads in disapproval, talking about how wonderful it is to have a good collective around you. This is a very real sentiment here; I was recently featured in the local paper (yup… complete with obligatory photo of teacher bending over student’s shoulder in an instructive manner) and it was interesting to note what struck the reporter as worth mentioning. There was nothing about the goals of Peace Corps or the work that I do. Instead, readers learned what my parents do, that my sister is studying to be an ecologist, and that my brother is in the 12th grade. Family is important here, as is the fact that I probably won’t get to go home to see everyone for two years.

But about the horse. I used to wonder if I could eat something that I had seen killed. It has always struck me as strange that I’ve made it this far in life without watching what I eat die. I’ve never been hunting and I’ve never lived on a farm, so I guess that accounts for it. But I have lived in Kazakhstan, so we can now answer one of life’s persistent questions. And in the affirmative: yes, I will eat what I have seen die.

I have never seen so much meat in my life. The women sat in the kitchen while the men, fortified from the cold with some vodka, did the most strenuous work and cleaning. In good time, they sent us huge slabs of meat through the back door and we got to work dicing for a special day-of dish of boiled meat and potatoes. As soon as that cauldron was filled, we started on the next, this time to make horse sausage (mixed with onion and garlic and stuffed conveniently in cleaned intestines). Many times over we filled bowls as big around as my encircled arms. I lost track of how many times we stopped to sharpen knives made dull by wooden cutting boards. My favorite part was the liver – bigger than a dinner plate and about the texture of guava paste. Now that I think about it, I probably just appreciated that it was easier to cut than the other stuff, which was difficult to work with on the account of fat and membranes. Which, incidentally, we did not discard. Everything went in – from cartilage to weird bits of bubble fat. Yum.

And while I can’t yet speak for the sausage, the meat is pretty tasty and might just be worth the effort.

Stay warm,
Nora

2006-11-24T06:13:00.000-08:00

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

I Have Seen My New Home...

2006-10-22T01:43:00.000-07:00

What's the best way to stop an SUV? Answer below. Hint: it turns the road into a slow-motion video game.

I'll bet you are all curious about my permanent site -- and if you aren't you should just skip to the last paragraph. In general, this is a super long entry, so take a break, go get a cup of tea, come back in a week, or skim as you see fit. This might be the last entry for awhile.

The time leading up to our departure for week-long site visits went well: our Halloween community event was a big sucess, but nothing like we had imagined it! Which I think is how most things will go for the next two years. The pumpkins our students carved ranged in color from grey to pink, and most were pear-shaped. They made for some wonderful jack-o-lanterns. Personally, I liked the one where our tenth graders carved the shape of a heart, wrote my name on the cutout piece, and gave it to me. Aww...

These are the same girls who I watched yesterday march around the school yard in military fatigues.They were participating in a Military Class competition, showing off their ability to follow the orders of a peer drill sergeant. And despite the sheer strangeness of seeing 10th grade girls singing marching songs and yelling commands, I was still pleased when my girls won.

But anyway, I was talking about my site...

To find where I'll be for the next two years, look up at the handy Kazakhstan map I'm sure you have tacked to your wall. Start in Almaty, down in the south east corner. Then head north, dipping around the western edge of the bizarre, half-salt, half-fresh Lake Balkash. Stop at the train station to pick up a huge, eyeless, split-open smoked fish from one of the vendors on the platform. Say good-bye to the hills you pass on the way -- they are the last bit of elevation you will see for quite a while. Welcome to the semi-arid steppe. Between here and Astana, the new capital, enjoy looking out the window at miles and miles of dust. Admire the ghost towns and the towns you think are ghost towns until you see smoke rising from dilapidated chimneys. Wave to the lone horsemen and their flocks of cattle. Imagine you are in western North Dakota.

You'll pass through Astana in the night, maybe waking up on your bunk when a new compartment-mate boards the train, or maybe stirring when the train comes to a station and you body senses the lack of motion. Be prepared -- when you get off the train and try to rest, your body will still sway, missing the rocking sensation. Get off the train at the end of the line, in the relatively large and mostly Soviet-looking city of Pavlodar. Then hail a taxi and follow the Irtish River north. In about 200 kilometers, just south of the Russian border, you'll come to a village of about 4-5,00 people. This is my new home. Total travel time: 30 hours by train and 3 hours by car.

I am excited about my site. The land is steppe, but the village is on one bank of the Irtish river, almost on the edge of the Siberian forests. So there are both a good number of trees and an incredible expanse of sky. The place gets cold in the winter with lots of good snow to ski on and hot in the summer with plenty of gnats. The people are a mix of Kazakh, Russian, and a small population of Tartars. There used to be a large German contingent, but most of them took up the offer of repatriation and abandoned the country -- leaving behind more ghost towns and German-looking genes.

Everyone in the village speaks Russian: the proximity to Russia means that the influence of both Russian and Soviet culture has been very strong. But the Kazakhs are making a comeback, as evidenced by my work site. I will be teaching at the new Kazakh 3rd School, which was completed in 2002. All classes are taught in Kazakh (theoretically; I've noticed teachers slip into Russian from time to time), and so are the day to day administrative operations of the school (ie, meetings, schedules, signs, etc). What is so wonderful about this placement is that I do not have to give up all my years of studying Russian, but that I also have motivation and opportunity to continue learning Kazakh.

I call the week at site my Trial by Fire in the Cold Rain and Snow. I met an incredible amount of people, used almost every word of my Kazakh, taught 20 hours of English in grades ranging from 2nd to 10th, met my new host family, broke in my winter boots, ate amazingly fresh and rich milk products, answered ridiculous questions about myself and America, helped in the cafeteria, schmoozed with the visiting school inspection comitee, etc, etc, etc. The 30 hour train ride back was actually a nice rest.

Probably my favorite parts of the entire week were the students, sweetend milk that tased like custard, and my new Kazakh/Mongolian tutor (she'll get her own entry later). Every morning, all 200 students at the school gather in the gym for pre-class aerobics. They form ranks based on grade, the smallest ones in the front and the 11th graders looking cool in the back. And then they all do stretching exercises to the count of their gym teacher. Bir! Eki! Ush! Tort!

If you've never seen eight-year-olds in suits doing hip swivels and reaching for the sky, I highly recommend it. I, for one, had to try my hardest not to giggle as I watched their earnest efforts: as a monitor for the activity, it would have been decidedly unprofessional to break into laughter.

The answer to the stop-an-SUV trivia question is: try to get it through my village just as evening sets in. Why? Because the streets fill with cows. Every night, just as the air gets dusky from coal-fired banyas and burning trash, cows pour into the village from wherever it is they go all day. They use the main streets, moving as herds until they get closer to home and then going their seperate ways. These cows do this every day without prompting: there are no herders, and only when a cow doesn't come home is there any problem. Unless you are trying to drive through town. Cows are slow, and they don't respond well to horns. But the impatient, and crazy, Kazakhstani drives don't let that daunt them. They weave through the cows and mud, crisscrossing the road in an effort to find the best path. It really does remind me of some sort of computer game: dodge the cows without going over 5 miles an hour. Don't get stuck in the mud!

The really fun thing is to walk against the flow of traffic, and by that I do mean the flow of cows. They just don't give a damn where you want to go. But if you can find a spot with the river and the mountains and the setting sun, it is worth the game of dodge-cow.

I have three more weeks to revel in the cows before I leave for my site. If for some reason you have read this far and were planning on sending me a package sometime soon, you should wait until I get a new address. Packages or letters that reach the PC office after I'm gone won't be forwarded to me, meaning I probably won't get them until January

Thanks for words, prayers, and love. Hope to give you some more contact info soon -- maybe even a cell phone number!

Love,
Nora

2006-09-24T03:58:00.000-07:00

Hello dear friends and family,

I wasn't planning on coming into Almaty to write today, but the one thing we've been told a million times by Kazakhs and Peace Corps staff alike is that everything changes at a moment's notice in this country. So take the opportunities you have and write to the US when you can.

Have I really been here for a month? It's difficult to believe. Sometimes the time just rushes by: my days are filled with Kazakh language class, student teaching, organizing English club after school, planning a community event to celebrate Halloween, and relaxing with family and friends when I have the time. And often being with family and friends is less relaxing and more of a cultural lesson! After a week of these full days, I wake up on Sunday mornings in shock that another week has gone. The days are never slow, and the weeks are picking up speed as training continues. Consider: our community project will be finished next week (we're celebrating Halloween a month early with our school. I get to do lots of translation to try to figure out what we're doing. Things change every day, so I can't really tell you what it will be. And it happens in less than a week!), we find out our site placement for the next two years on Saturday, then we have a conference for a week in Almaty where we meet our future teaching partner. Right after that we get to actually visit our sites for a week and meet our communities. At this point, we are all itching to get to our actual sites (at least I am), so that week will be a dream. It might also involve lots of time on a train, depending on where our sites turn out to be. When we get back, only a few weeks of training remain before we strike out on our own.

I already know that I will be sad to leave my training village. I get along well with my host mother/sister and she has provided a fascinating view of her generation of Kazakh women and men. Her husband makes me feel at home whenever he is, and their 1.5 year old son get more comfortable with me every day as I take on more babysitting duties. Plus, the dogs in our yard don't bark nearly as much as they used to when I trek to the outhouse.

I'm currently student teaching 5th graders (10 and 11 years old). They are mostly hilarious, and know even less English than I know Kazakh. I personally liked their response to the question "Where is Miss Nora from?", which my co-teacher asked after I presented myself to them for the first time. "Miss Nora is Miss America!" one boy shouted, and I almost lost it.

As I get to know people more and more, my walks to school get longer. I have to answer choruses of "Mrs Nora, Mrs Nora! How are you?" and greet assorted neighbors. It is wonderful, and people have started asking why I can't just stay in the village instead of going to a new site.

Are you starving for cultural details of my life? Here's the briefing. The climate is similar to Minnesota. Rain has started, which brings down the dust and gives me great views of the mountains. Mornings are cool and days are perfect. Food is meat heavy, but not excessively. We eat lots of sheep, some beef, and rarely horse. The rest is filled in by bread, noodles, soups, occasionally fruit or vegetables, and lots of black tea with milk and sugar. Last week I was treated to a Kazakh national dish day. First, my host father brought home a sheep, slaughtered it, and we ate fresh, rich internal organs cooked with potatoes and onions. Then we ended up going to a neighbors for a visit and being served besparmak (another Kazakh national dish): flat noodles in onion/dill broth topped with lots of meat and both large and small intestines. I can't say that I love intestines, and organ meat fills me up after a few bites, but the honey they put in front of me makes up for everything.

The religion is a mix of Islam and Orthodox Christianity. Almaty boasts both a huge new mosque (rebuilt after Communism) and some exquisite churches. Our village has a beautiful mosque in the center of town -- I expect to see lots more activity there in the coming weeks. Why? Because today is the first day of Ramadan (or Ramazan). Few of our families are keeping the fast, but all acknowledge the holiday.

Other cultural points are: soviet schools, tea drinking, beautiful songs, stick fiddles and dombras, and intense family ties. Forty days after a baby's birth is the party to recognize them as truly born. Weddings are something I have not yet witnessed, but the rumor is that they are amazing. What I have witnessed is the party celebrating a bride kidnapping. When couples want to mary and their families can't agree on marriage terms, they groom can kidnap the bride and bring her to his house. This forces the bride's family to concede her, in a way. We visited the day after she was stolen to celebrate with toasts of wine and vodka and food. A happy couple, but she said her parents were still crying...

I miss home in the quiet moments.

And it is time for me to go back to my village, but I'll leave you with this image. As we walked down the modern streets of Almaty, we saw a young woman, modernly dressed, leading a donkey down one of the main streets. And there, surrounded by Land Cruisers and internet cafes, she stopped, organized her bags, and got on her donkey. She rode away on the sidewalk. Maybe some day I'll be used to these juxtapositions of livestock and city bustle, but all I could think was "Only in Kazakhstan..."

Lots of love,
Nora

2006-07-20T11:07:00.000-07:00

Well friends, the time has come to jump into the blogging pool. Forgive my newness, technical incompetence, and inability to predict the future. I may write often, I may write never. Maybe there will be pictures, but maybe you'll just have to use your imaginations. We'll just have to wait and see how the Peace Corps and the Kazakh steppes treats me!

Here's the latest: I leave August 20th (that's in less than two weeks...) from Minneapolis. Then after two days of basic introduction to the Peace Corps in Philadelphia, I'll be boarding a plane for Almaty, Kazakhstan. I have three months of training somewhere near Almaty before I start my secondary English teaching assignment. Training sounds like it will be a crash course in Russian, Kazakh, Kazakhstani culture, health, safety, and teaching. Post-training, I'll receive an assignment, likely in a small town or village. Until then, I won't know where exactly in the country I'll be posted -- might be near an airport, might be 40 hours away by train.

Peace Corps will officially allow me to have visitors after my first 6 months of service and before my last three months. So plan accordingly, friends, because I'd love to see your smiling faces on the other side of the planet. And I probably won't be back in the States for at least 27 months. Aaah!

I'd love to hear from you all before I go. I've had a lot of time to think about how amazing my life and friends have been so far as I sort through old cards, playbills, fourth grade writing assignments, photos and love letters. I can't wait to find out where you are and what you are doing two years from now! Keep me posted.

Thanks for all your support getting this far (I know I haven't been the most stable friend in the past few months as this all works out) and thanks in advance for all your thoughts, prayers, letters, e-mails, etc.