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
Friday, July 27, 2007
Monday, July 16, 2007
Meet the Parents
Hey y’all,
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
Love,
Nora
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Summer is a coming in!
Well, hello, dear friends, family, and parents of other Peace Corps volunteers who read all PCV blogs. A special hello to incoming Kaz-19's who might stumble onto this page, we're already looking forward to meeting you at the airport and welcoming you to the life.
So, were you worried? Did you think I had fallen off the face of the earth even more than usual? Wonder if I had pulled a Kurtz and cut off all contact with the outside world?
Well, fear not, the long silence came not from any trauma but simply from a lack of email access and the appearance of summer break. My host family's new Internet service doesn't seem to reach across the ocean and our school connection is also mysteriously down. So I went to a different city, 12 hours away by bus, just to write to you all. Not actually... I'm working/relaxing with some volunteers and exploring the picturesque East Kazakhstan Oblast. The city is pretty, lots of parks, fountains, and wide streets. Makes sense for a place founded in 1720, and I think it's fair to say that it is especially well-groomed at the moment, as the President is paying a visit in a few days. I'm indulging in some longed-for activities, like cooking with curry powder, going to the movie theater, and speaking English rapidly. Plus some raptor gazing (is that a hawk or an eagle?), staring at mountains, and strolling by rivers.
It is always a trip to hang out with other volunteers. At first, we trudge through the required questions: how's your site? Where are you again? Do you speak mostly Kazakh or Russian? What grades do you teach? What do you think of the new Peace Corps travel policy?
In our own way, we are as uncreative in our questions as the Kazakhstanis we work and live with.
And it's funny, because most of the stories that we can tell to make you laugh and gasp back home are becoming fairly routine. Everyone has a story about a dog encounter (though only a few can boast of bites), a hell bus ride, harassment from men (both male and female PCVs), and struggles with language. Even comparing bathroom stories has become blase.
So we are slowly remembering how to talk and act with Americans. Harry Potter has come up more than once. Baseball is a fixture on the television. We tossed a frisbee. We tell those stories that we can't to locals because they simply take too much explanation (for example, talking about college life requires a lecture in the education system of America, after which no one wants to hear about your friends' quirks). We can discuss history and politics and gender as well as Office Space, Homestar Runner, and Billy Idol. It's kind of nice.
What's next? More time away from site, this time travelling and visiting with some local connections. Has the potential to be a real adventure worth talking about -- I can see it going either incredibly well or becoming a nightmare.
If you want to contact me, don't let my lack of email stop you. Snail mail is always a joy and I can occasionally check comments on this blog. I still miss you all, even if I haven't always been able to find a way to say it.
Love,
Nora
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
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Tall, fast, exotic, and famous
Kazakhstan has a funny way of fulfilling all my long-abandoned dreams. Here I am tall, fast, exotic, and famous – all things that I had mostly resigned myself to never be in America. These are the unexpected benefits of Peace Corps service.
The list of positive things I am learning about myself here goes on, of course, but this week brought out those four aspects. First, I competed in a volleyball tournament in Pavlodar as a new recruit representing our region. We didn’t play very well, but still, at a whopping 5’6” I’m poised to keep my spot on the team next year. Second, for the holiday on May 1st (used to be International Worker’s Day during the USSR, now is dedicated to national unity), I danced with a group of our teachers representing Uzbek culture. Organizations from around town took on a culture to present – ours involved national dress (hair in tiny braids, caps, tunics and flowing pants), dance (movement led mostly by wrist twisting and shoulder rocking), music (recorded horns and drums), and food (the ever popular plov – sort of like friend rice with mutton or chicken). Looking at pictures of the dance, I am the conspicuously tall, light-skinned redhead in a crowd of dark skinned, dark haired, round-faced dancers. And everyone in the crown seemed to already know me, I caught at least one “Americanka” spoken to a neighbor as we walked through the crowd. Such is my life.
You can’t help but encounter stereotypes of Americans here. Some are remnants of Cold War propaganda – one woman told me that her understanding of America was pornography and anarchy. More modern impressions come from film and mass media. And from these sources people have conflicting images; some see America as incredibly clean, trash free, and inhabited by movie stars. Others ask me if I’m scared to walk on the streets because of all the violence. Many think that there are no wild places left in America and that we all live in cities. Most believe that Americans don’t cook at all and only eat food prepackaged and factory made.
One student came to a harsh realization when I presented an “at the store” dialogue using dollars. “What, don’t you have tenge in America?” She was quite surprised to learn that we use only dollars. Her confusion makes sense, as here the dollar is often used to quote prices and the exchange rate is posted ever in our tiny two-teller bank. Saving money as dollars or euros is a natural reaction after the out-of-control inflation of the tenge during the 1990’s. So surely American banks must also display the tenge exchange.
Or the teacher, who when I told her that my parents bought tickets to come to Kazakhstan in July (yea!), responded, “It’s only May! Will it really take that long for them to get here?”
Like I said, I’m exotic here, with a very different understanding of the world than most people I interact with. It’s quite refreshing, even though I’m often bombarded with the same questions in every new social situation and it is a challenge to come up with new ways to explain who I am and why I’m here.
But it might be worth it all just to be fast: yesterday in conjunction with an upcoming holiday, the local government sponsored a track meet. School aged kids ran a relay and then the adults got to try their luck at the 1.4 km loop through town. Now, I’ve never run track or cross-county and at least once in my life I’ve renounced running for good and declared that I hate it, to the dismay of my marathon-running mother and sister. But I run here for exercise and may just have to start training more actively to keep up my reputation. Surprisingly enough I won the race for my age group, much to the delight of our gathered students, my friends from various sport events, and our school staff. Word spreads fast here and by the time we went out for a beer yesterday evening, the waitress knew enough to congratulate me on my victory. Not a bad first week of May.
In short, this can be a very difficult, confusing, stressful, sad, frustrating, and aggravating life. It is easy to feel angry, scared, and uncomfortable and want to bag the whole experiment and head home. There are certainly more pleasant or familiar places I can imagine myself, but even when things are the roughest, I know that there really is nothing else I would rather be doing and no experience I would rather be having.
Love,Nora
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
Thursday, April 19, 2007
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.
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.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
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
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
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Skiing in Kazakhstan
The past few weeks have been a lesson in the openings and closings of a post-Soviet school system. Something about March, I guess, threw things into a whirl. We had school closed for a whole week due to flu quarantine, then a handful of days of shortened classes due to cold, then the school closed completely for another day because our classrooms were below regulation temperature. For two weeks everyone was just sluggish, myself included. Last week there was a holiday, so school closed again and our schedules were confused by performances and parties.
International Women’s Day (March 8th) is a big deal, though I have mixed feelings about it. Men and boys spend the day congratulating all the women and girls in their lives with nice words, flowers, and gatherings at cafes. The local government sponsored a concert and gave female teachers and government workers white scarves. I went out with friends and colleagues and toasted the afternoon away, then danced and ate cake all evening. Traditionally, women are not allowed in the kitchen on this day and the men do the vacuuming, tea-pouring, cooking, and dishwashing. Sometimes they have to ask for help, though, since they only do these things once a year. The women put their feet up, get the remote, and relax. For one day. It sort of reminds me of Black History Month in the US – we celebrate the lives and work of an exploited segment of the population for a little while and then return to our normal roles. Wouldn’t it be nice if everything, from historical representations to household chores, were evenly distributed throughout the year?
At any rate, things at school are returning to normal just in time for the end of the quarter, and I’m preparing to make the trip down to Almaty for a Peace Corps conference. Seeing other Americans again… I’m not really sure I’m ready for the shock!
It’s a Sunday, my day off of teaching, and I’m preparing to do my Sunday business – laundry in the tub, skis looking at me longingly. They assure me snow will be here through the end of March, but we’ve had some days that are almost warm enough to melt the icicles, so I’m not taking any chances. Time to get skiing!
Here are the things I love about skiing in Kazakhstan:
The people. No matter where you go, cross-country skiers and ultimate Frisbee players are just good stock. They understand that their sport looks ridiculous to outsiders and that makes them particularly patient and fair to their own kind. Even the uniforms level the playing field: no one looks good in full-body spandex or with snot icicles on their chin. Or in an 80’s prom dress.
The woods. Our groomed ski track is down by the river, and to get there you have to walk out of the village. Your companions are other skiers, horses and sleighs going for firewood or hay, and women with metal cans on sleds breaking the river ice for water. Birds, trees, frost, the occasional herd of horses… One day I checked out the river instead of the track, following the u-bend past the ice fishermen. It is surprising and wonderful how quickly you can get to a place where there are no humans or houses in sight.
The exercise. I feel very American in wanting to move. Kids play sports, but sporty adults (especially women or non-gym teachers) are rare here – people with jobs and homesteads to maintain don’t have the time or the extra energy. But there’s nothing like a good ski or a dance around the living room to bring back my optimism.
So get outside and listen for the spring bird song – it’s coming soon!
Love,
Nora
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Nora sings at a wedding
It’s hard to believe that January is almost at an end. Thanks to the holidays, work, and skiing, this month has flown by. People here warned me about January – usually this is the month of negative 40 degree temperatures. Last year was a particularly harsh winter in this part of the world; you may remember news clips of record cold temperatures across Russia, and this band of frost extended down into Kazakhstan. I was looking forward to experiencing new depths of cold, having school cancelled, and bunkering down. But climate change sent another curve ball this year, and yesterday I awoke to the first above freezing air in quite a while. It was a shock to see things melting, but our speculations about the early arrival of spring were short-lived. By noon the cold had returned, and fresh snow covered the newly-formed ice later in the evening. This morning I awoke to the kind of warm winter day that makes you want to play. But skiing down the frozen river an hour later, I watched a front of blue-grey clouds crowd out the sun. We may be in for more snow.
The wind in this village keeps the sky and the land changing. It blows from the south, from across the steppe, and enters our streets from the river banks. Most trees in the village show signs of the wind, with short branches on one side or a list to the north. Sometimes walking home is like heading into a wind tunnel or like standing on the top the Snake Mountain cliffs. One day on that mountain I looked over the edge and watched from above as peregrine falcons circled, never once flapping their wings. Some mornings here I walk outside and am startled to hear the birds – this is the first sign that the wind is taking a break. Things feel very still on those days, everything is tentative without the rattling signposts or the rush of the pines lining the path to school.
The birds here are new takes on familiar forms – sparrows with large brown cheek patches, chickadees accented with yellow, blue, and green (they must have tumbled with parrots at some point), and magpies with long, white-flashing tails. I am surprised by the rarity of crows, but rock doves are the same the whole world over. My hands-down favorite, though, is the Kazakh woodpecker. On still days, I like to listen for and track down the local pair. They like the stand of pines behind the school, the little groves of aspens by abandoned factories, and electric posts everywhere under the sun. Why are woodpeckers always some combination of black, white, and red? They all have the same blueprint of colorless patches accented with crowns, stomachs, and crests of red. It’s like all the versions of woodpeckers got together one day around a bucket of red paint. Some dipped in their heads, others slid on their bellies. The Kazakh version appears to have sat down on a bright red bench before noticing the “Wet Paint” sign. I’m sure it has some sort of official name, but I think it’ll always be the Red-Butted Woodpecker to me.
Work has settled down, my counterpart has returned, and the class load is manageable. The plus side of the experience of teaching alone is that I have learned a ton of names from a combination of fear, necessity, and sneaky methods. Sneaky method number one was having students “practice writing their names in English,” while making name place cards at the same time. I asked my fifth graders what they wanted to be when they grew up and had them draw it on a small piece of paper. The put their names on the back and I had a new stack of flashcards to memorize. But my favorite thing was having the upper grades pick new English names. They came up with them all on their own (though I insisted that Shakira was not an English name), and their choices will tell you where they get most of their information about America. I have two Britney’s, a Madonna, a Kelly, two Jennifer’s (one Lopez, one Aniston), a Bruce Lee, and a David Beckham. I almost had a Chuck Norris, but Almas picked Jimmy instead and I couldn’t convince him otherwise. I gave some suggestions when people were stuck and was rewarded with a Tony, a Megan, and a Paul. My family and friends have namesakes in Kazakhstan!
Yesterday I went to the wedding reception of one of my Kazakh colleagues’ son. The bride had already been stolen a few weeks ago (this means that the wedding was a love match, not a crime), and lived with her husband’s family, so it wasn’t a real wedding, but a big deal nonetheless. The bride, I learned, was 17. Her husband was probably her age or older, but he could have passed for 14 or 15.
Almost the full compliment of teachers and administrators from our school attended the wedding. The rest of the hall was filled with family from as far away as Uzbekistan and friends of the bride and groom – some of whom were my students. Needless to say, my face will stick out like a sore thumb in the wedding video footage.
Anyways, as usual, the guests were expected to give well-wishing toasts. We teachers all went together and each said two words or less. I was thrilled to have gotten off so easily (my Kazakh can handle a two word toast), but the MC and the DJ (both teachers) called me back up as soon as I sat down to sing a song in Kazakh. Now, I know a handful of Kazakh songs, but I don’t know any of them completely. Luckily, about a month ago the DJ and I sang a duet for the birthday of my Kazakh tutor. So we jumped into that song and he started the first verse. I stood looking pretty, trying desperately to remember one of the lines from my verse when a middle-aged guest I didn’t know (who must have had a few vodka toasts in his belly) came down, took me in his arms and started dancing. Between birthday parties and random social gatherings, I’ve come to enjoy the chivalrous slow dancing here – it ranges based on dancing ability from junior high swaying in place to full ballroom spins. But this particular dance with a short man while cradling a microphone and trying to remember lyrics quickly began to border on the absurd. But never fear, my dear Americans, I have once again managed to successfully preserve our image abroad and come out of this experience ahead. Other couples came forward to dance, helping mask when I butchered that one line of the verse and forgot that we were supposed to sing the last chorus twice. After the song ended, my dancing partner disappeared, and I didn’t see him again the whole evening. And my reward was the praise of the family and a pen from the MC
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
Saturday, January 06, 2007
So, what are you doing, exactly?
The people have spoken and demanded to know what their hard-earned tax money is being used for in Kazakhstan. The question is easy: Nora, what exactly are you doing in Kazakhstan, land of unimaginably large steppes and huge oil and natural gas reserves? The short version is that I teach English, but that doesn’t really cover it. It seems to me that most people can talk for a very long and boring time about their work… so I will try to do so with a minimum of Peace Corps jargon and a maximum of interesting stories.
There are three schools in my town, mine was finished only a few years ago and has the most up-to-date facilities. We’ve got two computer labs that American schools would envy, a pretty auditorium, nice cafeteria, gym, etc. We also have a museum stocked with Kazakh crafts (most of which were made by my Kazakh tutor) and a “winter garden” stocked with cacti. I have never seen students in either the museum or the garden. They are always locked, as are the computer labs. And while those computers are really nice, the printers have spotty ink and the only a handful of teachers use the equipment. My classroom is rigged out with individual head sets to listen to language CD’s (of which we have few), but they mostly go unused because I provide authentic pronunciation practice (often contradicting the British English on the tapes).
In theory I teach with a co-teacher, a local counterpart. This is great because she can do paperwork (grade books are a big deal here) and help with discipline (I’m reluctant to take the advice of my principal, that is, just give one of the kids a whack – pretty sure he wasn’t joking). But she has just left for a month to work on her university degree, so I’ll be on my own. The grand totals: 25 hours of teaching a week, 10 grades from 2nd to 11th, and around 150 students. It’s going to be a challenge, but as Peace Corps says, if the schools were perfect, we wouldn’t be here.
The school was built to accommodate a strictly Kazakh speaking program. In Soviet times, Kazakh was deemphasized in favor of Russian, and schools like this are part of the attempt to revive (or artificially create, but that’s a different essay) a Kazakh national identity. There are still huge repercussions for the repression of language. Many Kazakhs and most Russians speak little on no Kazakh and getting them to learn it, especially up here in the North, is a difficult task. Many Kazakh families speak only Russian at home, and the media is far and away in Russian. Our students generally converse with each other in Russian (though they are sometimes yelled at for that). A friend told me that when he first came to work at the school three years ago, only 3 of the teachers spoke fluent Kazakh. Teachers still ask each other for help in translating our Kazakh textbooks, and my counterpart often drifts into Russian during class. My Kazakh tutor says she routinely uses me as an example to rouse her reluctant students, along the lines of “If Miss Nora can learn Kazakh, so can you.”
Some don’t see the point of learning Kazakh, as even some higher-ups in the government don’t speak it. Peace Corps trained only 10 volunteers this fall in Kazakh and the remaining 60 in Russian, reflecting the needs of the schools in country and the practical needs of volunteers. You can get by with Russian, but knowing only Kazakh limits you to certain areas (though in those places you are a hero) There are signs of progress, such as the US ambassador beginning his Independence Day address in Kazakh, but it is a slow process. I try my hardest to only speak Kazakh or English with my students, but when they address me in Russian, my mouth automatically responds in kind. Often I’ll walk down the hall and be greeted in rapid succession by three different languages. “Salemetsiz be, mugalim?” “Strastvuite, Miss Nora!” “Hello, teacher.” It’s a good wake-up for my brain in the morning.
My biggest challenges at work are discipline, paper work, and learning names. I get along well with the students, but sometimes we are on completely different pages. Mostly the problems come from cultural differences and language barriers (the English level of my students in any given grade is pretty much null), but I am also a new teacher, which accounts for a lot. Grading is not a problem, except when all my students rush me at once at the end of class begging me to give them good marks in the little books they show their parents. That can get crazy.
Names are a serious adventure. First, I’m trying to learn about a million of them, from teachers and students to extended host family, neighbors, politicians, cross-country skiers, and local singers. Second, I’m ok with Russian names, but Kazakh can be a trip, as many of them sound both completely unfamiliar to me and very similar to each other. There’s Alibek, Aigirim, and Aksana. Botagoz and Ayagoz. Dana, Zhanna, Aidana, and Ainara. Serik, Berik, and Aibek. Gurnul and Nurgul. Galya and Gulya. Their names are also a vocabulary lesson, as each name has meaning. Sometimes I translate their names in my head to help with memory recall, but most often that just makes me feel like I’m on a commune. We’ve got Holiday, Love, Moonbeam, Moonflower, White-Thought, White-Soul, Flowerbeam and Beamflower. Not to mention the hoards I haven’t managed to translate yet. I sometimes get called “Nora-zhan” or “Nora-soul” as both an affectionate and respectful title.
On a side note, I recently made my second appearance speaking Kazakh on television. This came yesterday after traveling to Pavlodar with the regional teacher’s league ski team. We raced against all the best teachers from the oblast (basically, the state). Expectations were high, as our region has won the meet for the last few years.
To get on the team, I came in second at the regional ski meet (out of a total of two women). The next day, two women, three men, and out regional team manager traveled to town, strapped on our skis, and for two days alternated between sleeping, eating, and skiing. And we won! By almost 15 minutes! Mostly by virtue of our first place ski guru/coach, who waxed our skis perfectly and regaled us with stories about when he raced in the World Championships at Lake Placid. But I came in second among the women and was on the first place coed relay team, so I like to think I helped. Kazakhstan is helping me live out my dreams of being a fast skier. They want me to start going to shooting practice so I can become a biathlete. If I do, I’ll be sure to let y’all know.
Oh, and I ended up on TV by virtue of being the only American and one of the few Kazakh speakers at the event. I didn’t see the actual program, but my colleagues at school were full of praise yesterday, so I guess I didn’t butcher too many words.
Happy Belated New Years and Happy Orthodox Christmas (it’s today)!
Love,
Nora
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
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Another post so soon? No way!
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
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
Friday, November 24, 2006
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 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
Sunday, October 22, 2006
I Have Seen My New Home...
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
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
Sunday, September 24, 2006
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
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
Thursday, July 20, 2006
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.
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.
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