One of the many ways in which living in Kazakhstan is a bit of a paradox: I don’t have running water in my home, but I do have satellite television. And while no form of entertainment can possibly make up for missing the current season of Mad Men, it’s a nice amenity. Mostly, if I choose to watch TV, I watch it on my computer—thanks to the kids in Shymkent, I now have a bunch of new stuff, including several episodes of Glee, which I have been burning through at an alarming rate—but hanging out with my host siblings, especially over school holidays, involves a lot of television. Here are some important facts I’ve gleaned from prolonged exposure to Kazakhstani TV:
1. Zach Braff has sold his soul to the devil. That’s the only explanation for why, in addition to being on American television 36/7 (36, you know, because of that one network that has programming from parallel universes), Scrubs is on Russian MTV all the time when I flip through the channels here. And it’s not even the episodes from way back, when Scrubs was kind of good (or at least tolerable)—these are the ones where Zach Braff grew stubble and apparently finally got together with Elliott, which caused her to affix some kind of shiny, impenetrable shield of make-up to her face and attempt to escape him by starring in terrible Lifetime original movies (which is really an oxymoron). This is what I assume happened, anyway—since it’s all dubbed over in Russian, it’s kind of hard to tell what’s going on. I can’t really figure out the logic of what shows make it onto TV over here—there’s some newer, pretty good stuff, like Ugly Betty, and then there are super-old and inexplicable choices, like Hercules and Andromeda (Kevin Sorbo, like Enrique Inglesias, apparently does much better in Kazakhstan). I keep hoping that having Hercules means they’ll also air Xena at some point, but so far this wish has gone unfulfilled.
2. Kazakhstan is where bad American movies go when they die. All those movies you forgot existed, because they bombed so utterly that even their creators swore, on pain of execution by a Hollywood death squad, never again to mention their names? Those movies you’re not even in danger of accidentally catching part of on TV, because no self-respecting network will air them? All those movies are here. Meet Dave, Drillbit Taylor, The Love Guru, The Spirit, Catwoman, several horrible Christian Slater movies I’ve never even heard of—I’ve seen a number of American movies here you couldn’t have paid me to sit through in the States. In Russian, though, they’re weirdly fascinating, and at the beginning of my time here, I was homesick enough that any glimpse of Americana—even the absolute worst of it—was comforting. Now that I’ve loaded up my hard drive with movies I actually want to watch, though, I hope to minimize my contact with Christan Slater for awhile (unless THT decides to air Heathers, which—much like the chances of them airing the Xena episode where Lucy Lawless feeds strawberries to Marc Anthony while Natalie Merchant’s“Carnival” plays in the background—is highly improbable.)
3. Cartoons are awesome, in any language. I have discovered—or maybe just decided to admit publicly—that I have pretty much exactly the same taste in entertainment as a 12-year-old boy. Which is sweet, since I live with a 12-year-old boy, but awkward, because I also live with a 15-year-old girl, who seems pretty nonplussed when I choose to watch Clone High over Project Runway. (Oh yes, they have Clone High, a fact I discovered on November 22, which is a little weird, since the show stars a clone of JFK and features a diner called “The Grassy Knoll.” Coincidence? Or is Kazakhstan a key part of the Kennedy conspiracy...?) The best network here, in my opinion, is definitely 2x2, which is a lot like Adult Swim—including the black and white bumps, King of the Hill, The Oblongs, Futurama, and Home Movies. I have not seen some of the weirder stuff on yet—I don’t think Aqua Teen Hunger Force would make even a mild amount of sense in Kazakhstan, but Metalocalypse might appeal to a post-Soviet sensibility. The humor doesn’t always translate—if you watched King of the Hill here, for instance, you would think Boomhauer is a mute, since they don’t even attempt to dub his lines, and the Texas accents don’t so much come through when attempted in Russian. You can still sort of hear them, though, since they don’t actually erase the original track: they just dub over it, so you can still hear (faintly) the English dialogue. It makes it a little easier for me to catch what’s going on—I get the beginning and the end of every other sentence, and make up everything in between.
4. Russian TV is like American TV, only…Russian. The whole dub-over thing is kind of a taxing way to watch television, so sometimes I prefer to watch the straight-up Russian shows, where there’s no hope of me understanding the dialogue and I can sort of zone out and pretend the whole thing is an absurdist art film. Sitcoms here are like sitcoms everywhere: zany, family-oriented antics accompanied by laugh tracks, where you don’t really have to pay that much attention to get the gist of what’s going on. My host family’s favorite—"Papa and Daughters”—is about pretty much exactly what you’d guess: five daughters and their father’s attempts to manage their various dramas and mishaps (although there’s also a mother on the show—I’m not really sure why she doesn’t make it into the title). There’s another one about two video game-playing stoners that’s pretty hilarious, and a "Little Russia" skit show (with the same logo design and set-up as Little Britain). A lot of the sitcoms here appear to be blantant rip-offs of American shows—there’s a Russian version of Married With Children that I can understand perfectly, because the characters and plotlines are pretty much exactly the same as in the original. There’s another that seems pretty close to Everybody Loves Raymond, but my host family seems to hate it as much as everyone I know in the States hates Everybody Loves Raymond, so I’ve never watched it long enough to confirm this.
Like in the States, reality television is big here. There’s this epic show called Dom 2 that’s on seven times a week, and appears to be about absolutely nothing. It looks to me a lot like the British Big Brother, where people are filmed just sitting, laying, or sleeping around, with no editing or attempts to make the material in the least bit interesting. My sitemate Tes, who has watched the show more than me and actually did some research into it, says it started out as a contest, where couples were competing to live in the house they were all building together. But the show has been on for five years now, and everyone is still just hanging out—and people still love it. I would think this was weird, but then I remember that there was more than one season of Flavor of Love, and that I watched more than one season of Flavor of Love, and I realize I probably can’t judge anyone for their reality TV choices.
5. Jesus loves you…even in Kazakhstan. On my first day with my new host family, they graciously asked if I’d like to watch English television. I said yes, of course, thinking that maybe I’d lucked out and would have access to CNN or BBC. So my host brother showed me the three English channels—two of which were filled with shouting, sweating, Southern-accented televangelists, and the third with an Australian park ranger puppet singing a song about all the happy children in the world who had made Jesus their best friend by being born again. I had a brief, Truman Show kind of moment, where I thought perhaps I hadn’t left East Tennessee at all and the entire country of Kazakhstan had been constructed as part of someone’s elaborate plan to totally eff with me, but then I remembered that NBC aired the Left Behind movie several times when I was living in Turkey, and the world is just crazy all over. If televangelical television seems absurd in the States, where the only people I ever knew who watched it with real interest were my friends and me, at 3 a.m. (due to some very poor life choices, I still get occasional automated phone calls from a faith healer trying to sell me Miracle Manna), it’s beyond bizarre here in Kazakhstan. First of all, most people don’t speak English well enough to understand any of it, and even if they did, I sort of doubt a hysterical, Muslim-hating old white man in a bad suit or a stuffed bear that sings endless, tinny rounds of “Jesus Loves You” (for only $19.99, you guys!) is going to convey a Christian message of peace and love to them. America and Australia, however, are not the only ones sending out Jesus-y waves—there are also several Chinese and Korean channels that seem to have pretty much the same aim, with huge revivals and frequent appeals for cash.
I’ll do a blog post about the holidays once I’ve recovered from the sugar-and-vodka coma that my New Year’s Eve celebrations are sure to induce. Until then, enjoy the last, fleeting hours of 2009!
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Friday, December 11, 2009
"Horsin' Around:" A Disney Channel Kazakhstan Original Movie
Being in Kazakhstan is kind of like being pregnant, what with the frequent morning sickness, inevitable weight gain, and sudden, insatiable cravings for normally unappetizing foods. This morning, for example, I was struck with an overwhelming and inexplicable desire for Cinnamon Toast Crunch, which I don’t think I’ve eaten since childhood. (Actually, that’s a total lie—the last time I ate it was probably during the sugar-crazed all-nighters of my last semester at college, when a 2 a.m. bowl was ritual). Other vaguely gross foods I’ve experienced powerful hankerings for lately: Waffle House waffles (with enough butter and syrup to drown an Olympic athlete), Little Debbie Christmas tree cakes, sweet n’ sour chicken, movie popcorn, and Wendy’s fries dipped in a Frosty. (There’s just something about that oily chemical aftertaste...) I’m not sure these are even things I would enjoy eating—I’d probably prefer something leafy and Mexican right now, if I truly had a choice—but I think the withdrawal from a lifetime of eating preservative and additives-laden American food is starting to kick in with a vengeance. It’s like how you never really want McDonald’s fries until you smell them, then some latent switch activates in your brain and you black out, only to come to minutes later with salty lips, grease-smeared hands, and a terrible sense of regret.
Kazakhstan’s major food groups are basically bread, meat, and candy. There’s a lot of fruit in my region, but outside of “tois” (parties held for weddings, birthdays, or, as far as I can tell, the hell of it), it’s not really on most people’s tables. I keep a stash of bananas, apples, and persimmons in my room, since all these items are ridiculously cheap (way less than a dollar a kilo) at the bazaar. I’ve sort of given up on vegetables for the time being—when I move into my own place it’ll probably be worth seeking them out, but for now I just have to consider the sandwiches at my school (which, though they also contain sausage, eggs, ketchup and mayonnaise, do include shredded carrots—sometimes) a healthy life choice. Besides the lack of balanced nutrition, I eat pretty well here. My favorite dish is manti, which are these giant, meat or vegetable-filled dumplings you top with beets, a red pepper-garlic sauce, or sour cream and eat with your hands. They were a hugely popular dish in my training village, where they were usually stuffed with fresh pumpkin and pure magic. The big thing here—besides beshbarmak, which I’ll get to in a second—is plov, which is rice with bits of meat and carrots. It’s actually an Uzbek dish—same with samca, which are these delicious, meat or cheese-filled pastries (think Hot Pockets, except three thousand times better and made with real food)—but we’re only an hour from the border of Uzbekistan, so it’s especially popular and tasty here.
And then there’s beshbarmak. It’s the national dish of Kazakhstan, and consists of huge pieces of meat, fat, carrots, and potatoes, set atop a giant platter of noodles. You eat it with your hands, which—for me, at least—gets out of hand (get it? GET IT?) pretty quickly. The noodles are slippery, the fat is, well, fat, and there usually isn’t a napkin in sight: it’s pretty much impossible to eat in a dignified fashion—which is unfortunate, since the whole time you’re eating it, people are watching you to determine how much you like it and urging you to eat more any time you stop chewing. While the meat—which includes parts of the animal I can’t and probably shouldn’t try to identify—is usually sheep, I have, in fact, had horse meat beshbarmak. (Horse meat is pretty expensive, though, so I haven’t had it too often.) It doesn’t weird me out that much, since I have pretty much the same amount of attachment to horses as I do to cows, and I figure if I choose to eat meat at all, I can’t make too much of a fuss about what animal it’s from. One of my good friends from training loves horses, though: she’s been riding since she was a kid, and had her own horse up until she went into the Peace Corps. So she was really excited to discover her host family had two horses—until I pointed out, in a Debbie Downer does Kazakhstan kind of way, that if these horses hadn’t been mentioned or seen during her two months of living there, they probably weren’t so much pets as…dinner. I’d like to say there was a happy ending to that story, and we freed the horses in some kind of hilarious, climactic sequence involving clever misdirection, a series of increasingly outlandish disguises, and a Miley Cyrus song about girl power, but as we are in the Peace Corps and not a live-action Disney film, that is not so much what happened.
Besides my weird cereal fantasies, I guess the most important news from the last week is that winter has officially arrived. We got our first snow two days ago—it happened during the night, so I didn’t realize it until I was halfway to the outhouse and thought, “I know I don’t have my contacts in, but is the world usually so…fluffy?” It was really pretty—for a couple of hours. Then the sun came out, and Zhetisay became a mud wrestling arena, without any of the fun parts (which really just leaves the mud). We don’t have any sewers, and sidewalks, if they exist, usually run out after twenty or so feet, so the ground more or less liquefies whenever there’s a storm. I can’t decide which is worse—ice or mud—when it comes to slipping, though I kind of feel like the psychological stakes are higher with mud. I’ve taken plenty of spills on the ice, but if I fell into one of these giant, trash and animal feces-filled mud puddles—especially if it was a Monday, and a whole week to get through before my next banya—the emotional damage might be severe. (Maybe the mud here has some kind of healing properties, though—a Kazakhstani mud bath could be yet another service included as part of my post-Peace Corps banya business…) My school is only five minutes away, but with the newly-formed mud rivers blocking my path, getting there is a bit of an adventure. Walking anywhere in Zhetysai really is, though, since roads are not so much rules as suggestions here. You may think, “Oh hey, I’m safe from those speeding cars because I am not on the pavement and am in fact several dozen feet from where the pavement ends,” but you would be wrong about that. Unless you are actually inside a building—preferably a solid iron one—you’re in probably in danger. This is not a phenomenon particular to my site, however: even in Almaty, where there are, allegedly, real and working pedestrian crosswalks, you will find yourself playing the most stressful game of Frogger ever any time you try to get across the street, even if you have legit right-of-way. That little flashing green walking man will not protect you. My strategy is to wait until a bunch of other people are crossing and use them as human shields—I kind of doubt this would be effective were a car really to plow into us, but at least it keeps me from seeing how close to death we’re coming and going into some kind of deer-in-the-headlights paralysis.
So, in summation: the Peace Corps is a two-year pregnancy; I’m already shipping home mud for use in my McBanya franchises; and there's a good chance I'll sacrifice you to the gods of traffic if you cross the road with me--less because I’m concerned for my own survival, and more because I really hate to lose at Frogger.
Kazakhstan’s major food groups are basically bread, meat, and candy. There’s a lot of fruit in my region, but outside of “tois” (parties held for weddings, birthdays, or, as far as I can tell, the hell of it), it’s not really on most people’s tables. I keep a stash of bananas, apples, and persimmons in my room, since all these items are ridiculously cheap (way less than a dollar a kilo) at the bazaar. I’ve sort of given up on vegetables for the time being—when I move into my own place it’ll probably be worth seeking them out, but for now I just have to consider the sandwiches at my school (which, though they also contain sausage, eggs, ketchup and mayonnaise, do include shredded carrots—sometimes) a healthy life choice. Besides the lack of balanced nutrition, I eat pretty well here. My favorite dish is manti, which are these giant, meat or vegetable-filled dumplings you top with beets, a red pepper-garlic sauce, or sour cream and eat with your hands. They were a hugely popular dish in my training village, where they were usually stuffed with fresh pumpkin and pure magic. The big thing here—besides beshbarmak, which I’ll get to in a second—is plov, which is rice with bits of meat and carrots. It’s actually an Uzbek dish—same with samca, which are these delicious, meat or cheese-filled pastries (think Hot Pockets, except three thousand times better and made with real food)—but we’re only an hour from the border of Uzbekistan, so it’s especially popular and tasty here.
And then there’s beshbarmak. It’s the national dish of Kazakhstan, and consists of huge pieces of meat, fat, carrots, and potatoes, set atop a giant platter of noodles. You eat it with your hands, which—for me, at least—gets out of hand (get it? GET IT?) pretty quickly. The noodles are slippery, the fat is, well, fat, and there usually isn’t a napkin in sight: it’s pretty much impossible to eat in a dignified fashion—which is unfortunate, since the whole time you’re eating it, people are watching you to determine how much you like it and urging you to eat more any time you stop chewing. While the meat—which includes parts of the animal I can’t and probably shouldn’t try to identify—is usually sheep, I have, in fact, had horse meat beshbarmak. (Horse meat is pretty expensive, though, so I haven’t had it too often.) It doesn’t weird me out that much, since I have pretty much the same amount of attachment to horses as I do to cows, and I figure if I choose to eat meat at all, I can’t make too much of a fuss about what animal it’s from. One of my good friends from training loves horses, though: she’s been riding since she was a kid, and had her own horse up until she went into the Peace Corps. So she was really excited to discover her host family had two horses—until I pointed out, in a Debbie Downer does Kazakhstan kind of way, that if these horses hadn’t been mentioned or seen during her two months of living there, they probably weren’t so much pets as…dinner. I’d like to say there was a happy ending to that story, and we freed the horses in some kind of hilarious, climactic sequence involving clever misdirection, a series of increasingly outlandish disguises, and a Miley Cyrus song about girl power, but as we are in the Peace Corps and not a live-action Disney film, that is not so much what happened.
Besides my weird cereal fantasies, I guess the most important news from the last week is that winter has officially arrived. We got our first snow two days ago—it happened during the night, so I didn’t realize it until I was halfway to the outhouse and thought, “I know I don’t have my contacts in, but is the world usually so…fluffy?” It was really pretty—for a couple of hours. Then the sun came out, and Zhetisay became a mud wrestling arena, without any of the fun parts (which really just leaves the mud). We don’t have any sewers, and sidewalks, if they exist, usually run out after twenty or so feet, so the ground more or less liquefies whenever there’s a storm. I can’t decide which is worse—ice or mud—when it comes to slipping, though I kind of feel like the psychological stakes are higher with mud. I’ve taken plenty of spills on the ice, but if I fell into one of these giant, trash and animal feces-filled mud puddles—especially if it was a Monday, and a whole week to get through before my next banya—the emotional damage might be severe. (Maybe the mud here has some kind of healing properties, though—a Kazakhstani mud bath could be yet another service included as part of my post-Peace Corps banya business…) My school is only five minutes away, but with the newly-formed mud rivers blocking my path, getting there is a bit of an adventure. Walking anywhere in Zhetysai really is, though, since roads are not so much rules as suggestions here. You may think, “Oh hey, I’m safe from those speeding cars because I am not on the pavement and am in fact several dozen feet from where the pavement ends,” but you would be wrong about that. Unless you are actually inside a building—preferably a solid iron one—you’re in probably in danger. This is not a phenomenon particular to my site, however: even in Almaty, where there are, allegedly, real and working pedestrian crosswalks, you will find yourself playing the most stressful game of Frogger ever any time you try to get across the street, even if you have legit right-of-way. That little flashing green walking man will not protect you. My strategy is to wait until a bunch of other people are crossing and use them as human shields—I kind of doubt this would be effective were a car really to plow into us, but at least it keeps me from seeing how close to death we’re coming and going into some kind of deer-in-the-headlights paralysis.
So, in summation: the Peace Corps is a two-year pregnancy; I’m already shipping home mud for use in my McBanya franchises; and there's a good chance I'll sacrifice you to the gods of traffic if you cross the road with me--less because I’m concerned for my own survival, and more because I really hate to lose at Frogger.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
turkey day, k-style
Here’s the thing: the Peace Corps is kind of hardcore. You may have already figured this out based on the fact that it’s called the Peace “Corps,” and not the Peace “Glee Club,” or the Peace “Naked Water Slide Fun Collective.” (The medical screening for the Peace Naked Water Slide Fun Collective is, incidentally, even more intensive than the one for the Peace Corps--with good reason, I guess). Theoretically, I knew the Peace Corps would be intense, but it wasn’t until my first few weeks at my new site, when I’d gone ten days without banya-ing, a month without doing laundry, and a month totally without running water, that I realized—and smelled—what “intense” truly is. My town has some definite upsides—you can actually get fruit and vegetables year-round here, which means I won’t be on the beets, potato, and vodka diet that most people survive on in the winter, and the winter itself will be pretty mild, compared with the Siberian Christmas a lot of other volunteers are facing—but it’s apparently one of the rougher sites in the country. It’s at the southernmost tip of what is known as “the Texas of Kazakhstan” (which is not necessarily a name that inspires confidence) and its economy relies pretty heavily around the cotton industry, which in turn relies pretty heavily on child labor and illegal immigration. I definitely went through a second wave of culture shock during my first few weeks here, and while I’m sure there will be continuing ripples (and possibly tsunamis) of “Seriously, Kazakhstan? Seriously?” throughout my service, I’ve feeling more settled in and at ease here now. I have a very chill host family, and my counterpart (the local teacher I’ll be working with over the next two years) is amazing, and has been a huge help with my adjustment—and my bazaar shopping trips. So now that I’m armed with a shiny, shiny teacher’s purse, shiny, shiny teacher’s boots, and a stylish, light blue swine flu mask, I feel more like a true Kazakhstani schoolteacher than ever. (I’m going to guess that no Kazakhstani schoolteacher has ever rapped 2pac’s “Changes” for her 9 a.m. class before, though—I’m not sure if that’s the Peace Corps’ precise vision of a cultural ambassador, but I keep it real).
This past week has been pretty sweet—not just because I finally got to do laundry, though that has certainly improved my mood (and the mood of everyone I come into contact with). Thursday was, of course, Thanksgiving, which didn’t mean too much for me on the actual day—I mostly made a lot of mournful Facebook posts, telling my friends and family to gorge themselves with extra zestful abandon for me—but the weekend was excellent. Friday was Kurban Ait, a Muslim holiday wherein people make awkward visits to all of their extended family members and devour huge amounts of unhealthy food (sound familiar, anyone?). I went out Thursday night to help my host brother deliver freshly baked bread to our neighbors—which mostly involved me lurking behind him in unlit apartment building hallways while he balanced a huge platter of bread, so “help” might be too strong a word. You’re supposed to distribute seven loaves to friends on the eve of the holiday, then visit seven different tables during the three days of Kurban Ait. My host family didn’t really go in for the guesting, though—they mostly just napped, watched TV, and ate cake at home, which is my kind of party.
Saturday morning I went to Shymkent to celebrate Thanksgiving with the other volunteers in the South Kazakhstan oblast. This involved a three-hour ride in a packed minivan, which made me sort of nostalgic for the Thanksgivings of yore, when my family would make the eighteen-hour trip to Massachusetts in our beloved Chevy Astro. Granted, the person I was squashed next to during those trips was usually my four-year-old sister, and not a large, sweaty Kazakh man with a chest cold, but I’ve become adept at replacing my current reality with fond memories from the States whenever necessary. (Though sometimes I just replace it with mental reruns of Pee Wee’s Playhouse—I think it freaks my students out a little when I start screaming because they’ve said the secret word, but they probably just write it off as another weird American thing).
It was pouring rain when I got to the city, so I pulled on my electric blue, oversized raincoat—which may be practical, but is about the most inconspicuous thing you can wear in Kazakhstan, where raincoats are either black, gray, or umbrellas. Combined with my giant Land’s End backpack and a general sense of confusion, I embodied pretty much every one of the Peace Corps’ anecdotes about volunteers who got into some kind of horrible, horrible trouble by standing out as foreigners, but the raincoat did help another volunteer locate me from across four lanes of traffic and a crowded sidewalk—and kept me extremely dry—so I guess it served its purpose. Because of the rain, I ended up spending most of the weekend hanging out at another volunteer’s apartment—which, because it was such a sweet place, was totally fine with me. I’m not even going to mention the toilet and shower (I guess I just did, but I’m going to stop there, because I could wax poetic about those for quite awhile), but the apartment was spacious, comfy, and filled with dance music and Americans capable of making ridiculously delicious food. If you had given me one wish, two weeks again, that might have been precisely what I would have asked for (well, that and some kind of odor-repellent reptilian skin, so I could just slough it when it got dirty and never have to wear clothes again. I guess the first wish was slightly more manageable…) We had a kind of Thanksgiving picnic on the living room floor, though I’ve definitely never been to a picnic this bountiful or artfully arranged in my life. There was a real turkey, mashed potatoes, salad (with actual lettuce and without mayonnaise—I’d forgotten such a thing could be), corn, Stove Top stuffing, homemade cornbread, fresh salsa, and two apple and one pumpkin pies with delectably artificial whipped cream. Needless to say, we pretty much went into a coma after dinner—by 8 o’clock, we were all slumped over the couches and floor, groaning in pain and satisfaction, and it took a couple of hours before we had the energy to do much but watch Robert Pattison reenact Britney Spears’ infamously misadvised VMA routine. Oh, yes—I forgot to mention that it was also a costume party, since we hadn’t all gotten to celebrate Halloween together: my costume was pretty much “these are my last semi-clean clothes,” but some people went all out. We had a Judy Funny (if you’re not a child of the 90s, you’re probably confused right now—but if you are, let me tell you, this costume was an inspired time warp), a Mexican wrestler, a Peace Corps Thailand volunteer (which involved wearing a sarong and complaining a lot about how hard it is to get sunburns on the beach while drinking Mai Tais every day), and a creepily accurate Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen (minus that distilled-sweat-of-homeless-people-scent Robert Pattinson apparently has from his weird refusal to wash—hey, he’d probably do really well in the Peace Corps).
When I roused myself the next day, I found that a bunch of people were already engaged in making yet another mouth-watering meal—I’m sort of glad I don’t live closer to the Shymkent volunteers, since I think I’d soon weigh around 400 pounds and they’d eventually figure out I can’t make anything more complicated than an omelette (and, despite the fact that I successfully translated the recipe into Kazakh for my language test, not a very good omelette). For breakfast, we had expertly prepared French toast and fancy home fries—the fact that there had been a “Top Chef” marathon the night before influenced the preparation of both dishes, to our benefit. We officially kicked off the Christmas season by listening to some X-Mas music, then Joe (whose apartment we were in) showed me the Megacenter, Shymkent’s mall (which is way nicer than both malls in my hometown, by the way—though that’s not hard to pull off). He sent Tes (the other volunteer from my site) and I on our way with two leftover packs of cheap local crack muffins, which we wolfed down while attempting to find any comfortable position in which to endure the insanely bumpy ride home in the backseat of the van. That position, I quickly realized, does not exist, but I don’t think the inconvenience of the commute is going to stop me from visting Shymkent as often as humanly possible. I know at the end of two years, when I’ve stopped regretting the fact that I didn’t pass the final medical screening for the Peace Naked Water Slide Fun Collective (damn my chlorine allergy!), I’ll be glad I ended up with an authentic Peace Corps experience, but right now I’m just grateful that wireless internet, outdoor heated swimming pools, and large, friendly groups of Americans exist somewhere within a four-hour radius of my current location.
This past week has been pretty sweet—not just because I finally got to do laundry, though that has certainly improved my mood (and the mood of everyone I come into contact with). Thursday was, of course, Thanksgiving, which didn’t mean too much for me on the actual day—I mostly made a lot of mournful Facebook posts, telling my friends and family to gorge themselves with extra zestful abandon for me—but the weekend was excellent. Friday was Kurban Ait, a Muslim holiday wherein people make awkward visits to all of their extended family members and devour huge amounts of unhealthy food (sound familiar, anyone?). I went out Thursday night to help my host brother deliver freshly baked bread to our neighbors—which mostly involved me lurking behind him in unlit apartment building hallways while he balanced a huge platter of bread, so “help” might be too strong a word. You’re supposed to distribute seven loaves to friends on the eve of the holiday, then visit seven different tables during the three days of Kurban Ait. My host family didn’t really go in for the guesting, though—they mostly just napped, watched TV, and ate cake at home, which is my kind of party.
Saturday morning I went to Shymkent to celebrate Thanksgiving with the other volunteers in the South Kazakhstan oblast. This involved a three-hour ride in a packed minivan, which made me sort of nostalgic for the Thanksgivings of yore, when my family would make the eighteen-hour trip to Massachusetts in our beloved Chevy Astro. Granted, the person I was squashed next to during those trips was usually my four-year-old sister, and not a large, sweaty Kazakh man with a chest cold, but I’ve become adept at replacing my current reality with fond memories from the States whenever necessary. (Though sometimes I just replace it with mental reruns of Pee Wee’s Playhouse—I think it freaks my students out a little when I start screaming because they’ve said the secret word, but they probably just write it off as another weird American thing).
It was pouring rain when I got to the city, so I pulled on my electric blue, oversized raincoat—which may be practical, but is about the most inconspicuous thing you can wear in Kazakhstan, where raincoats are either black, gray, or umbrellas. Combined with my giant Land’s End backpack and a general sense of confusion, I embodied pretty much every one of the Peace Corps’ anecdotes about volunteers who got into some kind of horrible, horrible trouble by standing out as foreigners, but the raincoat did help another volunteer locate me from across four lanes of traffic and a crowded sidewalk—and kept me extremely dry—so I guess it served its purpose. Because of the rain, I ended up spending most of the weekend hanging out at another volunteer’s apartment—which, because it was such a sweet place, was totally fine with me. I’m not even going to mention the toilet and shower (I guess I just did, but I’m going to stop there, because I could wax poetic about those for quite awhile), but the apartment was spacious, comfy, and filled with dance music and Americans capable of making ridiculously delicious food. If you had given me one wish, two weeks again, that might have been precisely what I would have asked for (well, that and some kind of odor-repellent reptilian skin, so I could just slough it when it got dirty and never have to wear clothes again. I guess the first wish was slightly more manageable…) We had a kind of Thanksgiving picnic on the living room floor, though I’ve definitely never been to a picnic this bountiful or artfully arranged in my life. There was a real turkey, mashed potatoes, salad (with actual lettuce and without mayonnaise—I’d forgotten such a thing could be), corn, Stove Top stuffing, homemade cornbread, fresh salsa, and two apple and one pumpkin pies with delectably artificial whipped cream. Needless to say, we pretty much went into a coma after dinner—by 8 o’clock, we were all slumped over the couches and floor, groaning in pain and satisfaction, and it took a couple of hours before we had the energy to do much but watch Robert Pattison reenact Britney Spears’ infamously misadvised VMA routine. Oh, yes—I forgot to mention that it was also a costume party, since we hadn’t all gotten to celebrate Halloween together: my costume was pretty much “these are my last semi-clean clothes,” but some people went all out. We had a Judy Funny (if you’re not a child of the 90s, you’re probably confused right now—but if you are, let me tell you, this costume was an inspired time warp), a Mexican wrestler, a Peace Corps Thailand volunteer (which involved wearing a sarong and complaining a lot about how hard it is to get sunburns on the beach while drinking Mai Tais every day), and a creepily accurate Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen (minus that distilled-sweat-of-homeless-people-scent Robert Pattinson apparently has from his weird refusal to wash—hey, he’d probably do really well in the Peace Corps).
When I roused myself the next day, I found that a bunch of people were already engaged in making yet another mouth-watering meal—I’m sort of glad I don’t live closer to the Shymkent volunteers, since I think I’d soon weigh around 400 pounds and they’d eventually figure out I can’t make anything more complicated than an omelette (and, despite the fact that I successfully translated the recipe into Kazakh for my language test, not a very good omelette). For breakfast, we had expertly prepared French toast and fancy home fries—the fact that there had been a “Top Chef” marathon the night before influenced the preparation of both dishes, to our benefit. We officially kicked off the Christmas season by listening to some X-Mas music, then Joe (whose apartment we were in) showed me the Megacenter, Shymkent’s mall (which is way nicer than both malls in my hometown, by the way—though that’s not hard to pull off). He sent Tes (the other volunteer from my site) and I on our way with two leftover packs of cheap local crack muffins, which we wolfed down while attempting to find any comfortable position in which to endure the insanely bumpy ride home in the backseat of the van. That position, I quickly realized, does not exist, but I don’t think the inconvenience of the commute is going to stop me from visting Shymkent as often as humanly possible. I know at the end of two years, when I’ve stopped regretting the fact that I didn’t pass the final medical screening for the Peace Naked Water Slide Fun Collective (damn my chlorine allergy!), I’ll be glad I ended up with an authentic Peace Corps experience, but right now I’m just grateful that wireless internet, outdoor heated swimming pools, and large, friendly groups of Americans exist somewhere within a four-hour radius of my current location.
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