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.