Our banya—which is actually my host aunt’s banya, since ours is broken—is infested with frogs. I spotted the first one a few weeks ago, when it crawled out from under the planks and nearly caused me to scald myself. (The banya is a really bad place to be startled—between the giant furnace, the slippery surfaces, and the gaping spaces between the rickety floorboards, there are countless opportunities to do yourself serious damage). But the frog clearly had no more interest in harassing me than I did it, and, as Mitch Hedberg put it, frogs are always cool. So the frog and I were co-existing in relative peace—until last Sunday, when I noticed the frog seemed to be sitting atop a weirdly lumpy pile of rocks behind the furnace. The pile was weirdly lumpy, I soon realized, because it was not made of rocks, but in fact of other frogs. Seven, actually, all just chilling out in their bug-eyed manner. Occasionally a couple of them would head under the floorboards—I guess there was something cooler happening down there—but they mostly stayed out of my way, and seemed content to just pulsate in their frog pile. I’ve decided that if I ever start a Moscow-based punk band—weirder things have happened in my life—I’m definitely calling it “Frogs in the Banya.” (Imagine that screamed over and over again at top volume, and I think you’ll see why). My biggest concern is the three kittens and their mom currently bunking in a box just outside the banya door—if there’s anything creepier than unexpectedly seeing a live frog while naked in a steamy confined space, it’s stumbling on a messily dead one under the same circumstances.
The end of winter is bringing out a lot of wildlife in Zhetysai, mostly of the insect and avian variety. I’m glad the bitterest of the bitter cold has passed, but the blanket of snow was starting to grow on me, especially when I realized walking through a wonderland of slightly dirty snow could, with some imagination, feel like walking on an endless plain of Oreo ice cream. (I feel an acid trip mentality improves most things in life, as long as it doesn’t lead to terrible decisions—like trying to eat all that delicious-looking but actually disease-filled snow-cream). I was all ready to declare the season officially over a week ago, when the days were hot and sunny and we moved all our dish and face-washing activities outside. But we had a crazy rainstorm on Thursday that, sometime during the night, turned into snow. The snow was gone by the end of the day, but I’m a little more wary of the weather here now. Still, it’s pretty warm for March— which makes me dread the summer a little, since will apparently involve 100+ heat, countless mosquitoes, and an annual infestation of giant bats. I’ve been through plenty of sweltering Southern summers, but I usually spent them immersed in water or A/C while wearing as little clothing as possible, which isn’t really an option in Zhetysai. Luckily I’ll be traveling for at least some of that time, so maybe I’ll avoid the peak of giant bat season.
March can be a fairly awful month in any part of the world, but Kazakhstan has made it a little more bearable by throwing in a couple of holidays to break it up. There was International Women’s Day, on March 8th, which was an official school holiday and a three-day extravaganza of gift giving, chocolate eating, and an insane amount of fake flowers. I now have a whole bouquet of fake roses, countless chocolates, various cosmetics, and a shampoo/conditioner set with the following instructions:
“Use method: after cleaning the hair, wipes the hair does, right amount this will trace evenly on the hair, the light canadian massage retains 1-3 minutes, finally strips with water cleanly then. Notice: avoid contacting the eye, if carelessly pleasant, please namely thoroughly flush with the clear water.”
I’m not really sure what a Canadian massage is, but if I attempt it I’ll try my best not to be carelessly pleasant, as that always leads to danger. Women’s Day here basically combines all the elements of Mother and Valentine’s Day, except that there are no relationship or child-related requirements for getting gifts. There were also a lot of concerts, and flowery greeting cards, and—as with pretty much any occasion over here—a lot of sparkles. Sparkles and exaggeratedly cute decorations are a big thing in K-Stan—Lisa Frank would be huge over here. I’m not what you’d call a “sparkles” person (if someone had to come up with 850,000 word combinations to describe me, “sparkles person” would not make the list), but I now own more sparkly, pink school-related items than I have since the third grade, due to the fact that those are pretty much the only kind you can buy at my school’s canteen. I’ve filled up all the notebooks I brought me, so I mostly write lesson plans in the exercise books the kids here use—my current one, a gift from a student, has Cinderella on a white horse against a bubblegum background, which is a pretty good representation of my life and interests. I found out about the sparkle fever pretty immediately upon arriving in Kazakhstan: our first day in Orientation, the Peace Corps gave each of us glittery exercise books with obnoxiously cherubic children praying over the golden, curlicue-adorned words “Valley of Angels.” During one of the more boring Orientation sessions (which will probably turn out to have contained some vital information that could save my life, at some point), I turned the valley of angels into a valley of horned, vaguely androgynous demon creatures, which has been a little awkward to try to explain anytime anyone’s caught a glimpse of it.
The other big March holiday is, of course, Nauryz, the South’s biggest celebration, which happens a week from yesterday. It’s also the end of our third term at school, which means there’s just one more until the summer. I’m trying to hit up both Turkey and Uzbekistan this summer, along with some in-Kazakhstan travel, so I’m pumped for the vacay. And yeah, I just said vacay—clearly my English degenerating far more rapidly than I suspected. Don’t judge, guys, don’t judge.
IMPORTANT: Because of mysterious Blogger-blocking on this side of the world, I'm moving this blog here: http://katharinedoeskazakhstan.wordpress.com/. See you there whenever my Internet works (so for about fifteen minutes every couple of weeks)!
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Five Ways the Peace Corps is Better than College
Now, don’t get me wrong—I loved college. In fact, I wrote a couple of blogs for Hampshire’s Admissions office, which despite never really mentioning academics or much else directly related to the school somehow still interested people in attending. But let’s be real: in terms of overall health, hygiene, and sanity, college is basically the worst environment imaginable. Though I now live in a developing country, my life has actually improved in a number of essential areas:
1. Food. Namely, having it. I was off the meal plan for my last three years at school, and trips to the grocery store only happened about once a month, if we were lucky. I pretty much survived on cereal and delivery food, which may actually be worse for you than eating nothing at all. Here I get my three square a day, plus some: Kazakhs are serious about their hospitality, and any time you’re a guest in anyone’s house you’ll find a full spread of snacks, jams, and salads in addition to the meal, which you’ll be pressured into having at least two servings of. My school also has a pretty good canteen, with hot food, samsas, and Kit Kats and Snickers for any American candy cravings that might hit. The bazaar is a lot easier to get to—not to mention cheaper—than the Hadley Stop N’ Stop was, so groceries won’t be a problem when I move into my own place (I think I’m going to go vegetarian as far as my home cooking is concerned, though—the severed cow heads and limbs in the bazaar’s meat section aren’t that appetizing). That said, there are three meals I would kill for right now: a BBQ chicken sandwich from Baoguette in New York City, a pork stuffed chile relleno empanada from Salsa’s in Asheville, and a No. 1 from The Lady Killigrew in Montague, Massachusetts—man, I guess I never realized how much I love sandwiches and sandwich-like things. This, along with our penchant for hot dogs and fast food, is apparently a stereotype about Americans held by many Kazakhs: when I find myself discussing food and “national dishes” (which happens a lot), there’s a lot of confusion over the concept of toasters and the fact that we don’t have one specific, traditional dish we always serve to guests. Kitchen set-ups here tend to vary—some people have microwaves and fridges while others just have an oven and stove. My host family has a fridge, but they store a lot of leftover food and preserves outside or in the pantry when it’s cold enough.
2. Shelter. College is pretty terrible, as far as housing goes. You’re either subjected to the claustrophobic squalor of a dorm or the slightly less claustrophobic squalor of a shared house, which despite the best intentions almost always end up looking like a particularly ill-kept drug den and smelling of PBR, dirty socks, and old pizza. The structures rarely exceed their most basic function of keeping you mildly warm and alive, and the furniture is usually stained, broken—or in at least one case I know of, no kidding—infested with flesh-eating bacteria. My third year, our main piece of living room furniture was known as “The Death Couch,” due to the fact that it had a jagged piece of metal sticking out of its frame. It ripped jeans, stabbed people, and was only slightly more comfortable than sitting on an actual pile of twisted metal. Our other furniture comprised a poppazon chair (also broken, and prone to dumping occupants to the floor in sudden fits of rage) and a stolen Wal-Mart wheelchair, which sadly may have been the most functional and comfy part of the collection. (This wheelchair famously led to the invention of a winter sport known as “wheelchairing”—I’m not sure how that event didn’t make it into the Olympics, but I’m guessing it’s because no conceivable amount of insurance would cover it).
Despite not having some American amenities, my apartment in Kazakhstan is unarguably more hygienic and livable than my college set-up. You always take off your shoes before entering a Kazakhstani house, because tracking in dirt is totally unacceptable. My host family does a thorough house cleaning at least once a week, and my room here is immaculate (especially compared to my room in college, which looked like a thrift store, a toy shop, and Neil Gaiman's library got into a deadly brawl). It’s quieter, too—even when my host family stays up late watching Russian serials, it’s a vast improvement over having the bright ringing drone of Super Mario Galaxy as the soundtrack to pretty much all of my dreams. People aren’t as apt to stumble in and out all the time, and so far no semi-homeless man named Freddy has come to live on our couch, like at Hampshire—but I’m not entirely ruling the possibility of that happening out. Other improvements: none of the furniture seems inherently lethal, my bed is not made of green plastic, and there are never dishes in the sink—mostly because there is no sink, but also because we eat most things family platter-style and washing up is pretty painless.
3. Clothing. Yes, Hampshire had free washing machines. Yes, they were at one point conveniently located right across from my house. Did this mean I did laundry weekly? No. Did this mean I did laundry monthly? Not always. Did this mean I did it yearly? …I’m almost certain. I’d like to defend this grossness by noting that the laundry room itself was pretty disgusting—even though I knew, theoretically, that my clothes were getting cleaner, the stale stench of abandoned sheets and underwear and pools of unidentified liquid on the floor made them seemed somehow tainted. Because there were only three or four washers and dryers for Enfield—the suburbs of Hampshire—the laundry room was also a battleground. Finding an open machine was hard enough, and once you did you couldn’t be sure that someone else wouldn’t just pull your clothes out early and stuff them in a dryer or just leave them in a wet pile somewhere. Although my laundry situation wasn’t great during training—I had one terrible, day-long experience with washing all my clothes by hand that I hope to never relive—here my host family has an automatic machine and does laundry every weekend.
4. Transportation. While the Five Colleges have a great free bus system, it couldn’t always compensate for the fact that Hampshire was fairly isolated. You could ride a bike into Amherst, but when it was freezing and icy—as it was for a good part of the school year—this was a less than an ideal way to get around, and the busses stopped or ran reduced schedules during holidays and Jan Term. Getting to the aforementioned Stop n’ Shop required a bus transfer that never quite worked out, time-wise, and usually wasn’t worth the trouble. There’s no bus system in my town, but getting anywhere at a moment’s notice is never a problem, due to Zhetysai’s overabundance of gypsy cabs. Gypsy cabs (called “dolmuş” in Turkish, which literally means “stuffed”) are unofficial taxis—which isn’t that important of a distinction in Z-Sai, since there are no official taxis. Basically anyone in a car can be a cab driver—some cars actually have “TAXI” signs on their hood, but these can be bought for cheap at the bazaar. You might think the lack of markings would make these cabs hard to identify, but since most people don’t have their own cars and most cars on the road here are, in fact, gypsy cabs, you don’t really need to search them out. They’re usually older, beat-up cars—Opels seem to be a particularly popular gypsy cab brand. You wave them down and they’ll take you anywhere in town for 50 tenge (about 30 cents), though they may stop to pick up other passengers, which can get cramped. I’ve never had to wait more than two minutes for a taxi, even in severely bad weather. Actually, even when I don’t need one, there’s always a taxi around—if I’m walking along the road, I’ll always get the horn beep and headlight flash from someone who thinks I’d rather take a cab. An all-cab system is, of course, not the most desirable transportation system environment-wise, but I can’t say I don’t appreciate it when I’m rushing around or rainstorms make it impossible to get across town without a vehicle.
5. Money. Like most students, I was broke for more or less my entire college career. The income from a work-study job just can’t cover the costs of a student lifestyle, which involves a lot of poor and costly late-night decisions. One of the Peace Corps’ main draws is they say you can make it through the entire two years without spending any of your own money, which I think—if you’re not planning to travel outside the country—is probably true. My monthly stipend more than covers rent and necessities, with plenty left over that I mostly save, because there’s not much to spend it on. While there are cafes and shops here, people rarely go out to eat and there’s not much I need in terms of clothes and other items. Internet time is probably my biggest money-sucker, but even that costs less than a dollar an hour. Zhetysai is particularly cheap—Almaty and Shymkent are pricey (though still not as bad as the States), so it’s probably good I’m banking a lot of my tenge for trips to the city.
1. Food. Namely, having it. I was off the meal plan for my last three years at school, and trips to the grocery store only happened about once a month, if we were lucky. I pretty much survived on cereal and delivery food, which may actually be worse for you than eating nothing at all. Here I get my three square a day, plus some: Kazakhs are serious about their hospitality, and any time you’re a guest in anyone’s house you’ll find a full spread of snacks, jams, and salads in addition to the meal, which you’ll be pressured into having at least two servings of. My school also has a pretty good canteen, with hot food, samsas, and Kit Kats and Snickers for any American candy cravings that might hit. The bazaar is a lot easier to get to—not to mention cheaper—than the Hadley Stop N’ Stop was, so groceries won’t be a problem when I move into my own place (I think I’m going to go vegetarian as far as my home cooking is concerned, though—the severed cow heads and limbs in the bazaar’s meat section aren’t that appetizing). That said, there are three meals I would kill for right now: a BBQ chicken sandwich from Baoguette in New York City, a pork stuffed chile relleno empanada from Salsa’s in Asheville, and a No. 1 from The Lady Killigrew in Montague, Massachusetts—man, I guess I never realized how much I love sandwiches and sandwich-like things. This, along with our penchant for hot dogs and fast food, is apparently a stereotype about Americans held by many Kazakhs: when I find myself discussing food and “national dishes” (which happens a lot), there’s a lot of confusion over the concept of toasters and the fact that we don’t have one specific, traditional dish we always serve to guests. Kitchen set-ups here tend to vary—some people have microwaves and fridges while others just have an oven and stove. My host family has a fridge, but they store a lot of leftover food and preserves outside or in the pantry when it’s cold enough.
2. Shelter. College is pretty terrible, as far as housing goes. You’re either subjected to the claustrophobic squalor of a dorm or the slightly less claustrophobic squalor of a shared house, which despite the best intentions almost always end up looking like a particularly ill-kept drug den and smelling of PBR, dirty socks, and old pizza. The structures rarely exceed their most basic function of keeping you mildly warm and alive, and the furniture is usually stained, broken—or in at least one case I know of, no kidding—infested with flesh-eating bacteria. My third year, our main piece of living room furniture was known as “The Death Couch,” due to the fact that it had a jagged piece of metal sticking out of its frame. It ripped jeans, stabbed people, and was only slightly more comfortable than sitting on an actual pile of twisted metal. Our other furniture comprised a poppazon chair (also broken, and prone to dumping occupants to the floor in sudden fits of rage) and a stolen Wal-Mart wheelchair, which sadly may have been the most functional and comfy part of the collection. (This wheelchair famously led to the invention of a winter sport known as “wheelchairing”—I’m not sure how that event didn’t make it into the Olympics, but I’m guessing it’s because no conceivable amount of insurance would cover it).
Despite not having some American amenities, my apartment in Kazakhstan is unarguably more hygienic and livable than my college set-up. You always take off your shoes before entering a Kazakhstani house, because tracking in dirt is totally unacceptable. My host family does a thorough house cleaning at least once a week, and my room here is immaculate (especially compared to my room in college, which looked like a thrift store, a toy shop, and Neil Gaiman's library got into a deadly brawl). It’s quieter, too—even when my host family stays up late watching Russian serials, it’s a vast improvement over having the bright ringing drone of Super Mario Galaxy as the soundtrack to pretty much all of my dreams. People aren’t as apt to stumble in and out all the time, and so far no semi-homeless man named Freddy has come to live on our couch, like at Hampshire—but I’m not entirely ruling the possibility of that happening out. Other improvements: none of the furniture seems inherently lethal, my bed is not made of green plastic, and there are never dishes in the sink—mostly because there is no sink, but also because we eat most things family platter-style and washing up is pretty painless.
3. Clothing. Yes, Hampshire had free washing machines. Yes, they were at one point conveniently located right across from my house. Did this mean I did laundry weekly? No. Did this mean I did laundry monthly? Not always. Did this mean I did it yearly? …I’m almost certain. I’d like to defend this grossness by noting that the laundry room itself was pretty disgusting—even though I knew, theoretically, that my clothes were getting cleaner, the stale stench of abandoned sheets and underwear and pools of unidentified liquid on the floor made them seemed somehow tainted. Because there were only three or four washers and dryers for Enfield—the suburbs of Hampshire—the laundry room was also a battleground. Finding an open machine was hard enough, and once you did you couldn’t be sure that someone else wouldn’t just pull your clothes out early and stuff them in a dryer or just leave them in a wet pile somewhere. Although my laundry situation wasn’t great during training—I had one terrible, day-long experience with washing all my clothes by hand that I hope to never relive—here my host family has an automatic machine and does laundry every weekend.
4. Transportation. While the Five Colleges have a great free bus system, it couldn’t always compensate for the fact that Hampshire was fairly isolated. You could ride a bike into Amherst, but when it was freezing and icy—as it was for a good part of the school year—this was a less than an ideal way to get around, and the busses stopped or ran reduced schedules during holidays and Jan Term. Getting to the aforementioned Stop n’ Shop required a bus transfer that never quite worked out, time-wise, and usually wasn’t worth the trouble. There’s no bus system in my town, but getting anywhere at a moment’s notice is never a problem, due to Zhetysai’s overabundance of gypsy cabs. Gypsy cabs (called “dolmuş” in Turkish, which literally means “stuffed”) are unofficial taxis—which isn’t that important of a distinction in Z-Sai, since there are no official taxis. Basically anyone in a car can be a cab driver—some cars actually have “TAXI” signs on their hood, but these can be bought for cheap at the bazaar. You might think the lack of markings would make these cabs hard to identify, but since most people don’t have their own cars and most cars on the road here are, in fact, gypsy cabs, you don’t really need to search them out. They’re usually older, beat-up cars—Opels seem to be a particularly popular gypsy cab brand. You wave them down and they’ll take you anywhere in town for 50 tenge (about 30 cents), though they may stop to pick up other passengers, which can get cramped. I’ve never had to wait more than two minutes for a taxi, even in severely bad weather. Actually, even when I don’t need one, there’s always a taxi around—if I’m walking along the road, I’ll always get the horn beep and headlight flash from someone who thinks I’d rather take a cab. An all-cab system is, of course, not the most desirable transportation system environment-wise, but I can’t say I don’t appreciate it when I’m rushing around or rainstorms make it impossible to get across town without a vehicle.
5. Money. Like most students, I was broke for more or less my entire college career. The income from a work-study job just can’t cover the costs of a student lifestyle, which involves a lot of poor and costly late-night decisions. One of the Peace Corps’ main draws is they say you can make it through the entire two years without spending any of your own money, which I think—if you’re not planning to travel outside the country—is probably true. My monthly stipend more than covers rent and necessities, with plenty left over that I mostly save, because there’s not much to spend it on. While there are cafes and shops here, people rarely go out to eat and there’s not much I need in terms of clothes and other items. Internet time is probably my biggest money-sucker, but even that costs less than a dollar an hour. Zhetysai is particularly cheap—Almaty and Shymkent are pricey (though still not as bad as the States), so it’s probably good I’m banking a lot of my tenge for trips to the city.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
kaz and effect
Okay, I know that based on the end of my last post, it kind of looks like I was in a sugar-and-vodka coma for over a month, but I swear I have been legitimately busy and not just massively hung-over and stuffing myself with stale holiday pastries. Mmmm…stale holiday pastries…Anyway, if you read any other Kaz blogs, you may have heard that Blogger was down here for a while, due to some mysterious government censorship. I also haven’t been getting to Komfort Kafé (our least sketchy Internet establishment) as often lately, since I have more classes this term and I’m also pretty lazy. But barring being bridenapped (there’s a tongue twister I should teach my kids), I promise to be more vigilant about updating, since I know how you, the hungry, anonymous Internet masses, crave your weekly dose of obscure news from southern Kazakhstan.
So I left off pre-holidays, which means you may want to make yourself some popcorn before reading this post, because it’s gonna be epic. December was pretty packed, what with Christmas, the New Year, and the most important internationally recognized holiday of all: my birthday. My host mother totally brought it, as far as my birthday banquet: she baked no less than 100 little frosted cakes, in addition to the full-sized cake, chocolates, and various other cavity-causing snacks on the table. She also made a ton of manti, salad, and these delicious cheese-covered potato and tomato things that I’m sure have a real name but I have no idea what it is. I had gone out with friends for shashlyk (barbecued meat on a stick) and a walk up Zhetysai’s only hill (no—really—the only hill) earlier in the day, but for dinner my host mom’s friends and various host aunts came over to have an all-night birthday extravaganza (which was not so much fun the next day, Monday, when I had to power through four classes on two hours’ sleep). There’s nothing that special about turning 23 in the States, but here it’s one of the last birthdays you can still celebrate without shame for not being married yet. Most of the toasts—and there were a lot of them—were wishes for me to find a rich husband by this time next year, which unless Neil Patrick Harris decides he wants to get gay-married so he can come live with me in Kazakhstan for some inexplicable but amazing reason, is probably not going to happen.
I thought the Christmastime might be a little weird here, what with the general lack of Christmas, but since the New Year celebrations in Kazakhstan basically appropriate all the traditional Christmas stuff—Santa, Christmas trees, presents, tinsel, et cetera—it was definitely festive. My students decorated the school gym with gorgeous wintertime murals and put on various New Year’s concerts, which mostly involved dancing and lip-syncing to pop music and dressing up in random costumes (they also throw a lot of Halloween into the New Year mix). Pretty much all my students already knew at least the chorus of “Jingle Bells,” though “Rudolph” was a revelation—that’s what my sixth-graders sang for our Christmas concert. The eighth grade put on a severely stripped down version of “A Christmas Carol” (penned by yours truly in about 10 minutes—suck it, Dickens) and sang “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” while the ninth grade performed a jitterbugging version of “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree.” The whole production was pretty cute, though it relied pretty heavily on a Christmas CD I’d received in a package a week before, without which there probably would have been a lot more awkward silence and public embarrassment. But hey, isn’t that what middle school is all about?
I spent Christmas Day in Shymkent, where Tes and I joined up with the Kaz-21s in the city and feasted on Becca and Philip’s “Chinese plov,” a roast teriyaki chicken, and heartbreakingly delicious chocolate chip and gingerbread cookies. We did a White Elephant gift exchange, which did not end in tears, gratuitous backstabbing, or any of the other things I’ve witnessed White Elephany gift exchanges ending in—I guess it’d sort of go against the whole “peace” idea if we started fist-fighting with fellow volunteers over a miniature yurt replica. The day after Christmas we recovered from our gluttony and hit up the Megacenter, which has a giant skating rink at its center that some other volunteers ventured out on—due to my longstanding conviction that wearing razor shoes in a confined, slippery space filled with fast-moving children and adolescents is asking for disaster, I opted out and spent most of my time in Ramstore. Ramstore is a giant supermarket that basically has everything you need but can’t find in your local magazine—endless varieties of snacks, fruits, and beverages, pens that actually work and colored pencils that really draw, certain hygiene products not in evidence at your local bazaar—but the problem is that once you get in there, it’s so overwhelming that all you can really do is wander around slack-jawed and try to remind yourself that this is not the last time you will be in the supermarket, and you do not in fact have to grab everything you can carry and bolt for the exit. For dinner we met up with some Kaz-20s at Madlen’s, a French bakery with club sandwiches, spinach quiche, and “holy-crap-that’s-good” lava cake. (Man, I can’t even type the words “spinach quiche” without wanting to cry a little—I cannot remember the last time I ate a truly green vegetable…) Thanks to the awesome Russian skills of a fellow volunteer, we got a ridiculously cheap apartment in the city for the night and, thanks to this being Kazakhstan, some ridiculously cheap vodka. The next morning we got wireless at a nearby café, which was great, since the only other time I’ve managed to get wireless in Kazakhstan was when Philip and I accidentally discovered it in the Almaty train station 20 minutes before our train left. There are a couple of Internet cafés in Shymkent, both of which serve Turkish food—double awesome.
After Christmas, I still had classes, but all the kids had tests and all the teachers had a huge party (at which I won a plastic comb for my sweet dance moves—yeah, you’re jealous), so not a whole lot got done between then and the 31st. I rang in the New Year in Z-Sai with my host brother and mom, since my host sister was discothèque-hopping with her cousin. We prepared a huge feast—yes, I actually helped, most notably with the assembling the cold, slimy fish rolls and the artistically arranging the cow stomach/brains. There’s no better omen for the New Year than your hands smelling like fish and cow parts, I always say. Luckily there was also Snickers cake and champagne, so I just went heavy on booze and dessert, which is of course the traditional American way to celebrate New Year’s Eve. We set up a banquet table in the living room and watched the Russian concerts, which start around the New Year and go on for at least three weeks. I’m not really sure what the point of them is: there are a lot of these kind of specials on TV, and they’re—as Tes accurately described them—kind of like middle school talent shows put on by adults. Actually, they’re more like middle school talent shows in the 80s put on by adults, since that’s where the costumes, hair, and musical sensibility appear to be from. Moscow was already a couple of hours into 2010 so we didn’t have a countdown, but it turned out we did not really need one, due to the violently loud explosions that started at midnight. There are no fireworks laws in Zhetysai, so ringing in the New Year was kind of like being caught in a war zone. Seriously, we went outside and there were fireworks in every direction—it appeared that everyone on our street was setting off rockets, and they were not aiming them so much skyward as at each other. My host brother had to run inside after awhile, but I was paralyzed by the shininess: clearly I would not make a great soldier, for this and pretty much every other conceivable reason.
Post-holidays, most of my time has been occupied by teaching, English clubs, and NPH (thanks to a lot of Dr. Horrible re-watching and Lizz sending me Season 1 of How I Met Your Mother). Winter in Zhetysai has proven to be considerably better than in Massachusetts, where I spent my last five winters, in that the sun does not go down at 4 p.m. and every walkable surface does not transform into an icy deathtrap. This New Year’s Eve, I stood outside in a t-shirt and open hoodie—last New Year’s Eve in Boston, I lost feeling in my face after about 10 seconds, despite my heavy jacket and scarf. For most of January the weather here was unsettlingly spring-like: Monday, though, we got an all-day snowfall that actually stuck. It’s still pretty frigid and the snow has made its inevitable transition from being pretty and fresh to gritty and depressing, but if this is the worst weather we get this winter, I really can’t complain. Spring will apparently have started, for real-real, by the time Nayruz (the Kazakh New Year) occurs on March 22nd. I’m pretty pumped about the last two weeks in March: first there’s Nayruz in Shymkent, which involves a huge celebration and a game of kokpar (which is sort of a combination of soccer and polo, played with a goat’s carcass instead of a ball—I might have enjoyed watching my sisters’ soccer games more if AYSO did it that way), then there’s IST, when all the Kaz-21s get to head back to the lap of luxury that is the Kök Töbe sanitarium in Almaty and take real showers, drink real coffee, and speak real English. I’m not so sure how that last one is going to go, but at least other volunteers will be having the same difficulty with their native language. I’m more worried about when I get back to the States: I’m either going to come off as really condescending, since I now slow down and usually repeat all of my words while smiling and nodding a lot, or as really stoned, for pretty much the same reasons.
So I left off pre-holidays, which means you may want to make yourself some popcorn before reading this post, because it’s gonna be epic. December was pretty packed, what with Christmas, the New Year, and the most important internationally recognized holiday of all: my birthday. My host mother totally brought it, as far as my birthday banquet: she baked no less than 100 little frosted cakes, in addition to the full-sized cake, chocolates, and various other cavity-causing snacks on the table. She also made a ton of manti, salad, and these delicious cheese-covered potato and tomato things that I’m sure have a real name but I have no idea what it is. I had gone out with friends for shashlyk (barbecued meat on a stick) and a walk up Zhetysai’s only hill (no—really—the only hill) earlier in the day, but for dinner my host mom’s friends and various host aunts came over to have an all-night birthday extravaganza (which was not so much fun the next day, Monday, when I had to power through four classes on two hours’ sleep). There’s nothing that special about turning 23 in the States, but here it’s one of the last birthdays you can still celebrate without shame for not being married yet. Most of the toasts—and there were a lot of them—were wishes for me to find a rich husband by this time next year, which unless Neil Patrick Harris decides he wants to get gay-married so he can come live with me in Kazakhstan for some inexplicable but amazing reason, is probably not going to happen.
I thought the Christmastime might be a little weird here, what with the general lack of Christmas, but since the New Year celebrations in Kazakhstan basically appropriate all the traditional Christmas stuff—Santa, Christmas trees, presents, tinsel, et cetera—it was definitely festive. My students decorated the school gym with gorgeous wintertime murals and put on various New Year’s concerts, which mostly involved dancing and lip-syncing to pop music and dressing up in random costumes (they also throw a lot of Halloween into the New Year mix). Pretty much all my students already knew at least the chorus of “Jingle Bells,” though “Rudolph” was a revelation—that’s what my sixth-graders sang for our Christmas concert. The eighth grade put on a severely stripped down version of “A Christmas Carol” (penned by yours truly in about 10 minutes—suck it, Dickens) and sang “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” while the ninth grade performed a jitterbugging version of “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree.” The whole production was pretty cute, though it relied pretty heavily on a Christmas CD I’d received in a package a week before, without which there probably would have been a lot more awkward silence and public embarrassment. But hey, isn’t that what middle school is all about?
I spent Christmas Day in Shymkent, where Tes and I joined up with the Kaz-21s in the city and feasted on Becca and Philip’s “Chinese plov,” a roast teriyaki chicken, and heartbreakingly delicious chocolate chip and gingerbread cookies. We did a White Elephant gift exchange, which did not end in tears, gratuitous backstabbing, or any of the other things I’ve witnessed White Elephany gift exchanges ending in—I guess it’d sort of go against the whole “peace” idea if we started fist-fighting with fellow volunteers over a miniature yurt replica. The day after Christmas we recovered from our gluttony and hit up the Megacenter, which has a giant skating rink at its center that some other volunteers ventured out on—due to my longstanding conviction that wearing razor shoes in a confined, slippery space filled with fast-moving children and adolescents is asking for disaster, I opted out and spent most of my time in Ramstore. Ramstore is a giant supermarket that basically has everything you need but can’t find in your local magazine—endless varieties of snacks, fruits, and beverages, pens that actually work and colored pencils that really draw, certain hygiene products not in evidence at your local bazaar—but the problem is that once you get in there, it’s so overwhelming that all you can really do is wander around slack-jawed and try to remind yourself that this is not the last time you will be in the supermarket, and you do not in fact have to grab everything you can carry and bolt for the exit. For dinner we met up with some Kaz-20s at Madlen’s, a French bakery with club sandwiches, spinach quiche, and “holy-crap-that’s-good” lava cake. (Man, I can’t even type the words “spinach quiche” without wanting to cry a little—I cannot remember the last time I ate a truly green vegetable…) Thanks to the awesome Russian skills of a fellow volunteer, we got a ridiculously cheap apartment in the city for the night and, thanks to this being Kazakhstan, some ridiculously cheap vodka. The next morning we got wireless at a nearby café, which was great, since the only other time I’ve managed to get wireless in Kazakhstan was when Philip and I accidentally discovered it in the Almaty train station 20 minutes before our train left. There are a couple of Internet cafés in Shymkent, both of which serve Turkish food—double awesome.
After Christmas, I still had classes, but all the kids had tests and all the teachers had a huge party (at which I won a plastic comb for my sweet dance moves—yeah, you’re jealous), so not a whole lot got done between then and the 31st. I rang in the New Year in Z-Sai with my host brother and mom, since my host sister was discothèque-hopping with her cousin. We prepared a huge feast—yes, I actually helped, most notably with the assembling the cold, slimy fish rolls and the artistically arranging the cow stomach/brains. There’s no better omen for the New Year than your hands smelling like fish and cow parts, I always say. Luckily there was also Snickers cake and champagne, so I just went heavy on booze and dessert, which is of course the traditional American way to celebrate New Year’s Eve. We set up a banquet table in the living room and watched the Russian concerts, which start around the New Year and go on for at least three weeks. I’m not really sure what the point of them is: there are a lot of these kind of specials on TV, and they’re—as Tes accurately described them—kind of like middle school talent shows put on by adults. Actually, they’re more like middle school talent shows in the 80s put on by adults, since that’s where the costumes, hair, and musical sensibility appear to be from. Moscow was already a couple of hours into 2010 so we didn’t have a countdown, but it turned out we did not really need one, due to the violently loud explosions that started at midnight. There are no fireworks laws in Zhetysai, so ringing in the New Year was kind of like being caught in a war zone. Seriously, we went outside and there were fireworks in every direction—it appeared that everyone on our street was setting off rockets, and they were not aiming them so much skyward as at each other. My host brother had to run inside after awhile, but I was paralyzed by the shininess: clearly I would not make a great soldier, for this and pretty much every other conceivable reason.
Post-holidays, most of my time has been occupied by teaching, English clubs, and NPH (thanks to a lot of Dr. Horrible re-watching and Lizz sending me Season 1 of How I Met Your Mother). Winter in Zhetysai has proven to be considerably better than in Massachusetts, where I spent my last five winters, in that the sun does not go down at 4 p.m. and every walkable surface does not transform into an icy deathtrap. This New Year’s Eve, I stood outside in a t-shirt and open hoodie—last New Year’s Eve in Boston, I lost feeling in my face after about 10 seconds, despite my heavy jacket and scarf. For most of January the weather here was unsettlingly spring-like: Monday, though, we got an all-day snowfall that actually stuck. It’s still pretty frigid and the snow has made its inevitable transition from being pretty and fresh to gritty and depressing, but if this is the worst weather we get this winter, I really can’t complain. Spring will apparently have started, for real-real, by the time Nayruz (the Kazakh New Year) occurs on March 22nd. I’m pretty pumped about the last two weeks in March: first there’s Nayruz in Shymkent, which involves a huge celebration and a game of kokpar (which is sort of a combination of soccer and polo, played with a goat’s carcass instead of a ball—I might have enjoyed watching my sisters’ soccer games more if AYSO did it that way), then there’s IST, when all the Kaz-21s get to head back to the lap of luxury that is the Kök Töbe sanitarium in Almaty and take real showers, drink real coffee, and speak real English. I’m not so sure how that last one is going to go, but at least other volunteers will be having the same difficulty with their native language. I’m more worried about when I get back to the States: I’m either going to come off as really condescending, since I now slow down and usually repeat all of my words while smiling and nodding a lot, or as really stoned, for pretty much the same reasons.
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