I started to realize the other day just how much I'm missing the variety of food in America when I was walking home and thought I smelled nacho cheese. It turned out it was just a pile of burning trash in our backyard, but it's amazing how similar this smell is to ballpark nachos. Soon after this disappointing episode I decided I would make spaghetti for my host family before I leave Chamalgan, if for no other reason than I would make enough for myself to eat too, and I really need to have something outside of the five-meal Kazakh rotation, which is delicious - don't get me wrong - but a little variety every now and then doesn't hurt anything.
Yesterday we all returned from our week long site visits, mine in Kzylorda, and while my visit was a lot of fun, it was a lot more fun to reunite with everyone back in Chamalgan. While there we all taught a few classes, got to know our towns and counterparts (the one teacher we'll be most closely working with during our service), and met our prospective host families. That to me was the craziest part of the whole experience- we each got to visit three prospective host families, and after visiting them all we were to choose one to live with for the first six months of our stay (possibly longer if we want). But here we are, a bunch of young Americans with extremely limited (if any) professional experience, not to mention language skills and cultural knowledge, and we're judging these Kazakh families, deciding which one we like the best as if it's a job interview. To me the whole thing felt pretty uncomfortable, since I still can't verbalize most of my thoughts or express myself to people in the local language, and yet I was the one deciding which family to choose.
All this being the case, I have to admit that it was in some ways nice having a choice, and after some careful consideration I think I am going to live with a family of two in a 5th-floor apartment overlooking the Cyr Daria (Secret River), about a five-minute walk from the University. It's a nice apartment, on the inside at least, as were all the apartments I saw (horrible looking on the outside with crumbling cement and no paint, and beautiful on the inside), and the family is very nice. It includes an aunt and her niece, who is a fifth year student at my university and is studying English to become an interpreter. She is already fluent, so I'm not sure how much I will be able to help with her English, and in fact I'm fairly certain she'll be able to help me much more with my Kazakh and Russian.
Walking around Kzylorda this past week, I realized that it wasn't nearly as terrible as everyone had warned me. It's a sprawling city of 200,000, yes the air and water aren't exactly clean, yes there are no hills or mountains anywhere in sight, yes most of the buildings are pretty ugly, yes there isn't a ton of vegetation, yes there is a ton of wind, it was pretty cold, but all things considered I thought it was kind of a neat little town. In the middle of the university there is a big square where people gather for holiday concerts and other get-togethers, there is a pizzeria and a "MakBurger" - a fast food joint at a gas station that serves very Kazakh-tasting hamburgers, along with the other Kazakh staple dishes like Manti, Pelmen, Pilaf, Borsch, and Lagmon - and it was the capital of Kazakhstan for a brief time in the 1920s. Near the square the town also features a billboard with a picture of a man in overalls wearing a baseball cap that bears an eerily striking resemblance to 1983 World Series MVP and long-time former Orioles catcher Rick Dempsey. (I had to stare at this billboard for several minutes before convincing myself it wasn't actually Rick Dempsey.) All in all though I think the town will have a lot to offer and will be an interesting place to work for the next two years. It will be difficult being as much as 40 hours by train away from some of my closest friends in Kazakhstan, but I also think this will make for some en joyable travel to different parts of the country.
When I returned to my host family's house Saturday night, after a week and a half away we were all extremely happy to see each other. My nine-year-old host brother Tolyesh, who seemed especially excited to see me, proceeded to talk for about 45 minutes at dinner about something having to do with Halloween, Spiderman, Freddy Krueger, and the Incredible Hulk (I know these were the topics because these were more or less the only words I understood). After having the floor for the better part of an hour while his grandmother and I quietly sipped our borsch and nodded our heads in unison, he paused long enough for his grandmother to look up and ask in Kazakh, "Are you done?" This comment had me laughing pretty hard, but he was unfazed and continued on for another several minutes talking about how he and his friend had had a pretend fight earlier that day and how they kept switching from being Spiderman to Incredible Hulk to Freddy Krueger. This isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened, and many times during these long diatribes his grandmother will wave her hand at him in disgust as if to indicate she is ignoring him and will start asking me a question. Sometimes I'm able to answer, as long as I can a) stop laughing and b) understand the question.
It's going to be really difficult leaving in a couple weeks because I've gotten to really like my host family and I've grown accustomed to living with them and working/studying here in Chamalgan. But, life goes on, and I'm sure I will be back to visit just as soon as the thermometer in Kzylorda hits 130 next summer. Either that or when the tap water starts boiling as it comes out of the tap, we'll just have to see.
Oh, and sorry to any Indians fans reading this for single-handedly jinxing them and sending them home early from halfway around the world. I shouldn't have just assumed they'd be able to seal the deal with a 3-1 series lead, like they did with ease back in the '97 ALCS against the Orioles. In fact back then it was so easy that if I remember correctly they had Tony Fernandez hitting series-clinching homeruns for them. If I remember correctly. (Which I do. All too well). But really, sorry. And now the Red Sox are probably going to win it all. How thrilling! Their fans really deserve it. Really, I can hardly contain all my excitement for them.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Friday, October 19, 2007
Rockies Series-Bound?
After getting the baseball update from my sister last night, it sounds like the '07 World Series will most likely be Rockies-Indians. If there is anyone on the planet that made this prediction at the beginning of the year, and was not joking at the time, I'd like to meet you. My contact info is in the last blog entry.
I had a big long post typed out on my computer, but because mail takes over a month to arrive here and I therefore still don't have a flash drive, I will have to once again wing it.
News at the Almaty internet cafe is they've added a TV that apparently plays nothing but rap videos from America. Right now there's a song playing that started out as a loose cover/remix of the 80s hit "Tainted Love" and then at the end they started singing "Black Betty." I'm pretty sure these were both part of the same rap song, for some reason. If anyone else has heard this song, I'm sorry.
Right now all the volunteers are here in Almaty at a two-day counterpart conference, where we have met the teachers that we will be working with for the next two years. After this conference (tomorrow), most of us will leave for a one week visit to our respective sites. While there we are supposed to teach lessons, give a presentation about Peace Corps to our school staff, meet our prospective host families, and generally get acquainted with our towns. I met my counterpart yesterday and she is a very nice woman who speaks excellent English (which I think is pretty lucky for me according to the level of English of some of the other counterparts) and has been teaching at Kzylorda State University for five years. Although teaching at a university was not my first choice, I'm now pretty excited about getting going with it and seeing what it's like.
I leave for my visit to Kzylorda at about 4pm tomorrow (Saturday) and will be on the train for just a shade under 24 hours, which should give me plenty of time to stare aimlessly out the window at the Kazakhstani "steppe," as they call it. (I'm still not totally sure the meaning of this word, but as far as I can tell it means some combination of desert-flatland-nothingness.) I was talking the other day with a volunteer who is preparing to leave Kzylorda, and I made the mistake of asking her about the weather in the summer. She said that for about a 6-week stretch this past summer, the temperature during the day was about 120-125. After fainting, coming to, asking her what had just happened, asking her to repeat herself several times, and then doing the math in my head, I realized that that is really, really hot. So we'll see how much time I end up spending in Kzylorda next summer versus, say, far northern Kazakhstan.
Other news- our talent show went off without a hitch last Friday which was a pleasant surprise considering how underprepared we were for all the logistics of it. It also reached previously unseen levels on the Adorable Scale. Performances included a rendition by two girls of the timeless Britney Spears classic "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman," a very Kazakh version of Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called to Say I Love You" (one of my all-time favorites), a poem about simple addition, a beautiful Hawaiian Hula dance led by our resident Hawaiian volunteer, and a very politically-incorrect but very cute Thanksgiving Play which included lines such as "Look, I caught a fish! But I'm still hungry..." and "How, me Big Cheif Wambossat." Of course what remained of the Five Little Elephants brought down the house with their performance of the popular remix version titled "Three Little Elephants." The video I took of this is what I'm now going to watch anytime I start feeling sad about things.
I swear I have more written on my computer at home, but this is all I can think to write about for now. I hope it's a good World Series- the last Series I didn't watch I believe included a pretty catastrophic earthquake, so I hope this one manages to avoid natural disasters of that kind. And whether it's Red Sox or Indians, go Rockies!
I had a big long post typed out on my computer, but because mail takes over a month to arrive here and I therefore still don't have a flash drive, I will have to once again wing it.
News at the Almaty internet cafe is they've added a TV that apparently plays nothing but rap videos from America. Right now there's a song playing that started out as a loose cover/remix of the 80s hit "Tainted Love" and then at the end they started singing "Black Betty." I'm pretty sure these were both part of the same rap song, for some reason. If anyone else has heard this song, I'm sorry.
Right now all the volunteers are here in Almaty at a two-day counterpart conference, where we have met the teachers that we will be working with for the next two years. After this conference (tomorrow), most of us will leave for a one week visit to our respective sites. While there we are supposed to teach lessons, give a presentation about Peace Corps to our school staff, meet our prospective host families, and generally get acquainted with our towns. I met my counterpart yesterday and she is a very nice woman who speaks excellent English (which I think is pretty lucky for me according to the level of English of some of the other counterparts) and has been teaching at Kzylorda State University for five years. Although teaching at a university was not my first choice, I'm now pretty excited about getting going with it and seeing what it's like.
I leave for my visit to Kzylorda at about 4pm tomorrow (Saturday) and will be on the train for just a shade under 24 hours, which should give me plenty of time to stare aimlessly out the window at the Kazakhstani "steppe," as they call it. (I'm still not totally sure the meaning of this word, but as far as I can tell it means some combination of desert-flatland-nothingness.) I was talking the other day with a volunteer who is preparing to leave Kzylorda, and I made the mistake of asking her about the weather in the summer. She said that for about a 6-week stretch this past summer, the temperature during the day was about 120-125. After fainting, coming to, asking her what had just happened, asking her to repeat herself several times, and then doing the math in my head, I realized that that is really, really hot. So we'll see how much time I end up spending in Kzylorda next summer versus, say, far northern Kazakhstan.
Other news- our talent show went off without a hitch last Friday which was a pleasant surprise considering how underprepared we were for all the logistics of it. It also reached previously unseen levels on the Adorable Scale. Performances included a rendition by two girls of the timeless Britney Spears classic "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman," a very Kazakh version of Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called to Say I Love You" (one of my all-time favorites), a poem about simple addition, a beautiful Hawaiian Hula dance led by our resident Hawaiian volunteer, and a very politically-incorrect but very cute Thanksgiving Play which included lines such as "Look, I caught a fish! But I'm still hungry..." and "How, me Big Cheif Wambossat." Of course what remained of the Five Little Elephants brought down the house with their performance of the popular remix version titled "Three Little Elephants." The video I took of this is what I'm now going to watch anytime I start feeling sad about things.
I swear I have more written on my computer at home, but this is all I can think to write about for now. I hope it's a good World Series- the last Series I didn't watch I believe included a pretty catastrophic earthquake, so I hope this one manages to avoid natural disasters of that kind. And whether it's Red Sox or Indians, go Rockies!
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Red Center
That's the literal translation for the town, or city, that I'm moving to in a month. We got our site assignments yesterday, and one other volunteer and I are going to be spending the next two years in Kzylorda. It's a city of 200,000 people (the number of livestock is still undetermined) situated in south-central Kazakhstan (very similar to south-central LA, from what I hear). Just as I was hoping for, there are no mountains or lakes, lots of camels, lots of heat in the summer, lots of sand, essentially no beautiful sights or landmarks, lots of water and air pollution, and it's more than a dozen hours by train to both Almaty and Astana, the capitol.
Although it apparently isn't going to be the small, rural, picturesque town in the foothills I was envisioning, I am looking forward to going there and finding out what it's like. I will be there with one other volunteer who also happens to be in my language group, which I think will work out well because we have gotten along so far.
Also, for some unknown reason they have placed me at a university, so after a month of learning to teach and manage a classroom of 30 eleven-year olds I will be teaching a group of twenty-year olds the virtues of Mark Twain and Atticus Finch (or if I have my way the guy from The Giver). I actually don't know if the students I teach will be that advanced in English or not, but this is my fear. Either way, it should be an interesting two years. And having lived in the desert for a while, I'm hoping I can handle the Kazakh-summer heat.
In other news, the word for "but" in Kazakh is "birak" but pronounced "Barack" like Obama. Naturally as soon as I learned this I looked in my Kaz-English dictionary to see if there was a word for Obama. I found that "Oba" means cholera epidemic, and if you add "ma" to the end of a sentence it becomes a question. So "Barack Obama" in Kazakh literally means "But, (a) cholera (epidemic)?" This is neither an endorsement for or slight against Mr. Obama; I just thought it was funny.
Some bad news came earlier this week when one of my good friends in our language group decided to terminate his service early and leave Kazakhstan. It was a sad day and was totally unexpected for all of us, but life in Chamalgan went on as we are all extremely busy, and now a little bit busier with Mr. Allen (his teacher's name) and his guitar back in America. But things are still going well. My five little elephants dwindled down to one, but is now back up to five as we acquired four new elephants (two girls, who like to smack each other as hard as they can, roughly every 45 seconds). But our talent show is on Friday and I think they will be ready. It is pretty funny to watch them recite the poem- they know it pretty well but not perfectly, but every time we practice it they yell it almost as loud as they can.
To avoid confusion, here's the poem:
Five little elephants
Standing in a row
Five little trunks (sometimes pronounced 'troonks')
Waving "hello!"
"Oh" said an elephant
"Time to go"
Four little elephants
Standing in a row
And so on until there are no little elephants standing in a row.
I'm currently trying to upload some of my pictures onto this computer at the internet cafe, but it doesn't seem to be working. Maybe when I get to my site I will finally figure out how to post my pictures.
Also I realized that I hadn't really given my address out to anyone. So in case anyone feels the sudden urge to send me mail, my address is:
Peace Corps Kazakhstan
P.O. Box 257
Almaty 050022
Kazakhstan
ATTN: Chris Chaplin
Hopefully I will have a flash drive soon, so I will be able to type posts on my computer and just transfer them on here when I get to the internet. So I hope to be putting a few more posts on here, since I can only get to the internet once a week and then when I do I have usually forgotten a lot of the stuff that's happened that's worth mentioning.
Also, I'm going to ignore my own request to not talk about the Orioles anymore, but was there really talk about them moving? For the record, if they're not, this is not a subject to joke about.
I also heard from my mom that I missed a great pennant race. Hopefully the playoffs are just as exciting. I think I would be rooting for the Rockies if I were able to watch.
Although it apparently isn't going to be the small, rural, picturesque town in the foothills I was envisioning, I am looking forward to going there and finding out what it's like. I will be there with one other volunteer who also happens to be in my language group, which I think will work out well because we have gotten along so far.
Also, for some unknown reason they have placed me at a university, so after a month of learning to teach and manage a classroom of 30 eleven-year olds I will be teaching a group of twenty-year olds the virtues of Mark Twain and Atticus Finch (or if I have my way the guy from The Giver). I actually don't know if the students I teach will be that advanced in English or not, but this is my fear. Either way, it should be an interesting two years. And having lived in the desert for a while, I'm hoping I can handle the Kazakh-summer heat.
In other news, the word for "but" in Kazakh is "birak" but pronounced "Barack" like Obama. Naturally as soon as I learned this I looked in my Kaz-English dictionary to see if there was a word for Obama. I found that "Oba" means cholera epidemic, and if you add "ma" to the end of a sentence it becomes a question. So "Barack Obama" in Kazakh literally means "But, (a) cholera (epidemic)?" This is neither an endorsement for or slight against Mr. Obama; I just thought it was funny.
Some bad news came earlier this week when one of my good friends in our language group decided to terminate his service early and leave Kazakhstan. It was a sad day and was totally unexpected for all of us, but life in Chamalgan went on as we are all extremely busy, and now a little bit busier with Mr. Allen (his teacher's name) and his guitar back in America. But things are still going well. My five little elephants dwindled down to one, but is now back up to five as we acquired four new elephants (two girls, who like to smack each other as hard as they can, roughly every 45 seconds). But our talent show is on Friday and I think they will be ready. It is pretty funny to watch them recite the poem- they know it pretty well but not perfectly, but every time we practice it they yell it almost as loud as they can.
To avoid confusion, here's the poem:
Five little elephants
Standing in a row
Five little trunks (sometimes pronounced 'troonks')
Waving "hello!"
"Oh" said an elephant
"Time to go"
Four little elephants
Standing in a row
And so on until there are no little elephants standing in a row.
I'm currently trying to upload some of my pictures onto this computer at the internet cafe, but it doesn't seem to be working. Maybe when I get to my site I will finally figure out how to post my pictures.
Also I realized that I hadn't really given my address out to anyone. So in case anyone feels the sudden urge to send me mail, my address is:
Peace Corps Kazakhstan
P.O. Box 257
Almaty 050022
Kazakhstan
ATTN: Chris Chaplin
Hopefully I will have a flash drive soon, so I will be able to type posts on my computer and just transfer them on here when I get to the internet. So I hope to be putting a few more posts on here, since I can only get to the internet once a week and then when I do I have usually forgotten a lot of the stuff that's happened that's worth mentioning.
Also, I'm going to ignore my own request to not talk about the Orioles anymore, but was there really talk about them moving? For the record, if they're not, this is not a subject to joke about.
I also heard from my mom that I missed a great pennant race. Hopefully the playoffs are just as exciting. I think I would be rooting for the Rockies if I were able to watch.
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