I almost went with "Where Have You Been All My Life, Regina Spektor?" as the title of this entry, because I just recently discovered all 52 of her singles not named "Fidelity." They're not all winners, but I really like the album "Far." At least it captures my current mood, kind of the same way Scrubs managed to steal my heart over the summer.
Anyway, I figure this will probably be my last update, for any of you still checking. I can certainly understand if some of you have stopped reading, what with the once-every-4 months entries. Though I can't understand, and won't accept, any other reasons.
I checked, and the last time I wrote on here was June, which feels like a lifetime ago. The following two months of summer were almost unbearably slow. I did have a Russian language camp, a trip to Astana, a trip to Kyrgyzstan, and a basketball camp near Astana, which were all fun, but aside from those when I was home, there just wasn't a whole lot to do. And I was encouraged to do even less by the fact that I had both internet and air conditioning, which made it that much easier to convince myself that it was too hot to go outside. I did, as I mentioned earlier, make it through all 8 seasons of Scrubs, easily one of my proudest and most notable accomplishments of the last two years. Another top one included buying and hanging two hammocks on my balcony, even though the first one broke and the second caught fire from a burning cigarette butt just days after I bought it. But I digress.
The reason for the title of this blog is that in one of my fourth-course classes this past month, we did a Scrubs unit - maybe I'm obsessed, but I wanted to make my last couple months of lessons enjoyable - and it's amazing how many new terms just one episode of that show can teach. I really wish I had discovered it sooner, because it's a wealth of everyday English colloquialisms and slangs. Part of it is that there's just so much dialogue on the show that it can't help but use a lot of unique expressions. Anyhow, there are plenty of less-than-polite terms and phrases used on the show, the understanding of which are often crucial for understanding the theme of the episode, so I decided to go ahead and not exclude teaching these bad words. That's why one of the expressions we learned was "you suck." Having never had to explain the meaning of this expression to anyone before, I was shocked to realize how many different meanings it can have. At first I wasn't sure they were understanding my multi-faceted explanation, until I asked them to give their own examples and one girl, Laura, said, "You're leaving soon. You suck." (You understand it correctly Laura.) I had never been so touched before by anyone telling me I suck.
Beyond teaching Kazakhstani students such poetic terms of endearment, I've been busy with a number of other things since lessons started back up September 1, the most notable of which was a "Healthy Living" Conference that in Kazakh was called Салауатты өмір салты (Salauattah umir saltah. For those really interested the translation would be something like "a splendid beautiful life"). We basically organized three days of interactive lessons/presentations about 6 different health topics, including HIV/AIDS, smoking, drinking, narcotic/alcohol abuse, exercise, and nutrition. I got a lot of help from my fellow volunteers here who each gave one presentation (mine was smoking). Most of the participants - one group of 15 students from the teaching college and one group of 15 kids from the local orphanage - either didn't know English at all, or didn't know it very well, so we used 6 of my best students as translators. Though the camp was for the kids who came, I was happiest about this aspect of it, because it was the first "live interpreting" experience for most of these girls, and they did a really great job. We also had a lot of help from the two village volunteers, Jenn and Andy, who came in and made huge amounts of lentil burgers and vegetable pasta salad, respectively, for the participants. The kids seemed to like the food, even though it was very different from what they usually eat here, and it's not easy to find locals who are willing to branch out culinarily. I'd be remiss not to mention my sitemates Cho, who taught HIV/AIDS awareness and narcotics abuse, and McKenzie, who taught exercise, and did an awesome job as well.
After the lessons we taught and played American football, which was a huge success, and tried to teach baseball, which was far less successful. It turns out you need more than 45 minutes to teach the rules of baseball in broken Kazakh. But they had fun hitting the ball around, so it wasn't a total waste.
Anyway, I've included a few pictures from the conference on here.
Aside from that, lately there's been a good bit of running around and saying all my goodbyes, doing all the things on my "list of things to do before I leave." And I have a feeling this will continue and intensify over the next 2-3 weeks before I do get on that last train to Almaty.
Just off the top of my head, a few other notable events from the past several months that would take too long (or be too painful) to recount in detail:
- going to Close of Service Conference in September and having to poop into a tube, easily the grossest thing I've had to do in two years
- finishing translation of To Kill a Mockingbird screenplay into Kazazkh with local teaching counterparts...we're hoping to get it published, and one counterpart, Nuraiym, is currently entering the Kazakh subtitles onto the movie file (an arduous process)
- seeing an impression of myself on Teacher's Day...it's a good thing I can't get videos to load on here
- discovering Pizza Hut and KFC in Almaty and TGI Friday's (3 times) in Astana
- getting a score of Advanced Low on my final Kazakh test and Intermediate High on Russian
- trying unsuccessfully to ignore the Orioles during their season-closing 13-game losing binge
- deciding to apply to law school for next year (also an arduous process - the applying and the deciding)
- teaching and playing baseball with school students in Andy's village (Zhalagash), with relative success - Andy's host sister proved to be a gold-glove caliber shortstop
- giving elementary Russian lessons to the new Filipino volunteers living in the city...I can only hope they find a better teacher when I leave
- buying tickets to Hong Kong and the Philippines to meet Betsy on my way home next month
- with 3 other PCVs and 1 local friend, Zhenya, beating a local traveling basketball team at basketball camp near Astana, 50-48, though at the end of regulation one of the opposing players walked by the scorer's table and whispered to the scorekeeper "just call it a tie," (there was no scoreboard) and then losing in overtime
- seeing beautiful Lake Issykul in Kyrgyzstan and being forced to speak only Russian for 5 consecutive days, and surviving
- being reintroduced to the card game "Oh Hell" and remembering why I used to love it so much
- celebrating my (cough)2(cough)7th birthday with new friends, American and Kazakhstani
- finding out for certain (finally) that I will be replaced at my university by another volunteer when I leave.
I think that touches on most of the big stuff that's been going on lately. If I can find the time and the motivation to post one more entry over the next three weeks I will, but it's likely this is my last one. So I'll just say thanks to everyone for reading and for your comments over the last two years. Writing these entries has been enjoyable and, at times, therapeutic for me, but I've had an absolutely amazing, unforgettable experience here. I hope that sentiment has been conveyed in what I've written.
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