9 months and… well… not really counting anymore

Well, maybe I still count. Last Friday was my nine month mark from arriving in KZ, and I think I’ve finally gotten to the point, like in a high school romantic relationship, where you stop counting months and just wait for the big “anniversaries.” Aside from the fact that I’m going broke buying myself flowers every new month I’ve survived here, and that I’m running out of fingers to keep tally, I’ve stopped caring about the 23rd of every month because I’m beginning to like it here. I’ve also come to realize that, based on four years of high school, four years of college, and nine months in KZ, 27 months isn’t as long as it seems. It’s amazing what the end of the school year will do to a teacher’s spirits, but I assure you there are things here that are responsible for my happiness other than the end of my primary job. A sampling:

Yavlenka
Back in early May, I had a great two-day trip to the nearby village of Yavlenka to visit Tim, a fellow Kaz-19. Yavlenka is a village of a few thousand about an hour’s bus ride away from Petro, and we arrived at his house just in time for a feast. He lives in a free-standing house (unlike most city dwellers in apartment blocks) but with no running water or indoor plumbing. His family owns a cow, a dog, two cats, several sheep (one of which has been named Phil), and a small army of chickens. We met his Kazakh host family, who served us the traditional Kazakh dish beshbarmak, which is a greasy plate of flat noodles, lamb, onions and dill and means “five fingers” in Kazakh. Although down south we did indeed eat beshbarmak with our hands, even the most traditional of the Kazakhs up north use utensils. They do, however, have the same overwhelming hospitality and insistence that you continue eating until it hurts. After the tasty but painful meal we went to the public Banya with Tim’s 16-year-old host brother. He drove us there in the family’s red sedan, and said the funniest joke (in English, even) I’ve heard a local say thus far. It goes: You know how most sheep say, “Baaaah, baaaah,” right? Our sheep say, “Tiiiiiiiiim, Tiiiiiiiiiim” Anyway, the banya was hot, the guys were naked, the whipping branches were painful, and the evening was fantastic.

Summer Camp
We finally crawled our way through the “I’ll have to talk to my supervisor and call you next week” jungle that is the local government here and had a meeting with the activities director at the local education department summer camp. They have accepted our offer to help lead activities for two weeks in June. We’ll be working with kids 7-15 years old, doing activities like singing, sports, yoga, art, and English conversation games. After the nightmare that we had trying to get the go-ahead from the akimat, the meeting we had was surprisingly positive. The director and assistants were very pleased with our abilities and backgrounds, both as Russian speakers and English teachers. Now I have two weeks to plan my portion of the activities, most of which will involve my guitar and 30 accent-laden Kazakhstani kids. If you have any suggestions (other than the obvious camp songs) of songs that I could learn and get the guitar chords for, I’d love to hear them. I’ve taught my students here Lean On Me, Island in the Sun, Umbrella, and Closing Time, but I’m always looking for more good, simple pop songs.


(To be continued)