where the sun makes a funny face

As I’ve mentioned, life in Kazakhstan as a PCV has been excellent. I’ve had time to be away from school and students and teaching, and have replaced that time with traveling with family, doing summer camps, and spending quality days with other PCVs from all over the country.

My visit with my family was both exhausting and highly rewarding. I was able to share a part of my life with them that they would never be able to really understand from pictures and blog updates, while giving them an experience they would never have ventured to take without me already living here and knowing the language. As my dad points out in the Lonely Planet travel guide to Central Asia, “Kazakhstan is not the easiest country to get around in.” I’m so proud of their patience – they spent roughly 64 hours on trains and buses; enthusiasm – they approached learning Russian and cultural practices with a “let’s go on an adventure” attitude that made their struggles in both bearable, even enjoyable; endurance – they spent roughly 64 hours on trains and buses, and a month with no air conditioning; love – they showered gifts and praise and thanks on everyone we met, from host family and counterpart to other PCVs to local landladies and friends; and perseverance – they spent roughly 64 hours on trains and buses, a month with no air conditioning, in a country where they didn’t speak the language. My family is great. I can’t say enough good things. Their trip here allowed them to have a taste of the things I’m doing here, both literally – they all ate horse – and figuratively, as they have now seen the majority of places that I’ve been in KZ. Just this week I talked to my mom on the phone and told her where I am sitting, at a school in a village 6 hours from Petropavlovsk and she said, “Oh, I remember that village! We’ve BEEN THERE!” Pretty cool.

After saying our goodbyes in the Almaty airport, which were considerably easier than the first time in Nashville (Mom still cried), I headed to Balkhash for a week of work with other PCVs. We spent our mornings processing data from a city-wide English competition the volunteers there did in the spring, and the afternoons divided between English Clubs and beach bumming. The week gave me a chance to get back on my feet and remember what it was like to be a PCV and not a PCV/translator/tour guide/son/brother combined in one. Then, after a much needed three day break at site, I headed to Burabai for my second camp of the summer.

Now, summer camp is still work, perhaps even more demanding than a regular school week because it is a 24-hour-a-day commitment and the activities tend to be of a much higher energy variety (i.e. grammar exercises versus Ultimate Frisbee). On the other hand, the atmosphere that surrounds a summer camp is one of freedom, play, fun and excitement, while school is, well…school. This particular camp has been funded by various grants and donations (thank you Montgomery Clan for your support!) and was a joint effort by PCVs and local teachers to organize and pull off the 10-day event. It is an Arts and Humanities camp, where the students spend their mornings in lessons led by PCVs, local teachers and US study abroad alumni, and their afternoons on excursions to the lake and various museums. The kids have lessons in painting, drama, music (which I lead), poetry, dance and mask-making. We’ve had some great collaboration between the different arts, as the masks will be used for the final play the drama kids will produce, and the poetry kids have written a poem that the music class turned into a song. The kids were shown a picture of a woman playing a cello on a curb and asked to write some verses about it. I pulled the parts together to make a coherent poem. It goes like this:

A girl plays the cello/She sings a song
“Good morning, people. Hello”/She sings all day long

She sits with her cello/She plays on the streets
All the people passing by say “Hello”/Because she’s very sweet

She wants to eat and drink/But she must play all day
Hey look! She’s about to sing/She’s so cool today

She sings, “Hello, Hello!/Hello, Hello!”
To these people she doesn’t know/”Please don’t go”

We also as a group wrote a theme song for the camp. The kids all wrote a verse or two which I chopped up and made into a catchy ditty that the kids learned and will perform for the closing concert. It goes like this:

Verse1:
I’m staying in an ecstatic place/Where the sun makes a funny face
This place is called Burabai/And here I feel like I can fly

Chorus:
Come on! Come on! Come on Come! ‘Cause time flies.
Come on! Come on! Come on Come! To Burabai.
Come on! Come on! Burabai.

Verse 2:
Together we play Frisbee game/We’re painting and singing every day
Playing and swimming and hiking outside/Where the air is clear and the sun shines bright

Verse 3:
Everybody is always happy here/The beautiful lake is always near
We’ll remember each other forever/Because we’ll always be together

Verse4:
A lovely summer camp in Burabai/It’s very cool and that’s no lie
We’re always groovy and never cry/We never want to say goodbye

These kids are fantastic. Their English ranges from novice high to intermediate mid, but their attitudes and eagerness to learn and practice has made this camp so incredibly smooth and rewarding. Over and over, the students will be in the middle of a conversation with a PCV, perhaps on the steps outside the school, and the student will hear a new word, say “Stop!” and then run inside to get a notebook to write it down. If I had only two or three students like these per class at my school, my frustrations about teaching would all but vanish. A motivated, interested attitude makes the worst English mistakes bearable, and the teaching of songs like “Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Deep Blue Something)”, “Island in the Sun (Weezer)”, and “Umbrella (Rihanna)” an experience I find difficult to call work. Being with all these bright, young, talented kids has really given me a bit more hope in the future of Kazakhstan, as well as so many ideas of how to improve my classes and English Clubs this coming school year.

As I turn my attention to the last day of camp, and my subsequent return to site, for what appears to be a long while (Thanksgiving will probably be the next trip away), I’m reminded that next week will mark one full year of my life in Kazakhstan. But that merits a whole new update. Stay tuned for pictures and videos from camp.