Summer Camp

Girls I’ve been playing basketball with here. They’re pretty good, I started teaching them the pick and roll yesterday.

Some of our students, these girls are in 5^th grade. The group I teach is in 8^th, but we all do sports together.

Some volunteers and locals after playing basketball. (America won, if you’re wondering :)

Me trying to get an expression out of my local counterpart teacher for the two weeks I’m up here. She’s a little, uh, stoic.

Hi everyone, it’s summer here and I’m up in the northeast of the country at a kids camp. I’m in the town of Alga, which is near the city of Aktobe. This area is actually as close to Moscow as it is to Almaty. The north shows a lot more Russian influence and none of the Uzbek influence that I have around Aksu. The weather is a lot cooler, too; which feels really good. In fact, all the guys from the south including me did not bring a jacket (or anything long sleeve) up here because down in our sites it’s so warm right now.

There are ten volunteers here (most of whom I learned Kazakh with in Almaty last Fall) and we’re running a summer camp for a hundred local school kids in grades 5 to 8. In the morning each of us team teaches an English class with a local teacher. In the afternoons we play games and sports with the kids. We do quite a bit of work, but it’s good to be around all my friends again. And the kids make friendship bracelets for us, never got one of those working at a college with older kids. And the school has a basketball gym with two functional hoops. One of them is bent enough that I can dunk on it, which really impresses the kids. It feels good to play basketball again, though I seem to pull a different muscle every day (calf yesterday, neck today… while trying to dunk). There is also a ton of donated sports equipment that volunteers’ parents have sent from home, including enough baseball equipment for a whole team. We are warming the kids up to baseball; this week we’re just doing kick ball.

We’re staying at a hotel-like place just down the street from the school we’re working at. A daily hot shower is an amazing thing, I feel a little too clean actually. Alga is a little smaller than Aksu, but it’s really nice. A lot of volunteers get placed either in mid-sized cities or in po-dunk villages; I’m really happy with my site, though it is nice to get away for a bit. The large village is the best of both worlds: small enough you can walk to work and always see people you know, but big enough to have a bank and markets and stuff. After two weeks here I’ll head back down to Aksu (27 hour train ride) for my one week teacher training seminar. I’ve got five other volunteers coming in to town for that. We’ll (hopefully) be teaching 10 school teachers and 15 of my students (future teachers) new methodologies and giving them English speaking practice. I’ve planned a bunch of stuff so hopefully it will go well. I’m really excited for my girls to be able to talk with Americans other than Mr. Eric.

After that I’ll go to another kids camp in the Northeast of Kazakhstan, near Ust Kamenogorsk (I’m getting the grand tour of the 9^th largest country in the world). Then I may take a trip to Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan with a couple other volunteers, we’ll see. Taking the larger perspective, I’ve made it through the first of two school years here and one winter. Ahead of me is a summer of various non-work activities, a full school year, next summer, and a few months of the 2009 school year before I go home in November 2009. There are always little things that bug you, but it generally gets a little easier as things become more familiar. And doing this with a bunch of other people in other sites around the country is definitely a life saver. We can commiserate together and it really puts things in perspective: there’s always someone who has it worse than you. Anyways, that’s what I’m up to this summer.

I’ve got a little extra time, so I want to talk about trains in Kazakhstan. This country is huge and we generally don’t get paid enough to fly places on the (very good) domestic airline, Air Astana. So we take trains. For days at a time. The train system is actually pretty good. If there’s one thing the Soviets could do well it was lay heavy infrastructure and industry. They put tons of factories in tons of places which made no economic sense, then built the train tracks to move that stuff around. Around my oblast (state) I can take buses. If the trip is 12 hours or less then the bus is a little cheaper and you can buy the ticket 5 minutes before the thing leaves. The train is for longer trips (which can be up to forty hours depending on where you’re going).

There are two classes: Plazcart (economy) and Kupe (cabin). As you walk through a Plazcart car, the aisle is on the right third of the width of the car. The car is divided into open sections. In each section there are two bunks horizontally abutting the aisle on the right side. To the left is a small table and open area with two sets of two bunks facing each other. These bunks are perpendicular to the direction the train is going. Hopefully that makes some sense. Anyways, Plazcart is a communal experience. You talk with lots of random people and share food and tea with them. This can be good or bad. If you’re in the mood to talk it’s a good way to pass time, but it can be a little overwhelming. This is especially true for girls. Kazakh men can be very overbearing and obnoxious towards any female, especially those who are decent looking. I don’t really have that problem, so I can chat and share my life story and practice Kazakh a bit more freely. Gender roles. Old Kazakh women are fascinated by random foreigners who speak Kazakh but not Russian and don’t really look American. (I have about the same conversation four or five times on one train trip)

The second option: Kupe. This is a separate cabin with a door that closes. Each cabin has two sets of two bunks facing each other. The beds are bigger than Plazcart and there’s a little more privacy. It works well if you’re with a group of people. Examples of prices: Aksu (my site) to Alga (where I am now) is a 27 hour train ride. Plazcart (which I rode) costs about $22. I heard Kupe costs about $30 or $35.

The trains can sometimes be overbearingly hot. At other times a flood of people will cram into one car, apparently because the conductor on that car is selling seats that don’t exist on the spot. I’ve ended up crammed shoulder to shoulder in a hot car with a hundred of my closest friends. On top of that, everyone’s drinking hot tea. This is the only beverage. People just don’t drink things cold here; a lot of times lukewarm is the best you can hope for.

That’s all I have time for now, included are a few pictures from the last week. Take care and have a great summer.