Pictures from Eastern Kazakhstan

I just finished a kids camp in the town of Georgievka, which is a couple hours south of the city of Ust Kamenogorsk in Northeastern Kazakhstan. It's really pretty up there right now; there are lots of trees, everything is green, and the temperatures are nice and cool. The trade off is that it's basically southern Siberia and the winters there get down to 40 below. We taught english and played sports with groups of 5th and 8th graders. The most interesting pictures are from playing baseball, which the kids really liked. Tomorrow I'm going to Tajikistan for a couple weeks with a couple other volunteers. After that I'll return to my site and resume my boring life. Or at least not quite as exciting as summer is. I hope everyone's doing well.

Volunteers Chris, Emiko, McKenzie, a student, Kimi, and Robert. This isn't the greatest picture in the world, but I didn't have any other group ones. We all stayed in one room the whole week in that house over Chris' shoulder. Also, this is kind of Kazakhstan's equivilant of "Big Sky" country, lots of clouds and open space.

Baseball with wiffle balls and plastic bats (sent from America). Chris played in college so he was the coach for the week.

I play basketball, McKenzie's into fencing. So our baseball coaching consisted of yelling "run that way!!" over and over. Everyone had fun though.

This girl did not want to stop playing. We were all ready to stop for the day and she kept wanting to hit again.

In the classroom we made arts and crafts, braclets, origami, collages, and other cool stuff along with teaching english.

Origami. Notice that none of the guy volunteers are giving instructions. I've excluded the pictures of us (guys) later asking the students for help.

Baseball

Coach Eric: "Make a fist like this. Now hit the fist in the glove like this. Now yell 'Hey batter!"

One More Thing

Me, with a perfect marshmallow. Yeah, I know I need to gain weight, I eat everything in front of me, I swear.

A friend of Emiko's host family. Thought bubble: "What the hell?"

Emiko's host mom (right) and friend. They seem to have the idea down. By the way, the metal trough we did this in is normally for shashlik.

I forgot to mention one funny story. Sometimes volunteers give the local cuisine a hard time. The food is good and hardy, but tends to be a bit bland. I get plenty of soup, potatoes, meat, etc. And except for shashlik (bbq'd shish kebab) almost all meat (in Kazakh, Uzbek, and even Russian tradition) is boiled. No pan frying, stir frying, baking, or anything. If you don't boil it, then it's not cooked.

So with this in mind, my story. Emiko (another volunteer) had her mom in the States send her a ton of supplies for making S'mores at her camp in Alga. This we did. The reaction of locals to marshmallows is predictable, they just kind of stare at it. In Alga they all seemed to like S'mores, though the cooking of the marshmallows was pretty funny, mostly because the volunteers all got into an argument over where to cook them over the fire and for how long. Result: One Kazakh kid is munching on a hunk of charcol and another has one toasty brown, just because that's the way their volunteer mentors like them. So when we went down to Aksu for my seminar, we brought along the extra supplies. My counterpart saw them and held up a marshmallow in his hand, studying it. "Do you boil it?" was all he asked. This may not be funny to you, but it's hilarious to us. I think I've been here too long :)

Seminar

My teacher training seminar last week was a great success. There were the inevitable bumps along the way, but all of my students loved having five other volunteers in town to talk with. We taught them a bunch of teaching methodologies and games that they can use when they become teachers. And of course they had plenty of time to practice speaking English. Now that I'm finished with the seminar (and can relax), I'll travel first to Almaty and then to Ust Kamen in the East of Kazakhstan for another kids camp. This is my month off; after Ust Kamen I'm going to try to go to Tajikistan and/or Kyrgyzstan with a couple other volunteers. I'll keep you updated and try to post some pictures. The following are some pictures from last week's seminar at my site.

Nate, my host sister (and best student) Guzal, and Kimi

Matt and Nate with the best meat I've had in country. The first pork I've eaten, too (it was at a Russian family's house). Juicy pork chops, mmm.

Opening Day for our seminar. I did a tv interview, though I never got to see it.

Emiko teaching some students how to write a lesson plan.

Robert playing a vocabulary game with some students.

Kimi, my youngest host sister Medina, and Emiko. Medina loved having more playmates.

More Pictures

Camp is over. We all had a great time. Here are a few more pictures. Tomorrow (saturday the 14th) I'll take the train back to my site in the south, Aksukent. Next week I'll have my teacher training seminar... hopefully there will be teachers and training, we'll see.


Two of the school's dancers in traditional Kazakh dress.


Besh Barmak, which means five fingers, because it is traditionally eaten without utensils. It is the national dish of the Kazakhs, and they are very proud of it. (The Uzbek national dish is polow, which is similar to fried rice) Besh Barmak consists of long wide noodles, potatoes, onions, and lots of meat with a broth poured over it. It is very tasty, and anytime you are a guest at a Kazakh's house there's no need to even ask what's for dinner, it's always Besh Barmak.


Roman was our Kazakh language teacher during our training in Almaty. He is an English teacher here in Alga. He is playing the Dombra, which is Kazakhstan's national instrument. The Dombra is a two-stringed instrument that is smaller than a guitar.


My group at the camp. These are eighth grade students. We were team Great Britain; and our main achievement during the last few days of camp was not finishing in last place on the ten team scoreboard. But all of them are good kids.


Me, sitting around during the closing ceremony. I've taken four or five hundred pictures over the last two weeks. I think a couple of them are even good.

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.

Calf Alert

So I helped my family with some yard work in the back today... and apparently we have a 2 day old calf. So I did the math, and apparently the calf was born without my knowledge while I was at home. But that's cool, I didn't have any great desire to see all that birth fluid and other stuff anyways. So we have a 2 day old calf stumbling around the back trying to walk. That goes with the two other cows and three sheep we have. My little sister was running around yelling "teddy bear" in russian at the calf... close enough I guess.

More Concert Pictures

Here are two more pictures from the concert.