Welcome to the last week of my training here in lovely Ecik. Actually, today I felt like I was back in Wisconsin, outside of the fact that there are no trees, mountains right in plan view, and everybody is trying to run each other over with cars. It's always the little things.
Anyway, this last week was a conference in Almaty to meet with our counterparts, with a little side project of spending a few tenge on supporting the Russian and Kazakhstani vodka industry. Everybody's hurting so every little bit counts. So my counterpart is Sara Ustazhanova and should be a good counterpart. She speaks English fairly well, has a law degree, but is pretty shy, so that will probably a slow building of trust. It will also be interesting because most of the English teachers at my school are 25 and some of them are single, so the hope is that this doesn't descend into a Kazakhstani game of the Bachelor. Well, maybe if they're cute. Haha.
Anyway, it was a lot of meetings and meetings in meetings, which can be extremely frustrating, but the fact that we're having means that they were deemed important by past groups of volunteers. It was nice to get out of Ecik for a while and just be pampered. Taking a shower everyday almost made me feel like a lush. I was dirty for being clean, which is the most ridiculous oxymoron out there, but it had some relevance.
It's actually kind of sad to think that we're all going to be scattered to the 4 ends of Kazakhstan in a week. I mean, I got lucky since I'll be in Akmola oblast where everybody is a few hour bus ride away from each other. But there are so many people I get along with who are going to be in the middle of nowhere or a 2 day train ride away (I'm not kidding, there are 2 day train rides here). But this is what we signed up for, being the only American person and helping develop this country in anyway possible. Well, there's not much to add, because I've been lounging around the hotel in useless meetings with a not very talkative person. Pretty soon I'll be in a new place with new stories. And maybe I'll post pictures of my clean-shaven self since I can't really have a beard in my region. Sucks. Well, I could be in the Domican Republic.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
соль food and other musings
So, after a long delay, I have returned. There is a decent explanation for the fact that I haven't updated this. I've been sick and I am just a slight bit lazy. But that has been remedied and I've taken time out of my day to try and update my life as it stands.
First of all, since most of you don't speak Russian, the pun up there has to do with the fact that it's really starting to annoy me how much bloody salt they put into the food here. The two main condiments are salt and oil, which I like to think of as part of the reason why healthy living has become more difficult as of late. That and cravings for junk food have become more prevalent. Even with that, I'm pretty sure I've lost something like 15 pounds, which I have absolutely no qualms about.
We just finished up our classes at Tereshkova, which was a kind of sad event, though it was a hectic week. Last week, I was banned by Dr. Victor from teaching class, so instead of 4 classes one week and 5 classes the next, I had to teach 9 classes. This wasn't terrible since that is closer to my normal workload at site. I definitely enjoyed my 7a class, who blew me out of the water on all my lessons, which is much better than the alternative. Though the teachers may have been difficult to work with sometimes, the enthusiasm by the kids always made it better. We even got a decent showing to our community project, which was a job fair. The kids around here just simply don't know they're options, so we made sure to present some alternatives to them. It was definitely a good idea on Charlie and Janelle's part.
A week or two ago, we also found out about our future sites we will be working at, and it couldn't have happened at a better time. After 2 months together, it's easy to see that some of the nerves are starting to fray between the volunteers. That's one of the problems with being such a small community in difficult circumstances. Anyway, I'll be going to Makinsk and replacing a volunteer there, though I will be working at a different school. Makinsk is near the capital city of Astana in the North, so I'm already preparing for frigid winters. From the information I have, it's a fairly quiet town of 25,000 people, which is fine for me. Outside of the possibility of no running water, it seems like a nice place. As much as I'd like to give more information about it, I just don't have very much. The good thing is that the people in my area are awesome. Hannah, Holly, Molly, Miles and Audrey are all going to be near me and they are awesome people. Funnily enough, we're all from the north or the mountains, so I think we'll survive the weather.
So, next week, we meet our counterparts, and the week after that we do some teacher training, and then we have swearing-in, after which they boot us onto a train to our respective villages. Honestly, I'm excited to get there because we've had so much training, I think we just need to get to where we need to go. Ecik has been a great city, with some nice people, but it hasn't left much of an impression on me. There are some stand-outs, like the shashlik guy at Cafe Anna, who would always take time out of his day and practice Russian with us. Otherwise, the people I'll miss most are Peace Corps staff, like Olessya our technical trainer, and other Volunteers who will be far away, like Becca and Nick. Either way, I'll be here for a little longer, and hopefully I can have at least one more deep thought before I leave. :-)
First of all, since most of you don't speak Russian, the pun up there has to do with the fact that it's really starting to annoy me how much bloody salt they put into the food here. The two main condiments are salt and oil, which I like to think of as part of the reason why healthy living has become more difficult as of late. That and cravings for junk food have become more prevalent. Even with that, I'm pretty sure I've lost something like 15 pounds, which I have absolutely no qualms about.
We just finished up our classes at Tereshkova, which was a kind of sad event, though it was a hectic week. Last week, I was banned by Dr. Victor from teaching class, so instead of 4 classes one week and 5 classes the next, I had to teach 9 classes. This wasn't terrible since that is closer to my normal workload at site. I definitely enjoyed my 7a class, who blew me out of the water on all my lessons, which is much better than the alternative. Though the teachers may have been difficult to work with sometimes, the enthusiasm by the kids always made it better. We even got a decent showing to our community project, which was a job fair. The kids around here just simply don't know they're options, so we made sure to present some alternatives to them. It was definitely a good idea on Charlie and Janelle's part.
A week or two ago, we also found out about our future sites we will be working at, and it couldn't have happened at a better time. After 2 months together, it's easy to see that some of the nerves are starting to fray between the volunteers. That's one of the problems with being such a small community in difficult circumstances. Anyway, I'll be going to Makinsk and replacing a volunteer there, though I will be working at a different school. Makinsk is near the capital city of Astana in the North, so I'm already preparing for frigid winters. From the information I have, it's a fairly quiet town of 25,000 people, which is fine for me. Outside of the possibility of no running water, it seems like a nice place. As much as I'd like to give more information about it, I just don't have very much. The good thing is that the people in my area are awesome. Hannah, Holly, Molly, Miles and Audrey are all going to be near me and they are awesome people. Funnily enough, we're all from the north or the mountains, so I think we'll survive the weather.
So, next week, we meet our counterparts, and the week after that we do some teacher training, and then we have swearing-in, after which they boot us onto a train to our respective villages. Honestly, I'm excited to get there because we've had so much training, I think we just need to get to where we need to go. Ecik has been a great city, with some nice people, but it hasn't left much of an impression on me. There are some stand-outs, like the shashlik guy at Cafe Anna, who would always take time out of his day and practice Russian with us. Otherwise, the people I'll miss most are Peace Corps staff, like Olessya our technical trainer, and other Volunteers who will be far away, like Becca and Nick. Either way, I'll be here for a little longer, and hopefully I can have at least one more deep thought before I leave. :-)
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