New Year’s

In the dead of winter, with temperatures regularly dipping below double digits, you’d think the smart thing to do with a vacation is head South with those intelligent, ornithological beings. Nope, instead I felt inspired enough to head North to Siberia. Well, a bunch of friends live up there, so that’s good enough to hop onto the train and enjoy myself in the confines of Petropavlovsk.

I would love to say that it was a deeply interesting time, but it wasn’t necessarily Spring Break in Cabo. All of us volunteers (roughly 10-12) gathered in a few apartments around the city. The weather was so bitterly cold (-20 F) that we didn’t really venture outside. Frankly, the only times we left were to get food and vodka. We basically Maslow’s basic hierarchy of needs, though we added vodka and beer to the shelter and food that every living being needs, or at least Peace Corps volunteers in the dead of winter. This is all in jest, of course.

Boiled down, we basically sat indoors, ate, shot the shit and played board games. I had never heard of this company called Rio Grande Games, but they put out a lot of good quality games. Most of them are strategy-based games. They are definitely not Candyland, but they’re good entertainment. My personal favorites were Carcassonne and Colonizers (this is my translation, I’m not sure what the actual name of it is in English). It was somewhat marred by the fact that one of the older volunteers and went home after a vacation in London, which left us to pack up his things. It is kind of sad to pack up the belongings of one of our peers. It also racked my mind because my first thoughts weren’t necessarily fellow-feeling for him as much as they were “I wonder if there’s anything I can take home.” Unfortunately, that’s the extent of life out here; we work and then we leave, usually leaving a lot of our possessions her for whichever scavenger wants them, whether they be Kazakhstani or American.

Don’t let this imply that I didn’t have fun. Just the simple face of going and hanging with a bunch of volunteers, including my best friend here, Sidd, raises our spirits. Spending an extended weekend with fellow Americans is the spiritual equivalent of relaxing on a beach in Bali. It was also fun because the last day we got to play a bunch of games with some orphans at the school that Becky, another volunteer in Petro, works at. They were definitely vibrant and alive, just happy to play very simple games with you and laugh. Something about kids being kids and not little shits or brats makes you feel like a kid. It’s the youthful exuberance that I hope to keep going the whole time I’m here. But I must say, I think the next vacation I’ll go somewhere a little warmer