New Blog

Because I can not access blogspot from KZ, I have moved to a new, more Kaz-friendly site.  Check it out at punchybunch.wordpress.com .

Another Week Down

This week was a lot tougher than last week, but only because I got pretty exhausted and a little sick.  My host mom's birthday party was Monday night and while it was truly great to be a part of it, I unfortunately had a splitting headache the entire time along with crazy sinus pressure on the right side of my face.  The PA system set to volume level "arena rock" right behind me didn't help matters.  It was a terrific party nonetheless -- I got to bypass the sheep's head while still getting to see it passed around, I heard a lot of Kazakh songs (and got to sing some Patsy Cline a capella in response), and I gave my first speech in Russian along with a little Kazakh thrown in for good measure.  And there was lots of dancing.  Lots and lots of cute, wrinkly, Kazakh women dancing.  They danced with me, we bonded, it was beautiful.

 

Tuesday was awful because I didn't get nearly enought sleep after the party and then I had to concentrate on Russian grammar for 6 HOURS.  It was painful.  I don't mind studying, but we are just getting grammar grammar grammar at the moment with no vocabulary, so it is ... difficult.  Wednesday I made it through okay, but by Thursday, it was clear that I had eaten something I simply should not have.  I was hurting and things were not pretty.  I admit, I had a bit of a pity party for myself and had to try not to cry as I crammed myself into the bus with the 80 other strangers who would be enjoying my hour long commute to my training site.  I don't know how I made it through the day, but I did, and I had two lucky breaks on the way home 1) some lady flagged down the bus for me when I had just missed it so I didn't have to wait for the next one and 2) another lady got up shortly after I got on, so I didn't have to stand the whole time.  I went to bed as soon as I got home and didn't get up until five the next morning.  This was good.

 

Friday I got to see Matt again.  Really, that is the only meaningful part of that day, but there were some other interesting points, the most memorable of which was a power point slide listing such things as "dirty sanchez" "snowballing" and "rusty trombone".  If you don't know what these things are, I don't suggest you look them up. Really. Don't. If you do know what they are, imagine the fun we had when our Russian-former-Soviet-Army doctor asked us to describe them for the group so we could all decide if they were safe practices or not (the topic of our workshop was STDs and HIV).  Apparently some former volunteers had put these things on an anonymous survey about their intimate activity during their service.  Who knew that hippies could be so much dirtier than mere lack of hygiene?  And, of course, pride of pride, I got to explain a dirty sanchez to everyone.  Mom, please don't look this up.  You'll be so disappointed that I know these things.  I did publicly ask your forgiveness for a) knowing and b) telling.  Rest assured, however, my knowledge is purely academic.  Dr. Viktor himself explained a rusty trombone, including hand motions.  I think I may need to wash my eyes out with soap.

 

Anyway, that has been my week.  Today I had two hours of Kazakh language training.  It's tricky.  I basically just make up sounds while moving my mouth around and hope no one notices that I haven't actually articulated anything.  Right now I'm in the Peace Corps office where I can get free internet, but since it takes me over an hour to get here, I'll probably just stick to my slower connection at home.  We had to come here for an emergency test (this is our meeting point), and I don't feel bad using the interwebs here like I would at home (electricity consumption).  That's why I'm writing this blog right now even though I hadn't really thought out what I would say -- hence, the rambling nature and the full paragraph on foul activities.

 

Now, I'll head home before it gets dark and start on my community project / English club.  We decided to combine the two and we're going to try to get the English club members to develop their own mini-community projects.  We'll act as mentors and support to help them get their ideas going.  I have a little planning to do, so I'm off.  

 

Oh, one last thing... If you want to write me or send me packages of Jiffy Crunchy Peanut Butter (I like the natural one with or without honey...), you can send me things at:

 

PEACE CORPS

P.O. Box 257

Almaty 0500-22

KAZAKHSTAN

Attn: Melissa Avis

 

And if you want to call me, you can call 8 705 575 4538.  I don't know the country code, but you can ask the operator to help you. You can also text me at the number above, just put a +1 in front of it -- no need for a country code.

And post number 5 - HUB days and sheep liver

(BLOG 5)  The many days of the week

 

This week has been all over the map.  I've been spending a lot of time learning Russian – anywhere from 4 to 6 hours per day in the classroom, plus home study.  Everyday is long because if I'm not studying Russian, I'm getting shot up full of preventative viruses (today I received my 7^th and 8^th shot of the week) or I'm learning about the Kazakhstani educational system (a real treat, as I'm sure you can imagine).  My host family continues to be fabulously awesome.  My ability to actually post these blog entries has been frustratingly futile.  One day they will get their chance to shine in cyber-space, but I can't say when that day will be…

 

Today I got to see Matt for the first time in a week, which was wonderful.  We're both handling the separation well now, but just being near each other is a bit of bliss.  We had a HUB day today, which is a day when all the trainees meet back together for a joint training session.  To clarify, there re 5 towns where trainees are placed – Almaty (where I am) and four villages surrounding Almaty.  We don't see anyone except the people in our training group all week long (there are only 5 people in mine), which means HUB days are hugely anticipated by everyone as a chance to mingle with some different folk for a while.  I just wanted to mingle with Matt, but I did get a few other conversations in.

 

Today when I came home from training, my host mom and sister were just pulling up with a car full of groceries – including a live sheep.  Tomorrow is my host-mom's birthday and she is preparing a big party that will be held Monday night.  In Kazakh culture, it is the honoree of the birthday party who actually holds it.  They make all the preparations and they feed all their guests.  My host mom will be turning 50, which is a special age just like in the U.S., so this party will be especially elaborate, hence the sheep, which is expensive.

 

I'd never seen an animal butchered before, so even though I was a little wary of how I would handle it, I wanted to watch and take some pictures for posterity.  Surprisingly, I wasn't bothered by the actual killing so much at all.  Before my host-uncle slit the sheep's throat, he, host-mom and host-sister all said some verses from the Koran (it looked like they were praying, but Nuriya told me they were reciting the Koran).  This gave me a sense of peace about the animal because I felt like the family was respecting the life they were taking.  Uncle held the animal's head over a bowl and slit it's throat very quick, then let it bleed.  Not even the blood coming out freaked me out – it all just looked natural and simple and the animal didn't seem to suffer. 

 

To make a long story short, I had sheep liver and potatoes for dinner tonight and it was very tasty.

Trying to post via e-mail...

Someone should let me know if these posts go through because I can't access my blog -- I'm sending these posts through e-mail.  My friend Margaret put up my last posts and I think she posted 3?  If not, let me know -- and I'll update!

Here's the first one:

(Note, sorry to leave anybody hanging with the last post.  Matt is fine, his host family is a great Russian couple and their kids.  He is hanging out with his host-papa in his man-cave, playing guitar and eating blinis. It's a good life)

 

So, a little about my host family and my living situation.  My host family is really just the mother, younger sister and brother.  The other sister lives in her own flat now, though her (fat, round, adorable) baby is here in the day time.  Both the younger sister and brother speak English and they enjoy talking to me (I think), so it's easy for me to feel at home.  Ethnically, they are Kazakh, so Kazakh is their native language but they speak Russian fluently as well.  This is perfect for me because I'm supposed to learn Russian, but I want to learn a little Kazakh as well, and they are eager to help me with both.

 

I know it has only been one day, but I haven't lacked any motivation to study and learn words.  When someone is sitting right across from you, encouraging you and trying to help you, it doesn't feel so difficult.  Plus, Mama doesn't speak any English, but she is eager to talk to me, too, so learning to communicate with her even on a basic level will make us both very happy.

 

The fact that I can learn a little Kazakh is useful because the majority of people living in Kazakhstan are native Kazakhs and even using just a few simple words like "hello" and "thank you" goes a long way to warm people to you.  I may never be able to say full sentences in Kazakh, but I should come out of this with some basic greetings and pleasantries.

 

Our house is on the edge of town and is probably similar to what those in the villages experience.  We live behind a heavy, locked gate that opens onto a kind of small, (charmingly) ramshackle complex.  There is the main house where the family has bedrooms, the living room and kitchen. Then there is the little building I am in, which from a divided entry way houses Azamat's room and my room.  My room is kind of like it's own flat – I have a bedroom area, a shower/sink area and a small refrigerator and dish sink area. Janma and her family lived here until I came along (homewrecker!).

 

Beside my building, there is an elevated room decorated a bit like a fancy living room.  Nuriya said that this is where guests usually stay and the whole family often sleeps there in the summer time because it is cooler.  In Kazakhstan, it is not unusual for a family to sleep all in the same room – they don't share our American insistence on individual space and extreme privacy.  We've been told to prepare ourselves for our host families to walk right in our rooms without much notice, but my host family is very considerate about giving me some warning.

 

The one thing you may have noticed that I left out is the bathroom.  That's because the bathroom is, well, left out.  Even though I am rather lucky because I have electricity and running water, the toilet is a squatty potty in an out house near the gate.  It's really not so bad – I'm used to sqattys because of Japan and this one is kept clean and while it's obviously an outhouse, the smell isn't awful or anything.  The only real inconvenience is that it's outside and that means at night, I have a bit of a trek AND there is no light inside the shed, so I have to make sure I position my feet correctly BEFORE I close the door.  A misstep would not be pleasant.

 

 I also have to be careful about paper usage because a) Kazakh people don't really use toilet paper – my family seems to mostly use squares of newspaper b) my host mom kindly bought me a roll of toilet paper (it's kind of like those brown paper towels you see in public bathrooms, but a little softer), but that's just ONE roll of toilet paper and it's apparently all mine.  I'd be embarrassed to go through it quickly since it's kind of an extravagance for them.  So, I've been supplementing with some tissues I brought with me just for this type of situation, but I don't have an endless supply of those either.  Oh, and c) you put all paper in a trash can beside the drop spot, no matter what it was used to clean up, so excessive use by me of my fancy paper would be pretty noticeable AND reasons FOR excessive usage have to be somehow discreetly dealt with.  I realize perhaps no one wants to hear about my toilet paper woes, but this is a rather big learning curve for me and I just wanted to share my amazing ability to adapt ;-) 

 

That's it for now folks, except to say how happy I am that I finally heard from Matt!  My family has internet and so does Matt's, so he was able to send me a message that he's alright.  It wasn't a long message, but at least I know he didn't book a flight home just yet!  Till next time…

 

Oh, and my host-mom was born in Uzbekistan and she wants to teach me some Uzbek dances.  Aren't you jealous now?

Rough Day

Well, what started out as a very stressful day for me has ended in what could only be the best possible way, though there is a caveat to that and I’ll talk about it below. Today was the day that we were split into our training groups and then sent off to our host families. Matt found out that he will be 30 minutes from me and someone told him there wasn’t a bus in his village, so he was really upset when I saw him after his meeting. I was managing to keep everything together up until today, but as the reality of the situation was approaching, I was feeling worse and worse.

On top of all that, I realized that my cell phone wasn’t working properly and I can’t get it fixed until at least Monday, which means no contact at all with Matt or anyone else. THEN I went to my “host family orientation” meeting and things looked even more hopeless as people had basically been telling us all day the many ways things could go wrong.

(Continued the next day – I was too tired last night to finish typing that out). Our group leader was trying to be helpful, but most of the help was telling us to tell our host families what we needed – which seemed really difficult considering none of us speak Russian yet. Soooo, I was feeling ill by the time it was all over. I’m thinking, I’ve got no husband, no phone, no way to communicate, Matt is upset, I’m upset, BLEH! Then it was time to leave. As I’m getting my stuff together, I’m basically getting myself more and more worked up.

By the time I haul my stuff outside, my host family is waiting for me. My technical trainer introduces me to this smiling young girl in a hijab and starts to tell me that this is her student, she speaks English, she’ll be my host sister, her house is close to a bus station that is one of the closest in my city to Matt’s village and they chose this host family extra special for me just for that reason. Well, I’m sure I made a great first impression at that moment because I basically burst out crying and ran off. Go me.

After I collected myself and the rest of my bags, I returned to the girl and then the training director came up and told me much the same thing that the technical trainer told me, adding, “We’re all people, we understand,” which sent me into tears again. I excused myself again and managed to say good-bye to Matt without falling onto the ground in sobs, then came back, straightened myself up and managed to finally smile at poor Nuriya, my new host-sister.

See, I think I could have made it through without crying if I had just been sad, but then they were so nice to me and I was so happy that Nuriya spoke English and so touched that they were showing concern for my situation and so upset that Matt was still in knots that, well, my emotional cup just overflowed.

My host family is soooo nice and I feel really comfortable here. Nuriya is 23 and she graduated from university with a degree in education and world languages. I find her really easy to talk to and get along with. I think she paid close attention to everything they told her about foreigners and our concerns and she had gone out of her way to make me comfortable. We live with her mother Rhadisha, who is sweet and thoughtful, too. There is a brother, sister and little baby, too, but I don’t know if they will be staying here. The sister is moving out, I think, but Mama (Rhadisha) watches the baby during the day. The sister, Janma doesn’t speak any English, but I like her just from her demeanor. The brother Azamat also speaks English and is an engineer at one of the universities. I’m not sure if there is another brother or not, but I guess I’ll understand more as time goes on.

I have lots more to tell about my first day, but this post is long enough already. My caveat that I mentioned above is that I’m just worried about Matt. He has not been happy the last few days because he so worried about living apart. I can’t really feel good about my situation until I know how he is doing. I’m hoping that his family is good and that there is someone there that he can communicate with. The thought that he might be miserable makes me feel physically sick, so I hope that I can talk to him soon and that all is well for him.

Jetlag

Saturday, August 21, 2010

It is currently 5 in the morning and I have been awake for hours. I was sooooo tired when I went to bed last night, but jetlag is funny in its way of deciding how much sleep you need and when.

Yesterday was painful, literally. Not only did we have 12 hours of training activities (with barely 5 hours of sleep after our marathon travel session here), but we had to get the beginning of our medical clinics underway. I’ve now got band-aids and puncture wounds decorating my upper arms from all the immunization shots they said I needed. On the bright side, I won’t be getting rabies any time soon. I just wish I could lift my arms.

Today we’ll finish up our crash courses in how not to completely screw up in Kazakhstan, then we’ll meet our host families. Yesterday we had an informative 2 hour language lesson to help us at least greet them in Russian, but considering that on our bodies’ clocks it was actually held at 4:30 in the morning (3:30 in the afternoon here), I’m not so sure of what exactly we’ll be reproducing when the time comes. I just hope my host family understands that when I start enthusiastically shouting “Godzilla! Godzilla!” over and over again, they know to answer that they are doing just fine, thanks, and then kindly suggest that next time I try saying something like kok-DILL-a, which is the more customary way of asking someone how they are.

Jokey cynicism aside, Matt and I are both happy to be here. We both mentioned that it felt good to be abroad again, it’s our milieu. All the strangeness and funny signs and trying to figure everything out is, ironically, our comfort zone, as uncomfortable as it is.

Hope everyone is doing well at home and that you are thinking of sending us lots of letters! Our address for the next few weeks is:

Our imminent takeover of Kazakhstan

We have successfully invaded Germany and are preparing for our imminent takeover of Kazakhstan. Our flight here was non-eventful. Getting on the flight, however, had its moment of drama… It seems I lost a little track of time at the Borders that was a short jaunt from our departure gate. After a thorough perusal of all my options, I made my literature choices and then leisurely strolled over to the mini-mart next store, mulled over the diet soda selection, considered buying some more candy for my host family, imagined what candy I would buy if I were to buy some, finally just decided on a bottled water and a Diet Dr. Pepper, completed my purchases and wandered back toward the gate. Then I saw the clock. It couldn’t possibly be right. The reason why it couldn’t possibly be right is because it read 5:41. And my plane was scheduled to fly into the air at 5:45.

I didn’t really react at first because I was positive there must be some mistake. In the split second between my mildly interested confusion and my hitting the holy effing @#*! panic button, I concluded that airports don’t usually post conflicting time devices because that would sort of screw up that whole little thing they call a schedule. By some struck of sheer dumb luck, we just made it as they were closing the doors. Needless to say, the airline folks were not amused with me. The flight attendants were not amused with me. Matt was certainly NOT amused with me.

So, by the skin of our teeth, we have indeed completed ¾ of our flights. We have an hour left here in Frankfurt before we complete 6 more hours of flying and arrive in Almaty in the dead of night to meet our new bosses. Tally ho!