Finally, Aktobe

If I may first just fast forward to now, the one month anniversary of my arrival in Aktobe, I will describe for you a city that I am thrilled to live in, and a community that surprises and pleases me on a daily basis. How’s that for an optimistic Peace Corps blog intro? In your face, South Africa.
My daily walk to the university takes me down a narrow boulevard lined with benches and trees, with shops and apartments on either side. I don’t know how to say it other than that I just get good vibrations when I’m walking down this boulevard. It’s about a 5 minute walk, and usually at some point a random thought makes me smile while I’m walking down it. Such as: This boulevard is named for some soldiers of the 101st division of some army. [How’s that for historical background…], and locals refer to the street as “101st.” So, even though I am now on the absolute opposite side of the Earth as California, I am still cruising down the 101.
Oh what, that’s not funny for you? Remember, I’m in the Peace Corps here…it’s all about simple pleasures.

That’s right. The 101.

Speaking of simple pleasures, thank goodness Aktobe has some great cafes with WiFi where I can enjoy a delicious espresso while surfing the net. Did I mention…I’m in the Peace Corps?

Some of you will think, “Oh what a pity…she’s completely missing the Peace Corps experience.” And you will be right. Make no mistake- I mourn a future without such experience and insight into the world under my belt. But I mourn it over a tasty mojito at a trendy local lounge bar.
It’s a subject for a whole other blog, but the thing is that development just isn’t what you imagine. It’s not just living in a village with no electricity and carrying buckets of water for miles. At first it’s that, but then it’s a whole continuum of some areas staying unflinching in traditional ways for longer than you can imagine possible given the developmental bursts forward in other areas that to you seem necessarily and innately connected. And it’s the state of people’s minds when society struggles to reconcile drastic, sometimes sudden changes with a way of life that may have been in place for 5,000 or 100 or 70 years.

Now back to the blog.
how can I explain the lack of posting? I have many excuses. My computer crashed for a couple of weeks. We all thought it was the end, but sure enough the univ technicians resurrected the old girl at the last minute. To be honest, I had a rough first couple of weeks here, and I’m glad I didn’t post because it would have probably given you a shady first impression of Aktobe.

After three months already living in Kazakhstan, I really felt culture shock for the first time when I came to Aktobe. I can’t even place the exact cause, nor will I try on a public blog because my theories will come across as less than diplomatic. Sufficed to say, for the first time in my life I really witnessed a fundamental difference in values between two cultures. And while the terms “East vs. West,” or “individualist vs. collectivist,” aren’t bad candidates for possible explanations, these don’t quite accurately encompass the frustrations I felt in recent weeks. I’m back on the upswing of the W curve now though, and now look back on those weeks with amusement as the only words I can really find to describe my main frustrations sound something like “my host family was just too damn hospitable.”
It really doesn’t sound so bad, does it. I know.

Rest of intro in 1 min or less: Everything is great. My classes are going great and plans are running wild for teacher training workshops to start next semester. Language is awesome- my Russian is totally conversational and I’m starting-just starting- to get some ideas across in Kazakh. Other vol’s in the area are also great- Melanie, who also lives in the city and works for an NGO, and I are going out to a remote village at the foothills of the Ural mts. to visit another girl, Katy, this weekend. Should be a nice taste of the rural life.

Here I am

I made it to Aktobe and I'm here all settled in. The university is awesome and I could not have asked for more motivated students or more qualified, interesting faculty to work with. Aktobe is already getting cold...there will be snow soon. But so far I really like it. Highlights are 1. Abundance of tree and bench lined boulevards for strolling, 2. interesting cafes, and 3. Awesome other 2 volunteers here in the city, and 5 others in the outlying villages (visited one this weekend...there were a lot of cows). Lowlight: 1. It's about to get pretty damn cold, and 2. computer crashed a bit, thus the sparse internet activity. I'm working on it. That's all for now. Just wanted to prove I'm alive.

New address:

Кристина Балдарэлли (my name!)
г Актобе
главпочтамт
а\я 15 030000
казахстан

I hope all of you out there have a really nice thanksgiving...it's kind of my favorite, so have a big turkey sandwich for me on friday :) xoxo

Me? On Kazakh TV? Stay tuned...

I just heard that a camera crew is coming to my university tomorrow morning to film me and my group teaching. It's for some program that's going to be presented in Astana, the new snazzy capital of KZ.

The catch: We aren't scheduled to teach any classes tomorrow.

We finished teaching a few weeks ago - remember the pic with the funny hat?

So, I hate to end another post with the words "stay tuned," but . . . .

Aktobe visit

(Quick review: In November I'm moving to a city called Aktobe -Ahk toh BAY- where I'll live out the rest of my PC days, knock on wood.)

Right after my last post, I left Almaty for something the PC calls "site visit." This is where I meet my point of contact from the university in Aktobe, and we go together to Akobe for a week of meeting people, seeing the town, etc. My counterpart, Aliya, is great. She's the Chair of the Department of Philology at the univ., and was born and raised in Aktobe. While I was there I stayed with her family and got a chance to get to know her. Aliya is a mover and a shaker- she has her PhD from the same univ. I've been working at in Almaty, and is very knowledgable about linguistics- which is great for me because I have all of these ideas and theories swimming in my head waiting to be put into practice, and she understands it all. And on top of it all, she's only 28, so we are on the same page about a lot of things and I think we're really going to be pals.

The university was all good news- it's a big school, but the different buildings are spread out all over town. My building (to my knowledge) just has the Depts. of Foreign Languages, Philology, and Translation & Interpretation.

One really cool thing about the system here is that instead of the professors all having their own offices, they all work and hang out in one huge office. So there is a vibe of real camaraderie because everybody shoots around ideas and gripes and news. Before I got there, Aliya warned me that our group of teachers are loud and animated. And she was right. I fit right in, and by the end of the week, I was entering the room kind of like how Kramer does it on Seinfeld, with a big, loud "Zdrastvuite!" (Hello!) and drinking cup after cup of tea while gabbing about this or that with various other teachers.

This was probably the best thing about the visit, because my biggest job while I'm here is to get teachers to be more motivated, empowered and creative, and my faculty seems totally open to it all and extremely excited that I'm there. (Stay tuned for a posting about 2 months from now talking about how the novelty wore off and everybody treats me like chopped liver.)

Anyway, I'll save the big description of Aktobe for a couple of weeks from now, because I didn't take my camera on this trip. I will tell you that it was a nice city and I'm stoked to live there. Stay tuned.

Pics of life since Babushka

Some more recent pics: Some of them are of my new neighborhood and my host sister, and one is of a class I taught for a while at the university. We took the photo on my last day teaching them, so I'm wearing some gifts they gave me. Also note the stuffed two-humped camel they gave me! They were an awesome class- freshmen applied linguistics majors. [note the one guy- it's not a very popular major for Kazakh guys]

Oh, did I mention that in the babushka story below, that dialog took place in RUSSIAN ? That's right my friends, я говорю по-русский. Learning Russian is going really well and I really like the language, despite the fact that the grammar is INSANELY more complicated than any other language I've ever studied. For example, the words "book" and "christina":

I have a new book: у меня ест новая книга.
(ooh mean-ya yest noh-vah-ya knee-gah)
I don't have a new book: у меня нет новей книгы.
(ooh mean-ya niet noh-veey knee-gouy)
I saw a new book: я видила новую книгу.
(Ya vee-di-la noh-voo-yoo knee-goo)

Or, kind of funnier:
I gave the book to Christina: я дала книгу кристине
(Christinyee)
I'm going to Christina's: я по-иду к кристину
(Christinoo)
I'm going with Christina: я по-иду c кристиней
(Christineey)

You bet it's funny to hear my name as "Christinoo." Some other funny ones in my group are Eliza- "Elizoy" when she's in the genitive case, and "Elizoo" when she's a direct object, Ryan- "Rynom" when he's in the instrumental case, and Laura, who is pretty much "Leeroy," "Laurie," and "Laroo" at one point or another in any given conversation.

Imagine all of these crazy grammar things applying to several parts of speech, and then changing again depending on which of the six "cases" each part of speech is in. And imagine that 10 or so years ago I was struggling with the difference between "muchacho cariñoso" and "muchacha cariñosa"
Spanish was a walk in the park compared to this. It gets a little depressing at times, but people are super nice when it comes to trying to get a point across with all the wrong cases and endings, and in general I really like going out and practicing. My host family is also helpful- One sister speaks pretty good English, so we talk a ton, and the other sister and the mom both speak a tiny bit of English, so between the four of us and whatever random guests and relatives are always stopping by, I speak both a ton of Russian and a ton of English. Not bad.

So, I will give you a run down of a day I had last week. I woke up at 5:30 and took a quick "shower." [this consists of me kneeling before the bathtub with the hand held shower head washing my hair] Then I went in the kitchen and put the tea pot on the stove to boil.

[Back-story: Babushka's 18 year old grandson was staying with us for the week to learn English from me, and she waited on him hand and foot. Usually she woke up and had Ramadan breakfast around 4:30, and then was asleep the whole time I was up and getting ready for school. But when he was there, she stayed up and cooked, and mostly just stood around watching us do stuff. So on Tuesday, I said that if she wanted to sleep in the next day, I would be happy to make breakfast and tea and clean up, and she said OK.]

Fast forward to Wednesday morning. No sooner had I got the ingredients for a delicious frittata out of the fridge when in shuffles Babushka, up and at 'em. "I want to learn your American breakfast," she says. Um, ok. Maybe she couldn't sleep. So she watches me make the frittata, cringing when I do my fancy flip out of the pan onto the plate and back into the pan [I could see her trying to stay calm while she watched a plate be used in an unconventional way] Finally, I finish, and there is a gorgeous frittata on the table with two plates next to it.

And then babushka says, "So...what's Irjan going to eat?"
I look confused and reply, "Half of this frittata."
"It's a very small amount of food," she says.
"Oh, do I need to cook more?" I ask.
She smirks. "Well this is just a very small amount of food. Irjan is a big boy."
"Hmm," I say, "I watched him eat breakfast yesterday, and he only ate two bites of plov."
"Yes," babushka says, "Irjan eats very little for breakfast."

Anyway, so I left the house at 6:45 with Irjan and we caught the #35 bus from the corner. it turns out that we both have a favorite spot on the bus, so we parted ways after we got on. The whole trip, I watched the bus get fuller and fuller and he got pidgeon holed into this old lady's lap, squished between all kinds of people. Meanwhile, I was chilling in my nook, standing up protected on one side by the wall of the bus, one side by a big horizontal bar that blocks my spot from the bus doors, and a third side by the person sitting behind me (whose leg area I was actually standing in, but for some reason this one particular seat on every bus has extra leg room, and somebody always ends up standing there. If you're not picturing an insane mass of people pressed into the bus, please add that into your mental picture. That will help you appreciate my 3 sided fortress spot that Irjan apparently didn't think too much of. And as for the 4th side, nobody can really squeeze past the person behind me's knees to get into my spot unless I let them. Usually another person ends up in there with me, but if I want I can make it look like there's no room.

Oh yeah, I have this down to a science. Around week 3 I looked at my average day and realized that I could seriously improve my quality of life if I could just figure out how to be more comfortable on the bus.

I planned on posting this story a week ago, so now it's kind of old news.....because I have since moved into a different house. Long story short, Babushka didn't live in a very safe neighborhood and Peace Corps moved me. new photos from the mountains are from the new host fam- they love the mountains! I have a mom and two sisters, 8 & 12. More on the new fam soon, but for now I have to run.

Aktobe

My permenant site for PC is...Aktobe (ahk-toh-BAY)! Just thought I'd post a quick note- I'll be the first volunteer at the university there- which is awesome, because most sites have had lots of volunteers before and have a lot of preconceived notions about PC and volunteers etc.

Also, check out where I went today!

The AKKSUIRWL

I realized that 1)I havn't said anything about what I actually do here in Kazakhstan, and 2)For that matter, I really havn't given much news or information about anything in this blog. So here's a little bit about my work:

Most of my time here is spent at the Abylai Khan Kazakh State University of International Relations and World Languages. It's kind of a miniature MIIS- They have a school of translation/interpretation, a school of international business/law/relations, and a school of pedagogy/linguistics. And all of the programs require students to take classes in a foreign language. At first I thought that they pretty much all studied in English, but actually a lot of them study in French, German, Arabic, Chinese, etc.

A lot of my hours are spent at the university, but as a student of Russian & Kazakh. Language is going...well. I'm learning a lot and doing a ton of talking with host family and around town, but the classes are kind of a drag. Picture a mix of the Grammar Translation method and the Audiolingual method. Ouch! I'm sorry to say that for every day of Russian class I have several pages of masterpiece doodles and cartoons (which, by the way, do have captions in Russian).

I also teach classes in the Pedagogical faculty. Right now I have all freshmen, and they are great. Their English is good- a nice solid Intermediate. One interesting thing is that because the government is placing such an emphasis on education right now, a lot of grants are available for students to study in the pedagogical faculty. But the educational system hasn't quite got the memo, and teachers still get paid one of the lowest salaries in KZ, so as a result a lot of the students in my classes don't actually want to be teachers- they're just good students who got grants. This is a challenge- but I see it as a really good "Peace Corps" opportunity- my job is kind of to get these students excited about teaching so that during their 4 years at school, they'll be more interested in it and then when they graduate they'll be more invested in the profession and hopefully become teachers. It's not exactly giving vaccines to the village children, but it's very Peace Corps in its own little way I think.

My group of trainees (there are 6 of us- we're a really awesome group actually) also gives professional development workshops to the faculty. On Friday me and another guy are giving the first one: Authentic materials. (Did you hear that Peter?!) I'm pretty pumped. It's a workshop that I already gave to my training group at the request of the Training Director, so I think it'll go pretty well.

The last major thing that we do at the university is English Club. When I first heard this term, it sounded pretty hokey, so I understand if it doesn't strike you as very exciting. But the cooler names just wouldn't draw as big of a crowd. Twice a week we meet with about 20 students from all different universities and programs, and just have fun in English. This is sometimes the highlight of my week, because we get to just hang out with the students and talk, without the professor-student vibe (a vibe which is pretty strong here- there's a lot of distance between the local Ss and Ts).

So anyway, this post was a little dry, but I'm about to do another post about something crazy that babushka did last week, and some big news. So stay tuned.

More pictures!

Today my group has sessions all day at Peace Corps HQ in South Almaty, so I got here early to use their precious, precious internet. I have about 5 minutes, so rather than write, I'm just going to try to attach as many photos as I can so you can see a little bit of my world here.

PS: While I'm in Almaty for the next 2 months it's really easy for me to get mail. Feel free to send some!

Peace Corps
Kazakhstan
PO Box 257
Almaty 050022
Kazakhstan
Attn: Christina Baldarelli

So here I am in the thriving metropolis of Almaty, and while most peoples' first-Peace-Corps-blogs probably start that way to introduce a little village with irony, I mean it most literally. For the past 3 weeks I've been in Almaty, which is a city or 1.5 million that is growing at an insane rate. When I look at the city from the window of my 7th floor classroom, the horizon is an even pattern of high rise buildings, and cranes building more high rise buildings. And that of course is set on the backdrom of the Tien Shan mountains, which are gorgeous. Actually, i already had a chance to visit them when some host-family relatives took me to Talgar, a little town about an hour away.

Which, I think, is a nice segue into introducing the host fam. I live in an apartment in West Almaty with Babushka (Russian for grandmother). She is the quintessential Kazakh babushka- cooks all the time in big vats on the stove, peels potatos at a rate that I can not imagine achieving, and whose favorite pastime is sitting and drinking tea while teaching me words in Russian and Kazakh. Her favorite phrase to tell me is: "Eat, eat" (like "Mangia, mangia").

The happiest I've ever seen Babushka is when I accepted thirds of her plov. True to stereotype, she is kind of a force feeder. The second my plate is empty, she fills it up again, so I always have to leave a little bit on it. The day that I ate 3rds, I actually had accidentally finished all of the first helping (it was so good, I forgot the rules!) So that meant automatic seconds, which intrigued babushka because this had never happened before. As I'm getting to the end of the seconds, budgeting how much I can leave on the plate to signal that I don't want anymore, while still not offending her by wasting food, I can feel the atmosphere in the room stiffen (We had company- a big table full of about 10 guests.) I realized that they were all counting down the bites until the plate was clean.

Would I finish?

Was babushkas plov THAT GOOD?

I looked over at her, and she was trying to play it cool, but I could tell she was nervous. I had already loosened the drawstring on my pants at this point because there had been many dishes served before the plov itself made an appearance, and a steady food coma was slowly creeping up on me.

But I couldn't let babushka down. I finished the plov.

The rest of the night is a blur. I know they filled the plate again, and I'm sure I ate it, but How? Who knows. All I remember is that babushka glowed for the rest of the night. She was showered with compliments by all of her guests, and every time I looked over at her she beamed at me. The other 5 volunteers who are also in Almaty training to be University teachers all live with larger families, but I really like my zen lifestyle with babushka. Also a plus is that she speaks no english, so I use only Russian and Kazakh at home.

I would love to add more, but I have a lesson in a few minutes...more soon, and pictures also.

Oh, and one more thing- I miss you all! I hope everybody is doing great. I know my LEL gang is all diving into another crazy semester, and I wish I could be there to be "the relaxed one" and calm everybody down :)

XOXO Christina

Check out the SAPAS Gallery on Pg.3 !

This is an article about the Starving Artists' Public Art Space in Monterey, featuring yours truly <3

Welcome

Hi all!

If you havn't got the memo yet, here it is: I leave August 17th for

K A Z A K H S T A N !

This blog will be my primary communication during my Peace Corps service. I'd love to personally e-mail all of you with news and updates...but let's face it, this is just way easier.

Also please note that I will no longer be using my Hotmail address. Please change my contact info to christina.baldarelli@gmail.com

Thanks!!