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