The village of Shalkar

Visiting Shalkar was a really cool trip. It's a village about 7 hours south of Aktobe- my host family's hometown of sorts. {Most of my host family still lives there actually} Where to even start.

I went to Shalkar because: the university was on break, I visited the school there and gave a seminar to the teachers, I wanted to get to know my host family better, and I have been itching to get out of the city. Don't get me wrong, it's great to live here and take showers, and sit here and write my blog at the cafe...but it's not exactly what I had in mind when I signed up for the Peace Corps, you know what I mean? You do.

To be totally honest...my two greatest motivations for going were also that they have snowmobiles (!) and a ton of camels (!!) . And if that wasn't enough there was talk of ice fishing. Icing on the cake! {If you can't tell if I'm being sarcastic or not: I'm pretending to be, but actually I did want to ice fish} [They look like they're having so much fun on Grumpier Old Men] (Don't judge me)

Ha ha, anyway. So when I got there with my host bro and cousin around midnight, we were met with a huge platter of beshbarmak (#1 local dish- see photo...I'm holding back commenting here for the sake of diplomacy) and the news that in 3 days we would be hosting 35 guests to commemorate the anniversary of a relative's death. Thus began a 3 day blur of preparation, a day of feasting, and 2 days of recovery. With many trips to visit the camels, play with their 5 dogs, and meet with English teachers at the school, interspersed throughout. Hopefully this slideshow works. If you click on it, you should get to a site where the photos have captions. Enjoy!




FYI, my last post, while sincere, was a shameless plea for more comments on my blog. I try to play it cool, but it's true. I live for your comments, and I check them every time the internet powers-that-be let me. It's been 5 months...I miss people.

Good luck NICOLE ! ! !

Nicole - Good luck on COMPS! I got no worries, sista.

and, while I'm at it...

Dad & Janice - can't wait for your package!

Man & Jan - I'm so happy to be back in contact, I missed y'all

Stef - Get over here already! almost 2 weeks!

Jenna & the City - keep the blogs coming.

Aims - Come on you know you want to visit Kazakhstan and see what all the hype's about...

Eliza - Keep swimming. I'm so looking forward to March

Angel & Trav - Cheerio! [Next time we talk maybe you'll say that?] [That was a request]

Greer, Meg, Natalie, Sofya, Pinar, Claire, etc...I MISS YOU. Thursdays at the Duck without me are not the same, I'm sure. Right?!?!

and Mom, Sophia, Pat, Grandma, M&M, Nonni, Gio, Jeff, and Bryan...I just plain love you guys.


Uh oh, now it's not comprehensive enough to have included everybody...but so comprehensive that it'll be obvious if I left somebody out. I'm stopping now because I have a meeting at the univ...but know this! If you care enough to be reading this...I probably have a similar thought for you as the ones above and am just too scatterbrained to think of it right now. xoxo

The Cold

It's cold here but luckily I have all kinds of gadgets to keep me warm. It's amazing how much technology can be involved.
-My technology: Dri-fit, micro-down, polar tec, hyVent, etc. [there seems to be a trend in favor of SPELLING THINGS WRONG]
-Their technology: sheep...cow...fox...etc.

I'm looking at my NorthFace jacket and it's crazy. There's a special little mesh pouch in the pockets for a hand warmer. Little graphic tags in the lining indicate which little pockets are for goggles, mp3 player, & cell phone.

If I choose to zip off the hood and leave one side of the zipper alone and exposed on the collar, a special little flap can extend to cover this unsightly thing. I'm looking at this jacket and finding things I never even knew existed on it! There's a zipper on the right forearm and- holy cow this jacket is like a treasure chest- out of the zippered compartment comes a little mini bungee with a detachable ring on the end holding a cloth for de-fogging goggles. That would have been nice to know on those especially precipitous days up in Tahoe. I check the other sleeve but no dice...just a sleeve, albeit it does have the obligatory under-arm zipper should some ventilation be in order.

So needless to say I'm braving the cold. But sometimes you just can't think of everything. It got down to -30C the other day and all kinds of things were freezing that shouldn't freeze. Like, my lip gloss. After making my way across the whole university and greeting my way through hoards of students eagerly following me with their "Hello Ms. Baldarelli!" 's, I finally made it to my office and glanced in the mirror by the door. A big scary ghost was looking back at me. Not only had my lip gloss frozen and turned completely opaque-white, but it had also smeared all over my face because I was all bundled up and breathing into a big wool scarf the whole way to the university. Kudos to all those students for not falling down laughing UNTIL I had left the room.

What I learned:
-Stick to the carmex until March
-Research is in order in the area of developing a lip gloss resistant to extreme temperatures. Would have been a great one for Bill Nye.

The upside is that the snow is gorgeous. The whole city is shiny and sparkly and old babushkas and papas pull their grandkids around on little sleds. The park is full of ice sculptures, and cross-country ski tracks can be seen on the sidewalks. I'm trying to hold on to this optimism about winter, because I'm told that it gets depressing for a lot of people. The word 'February' conjures dark, cold, lonely memories for a lot of volunteers I have talked to. But actually, I have a feeling that I'll remember this February quite fondly.

Christmas

A lot of people have noted in recent emails that it must be difficult to be so far from home during the holidays. And they were right. Of course it's tough. What kind of a machine would I be if it wasn't tough?

Especially this year. Some things about this year made it especially tough. But there were also some things that made it easier. Like having good people here to celebrate with, and good people back home sending me lovin.

So I want to dedicate this blog [albeit a little belatedly] to the people who made these holidays great. The e-mailers, the text-messagers, the fed-exers. You made me feel like I was back home even though I was eating camel hump instead of roast turkey.



[Your eyes don't deceive you. In this picture I am holding in my hands focaccia from the Liguria Bakery in North Beach. While this photo might make you think "Wow she sure is happy, maybe I'll go to SF and get some for her and send it to Kazakhstan," I have to tell you that I don't recommend doing so. I don't deny that it was the emotional high point of my holidays when I opened this package, sat for a moment staring in disbelief, and then frantically started the oven, waited like a kid on christmas for it to heat up and sat all jittery watching it cook through the little window in the oven door, and then devoured it all before my host bros got a chance to try to steal any. This is all true. However I do question whether it's healthy to eat focaccia bread that has been through the journey that this focaccia bread had. So as much as I want to say "Hey! Send me my favorite parishable food items, it's ok!" I think I should quit while I'm ahead.]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

This is me sending out big blog love to my favorite big sister and my uncle B, on their birthdays. I was sending all kinds of good vibes your way on the 4th and 5th. xoxo.



By the way...happy new year! In preparation for a much needed pre-celebratory nap on the evening of new-year's eve, I accidentally set my alarm for "11:00" instead of "23:00"...and slept all night. Better luck next year.

The Aktobe gang

Ah, but I promised to introduce the other volunteers. In the vicinity there are 7 other Americans and one Australian. Here we are, minus Emiko and Kathy, in Kromtau celebrating Christmas. That’s Katy (WA), Sasha (Kristen’s host bro), Melanie (MIN), Melissa (NY), Erin (SC), Kristin (GA), Perry (MICH) and me. All really cool individuals.



I’m in the city with Perry and Melanie, and Kathy the Aussie, who works in orphanages with an organization called Operation Mercy. Perry came to the PC after graduating from U of Michigan, and he works at an NGO for disabled people. My buddy “Corporate Mel” was a super businesswoman in the Twin Cities, and now she’s here at an NGO called the Aktobe Women’s Center. What awesome colleagues she has. They invited me to their office New Year party, where they dressed me like a mouse (for 2008) and danced with me all night.

I’m attaching two slideshows, the first of which is to show the last bit of time that I spent in Almaty. I really miss my host family there and I’m pretty sure our paths will cross again and again. The second one is a snapshot of life in Aktobe so far…the university, the volunteers, the city, etc. Most of the photos were taken on holidays, so it looks like all I do here is feast.

I look at these pictures and all of the people and places have become so familiar to me that I can’t really imagine what your first reaction to them will be…I can’t really remember what mine was. But you’ll probably get the idea that food has become a pretty central part of my life- cooking has become really therapeutic for me, and I’m always in my kitchen experimenting with the “Peace Corps Kazakhstan Cookbook” -pure gold as far as I’m concerned- it has recipes written by volunteers giving advice on how to cook with the products that are available here. When I’m not cooking, I’m usually surrounded by various people at a big long table covered with different dishes. Little did I know when I was young and helping my mom with catering jobs that I was actually acquiring what has proven to be my most impressive skill here: The ability to esthetically arrange food in cool ways. It’s a really interesting part of the culture here- it’s such a strong culture of hosting and “guesting,” and expressing hospitality through food. So many traditions and customs are centered on the act of giving or receiving food. For me it’s been one of the most telling lenses to view the local culture through.

Phew. I think that’s it for now. I’ll leave you with a piece of a poem by Pedro Salinas:

¡Que alegría es vivir
sintiéndose vivido!

I believe he was referring to blogging.

The past month in...Kazakhstan!

When I have time but not internet, I write a lot in a journal. Sometimes for my eyes only, and sometimes with the idea that I’ll get around to typing them out for you guys. In the interest of catching you all up after yet another too-long blogging hiatus, here are a couple of the latter from the past few weeks:

10 XII
Some fam friends just brought over a wild pig they shot and are in the process of butchering it on our kitchen table, and so begins my day. The funny thing is, before they brought the thing into the house, they were careful to all take off their shiny black, pointy-toed shoes without scuffing them, and then made sure to load the meat into the fridge without banging up the newly remodeled kitchen floor. Once again I’m confounded by the developmental order. Katy’s example the other day was classic:

One night there was no electricity, and her family huddled under the light of her flashlight hanging from the ceiling as they divied up pieces of the boiled sheep’s head that was their dinner…and the next day when then power was back on, they microwaved the left-overs for lunch! One particular week, Katy had six sheep heads in 3 days! Everybody: Hats off to Katy. I told her I want to ghost write her blog because her stories are so much cooler than mine.

10 XII
Later that very day…
My host dad is blasting Bryan Adams on Kazakh MTV, which as some of you might have guessed, has TOTALLY made my day. When I got home from work, the wild pig had magically turned into bags and bags of ground pork (yum!). My family was actually complaining that there was too much of it, and was delighted when I mentioned that it would make great spaghetti sauce. I figured they meant the next day because they had already cooked some tasty pelmeni (like tortellini) for dinner that night.

But then they said, “No! You can make it for…second dinner” [this was in Russian] and I say… “Second dinner…tonight?” They have this “duh” look on their faces and explain that obviously second dinner is what you eat if you’re still hungry after first dinner. Great! I was quite proud to manage the Russian for “What a good life it is when there is a second dinner” and prouder to get an impressed, albeit somewhat amused, look of approval from host mom and dad. I hope it made them feel like good hosts. I can’t explain the 180 from my first impression of living here…it would take a whole book to break it all down and figure it all out. Definitely a study on cultural differences, especially between me and my host mom [Note from the current writer- I didn’t really talk about it, but my host mom and I were kind of quiet rivals when I came on the scene]. Holy cow, who would have thought she and I would have such appreciation for each other (,” she said, describing the situation from exactly one point of view and hoping it was a mutual one).



22 XII
Meanwhile, I’m pretty much done with my first official univ teaching experience, and it was pretty awesome. “Practice of Cultural Interaction” will go down in history as a damn good first attempt. [Especially since my only objectives were to: 1. Make a good first impression on the T’s observing me, 2. Get the Ss comfortable talking to me, their T’s and each other, and 3. Figure out “the system” a little bit. Ohhh is there a system.] I’m not sure if anybody really learned anything in terms of vocabulary and grammar and what not, but hey. I taught 9 sections of this class to 9 different groups of students, and all of their usual teachers unanimously agreed that the students talked WAY more than normal. So that’s a big plus as far as I’m concerned. [I arrived mid-semester, so I kind of just took over these sections and their actual teachers observed the lessons] I’m bummed not to teach this subject again next semester, but it’ll be a good opportunity, come to think of it, to work with the T’s who do teach it and actually know what I’m talking about.

A quick “What I learned” from this semester:
-Truly, the better the plan, the better the lesson.
-You really have to modify for skill level [All 9 groups had different levels of English and it’s supposed to just be all content without explicit language instruction]
-Trying to get Ss to answer critical thinking questions is a B*%!#. Sorry grandma.
-Tools should be designed assuming zero common sense.

[Note from the current writer: That last one is not so optimistic, but I can’t count how many times I thought I had made a self explanatory worksheet or quiz, and been met with 10 different ways that students tried to work with it.]


Now back to the present. The entry from the 10th hints at the frustrations of my first few weeks here…there was quite a power struggle between my host mom and I when I arrived. We both acted really unnaturally for some reason- she was really nosey and pushy, and I was really sensitive.

By the way, I suspect that the translation of in this situation was actually Anyway, after a few weeks, I switched over to a much more direct communication style (i.e. “I want to eat now” instead of “When do you think we’ll eat?”, and she relaxed a lot (i.e. NOT telling me how and when to do everything), and we lived in harmony. She’s an administrator in a school in one of the nearby villages, so actually she has given me some really interesting insights into the educational system and the reality of education here. She’s staying in the village for a while right now, and actually I miss our long talks over chai.

The entry about the univ also is a nice sum-up of the semester, I think. I’m really looking forward to next semester- I’m teaching a bunch of sections of “Intercultural Communication” for English Philology majors- could there be a more perfect class for me to teach?! I’m so pumped. And my faculty loves the idea of me finding all kinds of authentic materials and “doing my innovative methods” as they call it. I’m also starting Spanish classes next semester, which is going to be AWESOME, and I’ve been working with a really good Russian tutor who is teaching me a ton. Don’t worry, MIIS, I’m documenting all the interesting language learning experiences, and in fact I have got a pretty solid reputation already of being a linguistics nerd. My colleagues at the univ always roll their eyes (lovingly, I think) whenever I start out, “Actually! In Spanish you can also…” or “Ohhh that’s interesting because in English…”