My blog is being censored!!

The time sure flies.

I got wind of a lapse in the gov't censor of blogger.com, so I thought I'd post a quick note to say that it's almost spring, I'm still here in K-stan, and things are going just fine. Steffen and I went to the UAE and were wowed by the tallest building in the world, fantastic Indian food and beautiful weather, among other things that are definitely absent here.

I resurfaced into the internet world to learn that people were getting engaged, running for congress and becoming way too successful and educated while I was gone. I'm almost ready to start the 6 month countdown until I come to America (which is pronounced here the same as the PRs do it on West Side Story: A-MAY-rica with the soft R). But in the meantime, there are a lot of things to do here.

For all of the adventure travellers/hiking enthusiasts: Get a few friends together and sign your team up for the first annual Hike For A KAZ event in the Tien Shan Mountains above Almaty, Kazakhstan. Visit one of the most off-the-beaten-track corners of the world while raising money for local charity programs that promote development in various areas. www.hike4akaz.org

I'm off to the university to meet with the IT people. We're planning a teacher training on using the internet ;)

Take care,

CB

Sgaz the cat is curled up under the radiator and I just got back from dropping a bunch of t-shirts off at a print shop to get the ‘Hike for a KAZ’ logo printed on them. There is a pilots’ college behind my house, and the trainees are out there marching and singing very soviet sounding songs, just like they do about 3 times a day every day. And this punk kid outside is yelling up at his girlfriend’s window:

SAMAL ! [with a heavy stress on the MAL.]

He does it every day around early evening. Exact same intonation every day, and he never says anything except her name. Not sure what the deal is there. I live in one of these big block housing projects, so there are about a hundred windows he could be yelling at.

The printers think I’m crazy for getting t-shirts printed in January, even though I explained that I’m just planning ahead (not a popular concept). I can see their confusion, because it’s not t-shirt weather, it’s -30 outside. It’s the kind of cold where you have to factor an extra 10 minutes in for getting bundled up before you leave the house. The kind of cold that I was definitely not an authority on before, and maybe I’m still not. But if you’re about to move somewhere cold for the first time, I’m pretty sure I can give you some advice. Things that a warm weather person never wanted to know but does:
• Mittens are warmer than gloves
• Some chapsticks freeze if it’s cold enough
• Most lip glosses freeze if it’s cold enough
• All scarves are not created equal
• It doesn’t matter what you’re wearing under the coat and boots, nobody’s ever going to see it. One time when the university’s heat was out, I wore my pj’s to work because I knew I’d never take my coat off. In case you haven’t seen a photo of my winter get-up, the only clothes that are visible under my coat and boots is about 2 inches of my shins.
• Electronics freeze
• Mascara = pain
• Zippers are better than buttons
Etc.

The question I get most these days is: “Do you have snow in America?”

How do I explain that, Yes, there is snow, but where I’m from you can escape the snow by driving a couple of hours west. It would be hard to grasp because you can literally take a train for 3 days across this country and see the same empty, flat landscape and the same bitter cold the whole way.

Right about now that grass hut in the jungle village is sounding pretty nice.

It’s not all bad though. I mean, it’s all a cultural experience, right? I get to see the parents pulling their kids around on sleds, and the baby strollers that are fitted with ice skate blades where the wheels should be. In the winter everybody has a cool hat (me included now!) and you can’t see any of the trash on the ground. The thick steam of the Russian sauna down the street is all the more fabulous on a day this cold, and there is a certain pleasure of walking through your front door and ‘being home’ after the tedious walk back to your house on the icy road. This is a new pleasure for me, never having experienced a place where being out in the elements can be so hostile. Ducking off the street into a cozy hole-in-the-wall café feels like a valiant escape accomplished, and a hot drink is more comforting and can feel luxurious. And there’s no arguing with the fact that a fuzzy purring cat on your lap is way cuter on a cold day.

So, the main reason that I have sought out an internet connection today is to post photos. In some of them you can see various classrooms, my apartment, and other places where I spend a lot of time (including the “marshrutka” bus :-/ )

blog jan

Some other things you might notice:
• They start in July and end in January. You will notice that there’s not much of an autumn in between.
• I didn’t get a dog - it was Melanie’s. We went a little pet crazy over here. What’s worse is that I suspect that Sgaz is just using me for my American passport.
• The petite Kazakh woman is my friend Mira - we’re buddies.
• I taught Spanish classes all summer. Lots of fun.
• Disaster averted: I was trying to hug a horse and it tried to head-butt me.
• Lots of mosques and Orthodox churches next to each other. Not sure why.
• Even babushkas wear Gucci knockoffs.
• The two young Kazakh boys playing scrabble are Nursultan and Danyar, the neighbor kids. They come over twice a week to play with Sgaz, play various games and practice English (which translates to “tease the hell out of Sgaz, cheat at various games and talk trash using several choice phrases in English”) They’re cool kids though and we have a lot of fun…although, the older one has repeatedly threatened to ‘gobstop’ Steffen on the street. ‘Gobstop’ is apparently a slang term that roughly translates to mugging someone. What?! More on gobstopping at a later date.
• I saw the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, when he came to visit Aktobe. It was a huge event for the city. Pretty big deal.
• Christmas was fun. Many thanks to: Our neighbor, China, for providing a cheap fake tree and countless gaudy decorations; family, friends and the Monterey Institute for sending packages and cards; and all of my colleagues at Zhubanov University for throwing a great Christmas/New Years party.
• There aren’t a lot of picture of cold weather because it’s too cold to take my hand out of my glove to take a picture. I miss hooooome.


Also I just want to tell all of my family and friends in Sacramento, Chico, Monterey, Reno, LA and beyond: I love you, I miss you, and I think about you all the time even though I don’t write. I know that’s a lot more sappy than the average me, but I guess that’s what this kind of stuff does to a person.

Happy New Year

So…it’s been a while.

At the time of my last blog posting the temperature in Aktobe was a wonderful 85F, I was enjoying trips to the lake and picnics with local friends and volunteers, and being treated to fresh produce from the summer gardens of my co-workers on a daily basis. At the market I could fill up this huge tote bag with eggplant, sweet ‘bulgarski’ peppers, tomatoes, and garlic for about the equivalent of two dollars - a total steal considering the fact that prices of a lot of groceries and consumer goods here are actually pretty comparable to those in the States.

Traveling with my friend Melanie to the UK to hike the 3 Peaks Challenge and to see my mom, grandma and sisters, and going to Oman to see Steffen were by far the highlights of my summer [Oman is, after all, the home of frankincense.] During the warmer months I also had a good time getting more comfortable in Aktobe, a city that by the summer I had only known for 7 months as cold and gray. Typical depressing post-Soviet montage of dreary block housing set on a stark white sky. After all that snow melted and the spring mud dried up, it turned out that the streets were full of fountains and flowerbeds, and that good-weather Aktobe was actually a pretty bright place. Now, my perception of natural beauty was a little skewed after that first winter [recall the Ode to Leaves posting], but it just made the colorful summer seem all the more spectacular.

Just before the fall semester started, Steffen finished his fellowship in Oman and came to Aktobe after a visit with his family back in the States. One highlight can be mentioned above all others when recounting this time period: Sgaz the cat!! We rescued him from certain malnourishment and possible abandonment: he was the lone runt with a full coat of hair among a litter of kittens born to two cats of the Sphinx breed. Not familiar with the Sphinx? Think Dr. Evil. Yep, they’re hairless. Bald. Which is great if you have allergies, but not so great if you like, well, cats with hair. So now little Sgazum (Russian for “with gas”…he farts a lot] has a nice home where he eats cat food and gets tons of love. His antics keep me and Steffen laughing- sometimes you’ll just be walking around the house and BAM! Sgaz sneak attacks your leg with a flying leap, just like Hobbes does to Calvin. Couldn’t be more perfect.

The fall semester gave me about a hundred new students’ names to remember and a couple of new teachers to work with. It makes it harder when my students have names like Nurdaulet, Aibupe and Bakhitzhan, and the teachers go by first name and patronymic. So, instead of Gulshat and Olga, we have Gulshat Bazurbayevna and Olga Leontivna to remember. Big projects currently include introducing to my university the idea of a syllabus, grading rubrics for oral exams, and an online forum to supplement lessons. I just finished giving final exams, and a memory that sticks out is last week, when out of 13 people: 5 arrived on time, one arrived late with a huge bag of meat, one arrived even later with flowers and juice for me, one arrived even later with chocolates for me, and one arrived even later with her baby. The rest just arrived late without any spicy excuses. Blurg. I can’t even blame them, because the exam schedule that’s posted for the students is different than the exam schedule that’s posted for the teachers. Why would it be? I’m constantly reminded of a professor, Jean, from MIIS, saying, “Just keep swimming…”

Otherwise work at Zhubanov university is great. I work with fabulous women who make me feel like one of the girls, especially now that my ability to gossip and eavesdrop on gossip in Russian and Kazakh has become pretty high. Yet another argument for Natalie’s Need Hypothesis. I have also been teaching Spanish now for about a year, and it’s super popular. Although I work in the Foreign Languages department of the university, the only options are English and German. Next week all the Spanish students are coming to my apartment to learn how to make Fajitas and Spanish rice.

In November a group of new volunteers came to the region, and now along with Melanie and Steffen I get to have fun with Dawn and her husband Aaron. It’s definitely cool to be the seasoned veterans, feeling like locals- so different than a year ago. So, a quick checklist of 2009 in Aktobe, KZ goes as follows:

-Survived an almost-Siberian winter that lasted from late October to late April
-Lived with a Kazakh host family for 6 months
-Taught my first full year at the university level
-Raised a bunch of money with Melanie for the Ubuntu Education Fund in South Africa
-Trained for and Hiked at the 3 Peaks Challenge, June
-Traveled to the Middle East for the first time to go to Oman, June
-Moved into my own apartment in Aktobe, July
-Went to a Kazakh dentist, July
-Started leading a yoga class. August
-Welcomed Steffen to Kazakhstan, and Aktobe, and the craziness of life here, August
-Saw Football Club Aktobe become the National Champions of Kazakhstan, October
-Hosted 10 noisy Americans for Thanksgiving Dinner, slash, bought a goose at the bazaar and cleaned it out for Thanksgiving dinner…Nov.
-Steffen’s visa ran out and he went to Dushanbe, Tajikistan for two weeks to get a better taste of Central Asia and a new visa…brought me and Mel back the coolest socks ever.
-With Melanie and two local friends, started the NGO “Hike for a KAZ” [Pronounced “Hike for a Cause”] modeled after the 3 Peaks Challenge, where teams of hikers will fundraise and hike Soviet Peak in Almaty to benefit quality development projects in Kazakhstan. Stay tuned for more info, or wait a few weeks and then visit www.hike4akaz.org
-Invited some people over, bought some ginormous fireworks that would be illegal in the states for sure, filled the fridge with Russian vodka and got mom and grandma’s Christmas packages this week, which were full of CHOCOLATE. It’s going to be a great New Year’s Eve.

Plans for 2010 include:
-Not accidentally sleep through the night tonight (I did last year)
-Keep trying to do good work at the university
-Kick off the first annual Hike for a KAZ event this August in Almaty
-Go to India, Thailand, Turkey or Egypt to get some sun during the long winter (tickets are pretty cheap from here!)
-Take some horses up into the mountains in Kyrgyzstan this June and go yurt-camping
-Maybe introduce my mom and/or sister(s?) to Kazakhstan if they visit
-Find a good tutor and get fluent in Russian
-Make peace with the Soviet mentality
-COME HOME IN NOVEMBER ! ! ! ! ! !

And, of course, not suck so bad at remembering to write blogs.

Happy New Year 

Christina

summer vacation : )

Quick Oman photos -- they're the same ones that are on my Facebook fyi. Enjoy.

3 Peaks Challenge

Here's a picture of Team ALPHA at the top of Ben Nevis in Scotland -- first stop of the 3 Peaks Challenge this year





(PS: Although we are in fact totally awesome, the name Team Alpha was assigned to us). That's me, Angelina, Sophia and Melanie. Thanks to the generosity of our families and friends, our team raised over 2,500 pounds for the Ubuntu Education Fund!! So thanks for your help, warm thoughts and good vibes. Now if only my muscles would stop aching enough to let me enjoy these last couple of days hanging out at Angel's house in England before I go to Oman TOMORROW!

Quick UK lowdown:
-Here with mom, grandma, Sophia and Angelina, plus BONUS: Mel got to hang out with the fam for a few days!!
-In the past 5 days I have eaten pizza, chinese food, pub grub, had a delicious meal at a French Brasserie, and kicked back a few lovely English pints, and this will continue for the next 16 until my tastebuds begrudgingly return to the oil-soaked carb fest that is Kazakhstani cuisine.
-I had a Flip video camera delivered here, so stay tuned for my debut as a videographer.
-Bury St.Edmunds, Suffolk UK is to me, like Cleveland is to Liz Lemon. I like to think I'm a pretty nice person, and I have had to stretch my friendliness to levels that would be unthinkable on the streets of Aktobe just to remain barely within the norms of social pleasantry here.

Thanks for checking in -- CB

Fake Out!

Two blogs in a week?! I know what you're thinking, but: No, I didn't move back to the States thus affording me such luxuriously frequent internet access, nor did I get bride-napped by a wealthy Uzbek mafia boss working secretly out of an underground Aktobe palace that has surprisingly reliable wifi.

I just came to the cafe twice this week. It's finals week, and Melanie left yesterday for a business trip in Kyzlorda, and I said: Dammit. I'm going back to that cafe.

Annnd. Today is also a very special day and I couldn't let it go by without saying:

CONGRATULATIONS NICOLE ! ! !

That's right ladies and gents. She's a veritable Catch Phrase prodigy, her milkshake brings all the boys to the yard, and her unwavering ability to match even the most unwieldy of outfits has left me awestruck on many occasions. Already clearly a master of many arts and trades, only today does Nicole finally officially earn the title and the fabulous little piece of paper to go with it. I wish I could be there. Love you girl.



(begin parenthesis...
Meanwhile, I don't even know how to start the MIIS congratulations. At the great risk of half-assing it with this meager preview, I will say that I have a group of friends and colleagues who have just finished something pretty spectacular. I think it may have been a harrowing experience, but I'm hoping that by the time this blog posts, the anxiety will have all melted off -- leaving nothing but joy, relief, energy, and dare I say: an inclination to get crazy and visit me in Kazakhstan. Hmm, Sofya? :) BUT. This is not the congratulations, it's just a preview. SO just know that I'm thinking about you guys, feeling a little surreal that I'm not there with you. Pozdravlaiyu.)

An ode to leaves

May has been a pretty feel-good month. My birthday was great - I rented out a big sauna for the local volunteers (remember those guys from my Christmas posting?), and we ate, drank, sat in a hot, sweaty sauna, and took daring (but possibly unhygienic) dips in an icy pool. A two hour reservation got drawn out into a four hour celebration of camaraderie, life, and the unbeatable carnal pleasure of a cold, fresh beer after a steamy, hot sauna. It's not just relaxing- it's sooo comfortable, so CLEAN. I am totally hooked.

For the last bit of April and the first weeks of May, there was this thick anticipation of leaves. It was like everyone and everything was lacking life for 5 months, and then it started to warm up, and melt, and dry off, and then you could see little branches start to grow on the trees that had been totally dead, and little brown growths that appeared, and started to get ripe, and riper, and then....LEAVES. My count down to leaves was prolonged and tense. It got to the point that on my walks around town I was scouting out the trees that I thought would sprout some green first, because I was so impatient to see it. There was a promising tree over by a field that Melanie and I run in sometimes, and I would take little detours by there to see if my prediction was right. I walked around for about 5 months without seeing green, and then one day it was everywhere. There was one drizzly day and all the buds just exploded and the whole city was full of that fresh light green color- not a mature shade but a totally delicate and almost neon one.

Around that time I watched American Beauty and there was one scene that perfectly captures that feeling of standing on the street and looking at that neon green: It's when Kevin Spacey's in bed looking at the ceiling and fantasizing, and he says:

Spectacular.

That's how it felt. Anyway. As previously noted in my last post, Spring also means freedom from training in that smelly, dusty stairwell. Now instead of weirding out my neighbors, we weird out local elementary school kids as we run around the school track while they do their Soviet-style P.E. drills. Even creepier is that Melanie and I randomly have a lot of matching clothes...somehow we both came to KZ with the exact same pair of Nike pants (by now, affectionately referred to as 'the uniform'). The surprise highlight of training so far has been my new guilty pleasure: Mel's Billy Blanks Cardio Bootcamp DVD (Don't judge me), but I also had a chance to break in my new boots out on the steppe on a nice, long hike last weekend [photos included in the slideshow]

I'm in finals week right now- working to end 'Intercultural Communication - Spring 2009' with flair. The final exam includes information about Mel Brooks, Weezer, West Side Story, and other fabulous little cultural media that were conveniently hiding on my hard drive, and I think my students had a good semester on the whole. The colleagues I've been working with have also been troopers, going with the flow when I wanted to try out some wacky methods [like making a scoring rubric to grade the oral exams].

Am I going to post again before I leave on June 1st? I want to say yes, but let's be honest. I might not. So I will leave you with some highlights to look forward to in the next post: tentatively called '3 Peaks & Oman debrief.'

-Will we climb the 3 highest peaks in the UK in 24 hours? Will the perilous 'loose shale' and 'gale force winds' the preparation guide warns of get the best of us? And does it really even matter, since it's just an awesome chance for 3 sisters to get together and do something crazy?

-Will I rock the hijab in Oman? Or maybe go with a tasteful sari? Will we swim with the sea turtles? Do they even exist? Once again, I have a feeling it won't matter since this is going to be hands down, the coolest trip I've ever been on.

-Also stay tuned for the final tally: How many 30 Rock jokes can Melanie and Christina crack in the period of 24 hours, and how much will it annoy the rest of our team?

Vremya pakazhet. Or, as my host brother Adilet says: Only ze time will tell.

We're still working on our fundraising goal, so if you haven't checked out our web page, go have a look:

http://www.justgiving.com/IHikeForAKaz

The 3 Peaks Challenge kicks off about a year long project that will end in Melanie and I designing a similar event in the mountains above Almaty next summer. The inspiration for our making this trip to the UK is the incredible work that the Ubuntu Education Fund is doing in South Africa, and we're hoping to learn from them and from the 3 Peaks to make a similar difference for forward-thinking nonprofit organizations here in K-Stan. Anything you can give helps, even $5, and it's easy to donate online.

Big hug

Christina