Happy International Workers Day, or as it is officially known today "Kazakhstan Day of Unity". This holiday has a special place in the hearts of many former Soviet people, and it is celebrated by making the blood that pumps through said heart a little thinner.
In the city square of Pavlodar -- a central area boxed off by the Akimat (similar to a city hall), library and the Irytish river embankment -- was a solid balloon-banging, slogan-shouting, Nazarbayev-photo-carrying extravaganza. The city set up the place as it usual does for any holiday, with a stage for dancers of various cultural backgrounds, speeches galore and a ton of lipsynching. There was, of course, a parade. Leading the way were a myriad of oil companies, banks, local businesses and then finally caboosed by students.
The most interesting occurence, in my opinion, came on one of the side stages where a band of tuba players were stationed. Imagine a tuba. Now imagine an entire band of tubas, pushing 25 players. People were almost forced to march with all that oom-pa-pa.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
The beleaguered start to spring
PEPFAR HIV/AIDS Conference Attendees in Karaganda, KZ
A grandmother takes a restAbout six months to go, I sing.
This part of the year always seems to bring about a great mental mixture of review and renewal—grass, bees and an inflamed appreciation for the female ankle come to mind on the latter—and the recent weather did a good job at confusing me on both accounts.
The long winter is finished, now available to be cited for the rest of my living days as one of those back in my day, you The North Face-loving sumagun, I walked to work in -43° C weather! moments. By most books, it is April. April usually includes bouts of rain and fluctuating temperatures leaning towards the warm. Usually. Things were thrown for a loop last week, when at about 2 AM, I arose from my slumber to the eerie silence of snow falling (most people that grew up in the Northeast or anywhere else where they waited for snow before winter school days knows this non-sound well), and went a little crazy. Maybe it was the mid-night awakening and the bleariness that comes with it, but I went to my balcony, stared at the white blanket silencing the road below, saw a man walking in the street and became incensed with vehemence for weather. I decided that this climatic parody deserved some kind of statement.
Me: “It’s snowing!” yelled in Russian to the man.
Man on street: Stop, turn, glance, blink frighteningly, continue.
Me: “Seriously! It’s snowing!” I chime again.
Man on street: Stop, turn, glance, blink frighteningly, stare at the sky, run away.
Yes, I felt that my shouting made the absurdity of snow fall in April more realistic; that crazy should always accompany crazy.
Anyway, now it’s warm again, the snow is gone, making it the last snow I will see in Kazakhstan for a long time. Then again, I thought that thought eight days ago.
Basically, I was reminded that assumption is the cheese on the mouse trap, that the unexpected should be expected and that the absurd is helpful to us all, especially when you get on a railway track of thinking earlier than you should. There’s still time for further effort. And snow.
Otherwise, man, it’s been good. Let us draw up the short list of Kazakhstan recent greatness:
a) Nauryz (Kazakh New Year)
b) Presidential Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) Conference
-This was a conference of host country nationals and Peace Corps volunteers gathered to discuss HIV/AIDS in a myriad of social sectors. Alongside some high quality and dedicated volunteers, I added my part by co-facilitating the conference with presentations on drug trafficking in Central Asia, HIV blood analysis processes in Kazakhstan, project planning, etc. (although I know my half was much less than 50 percent of the work compared to the diligence of other volunteers).
c) This photo of former roommate and Top 5 Coolest Dude Ever, Baurzahn Ablyavich 
d) Cultural lessons with local students getting ready to travel to the US and A for the summer
e) English lessons at local language center
f) Avoiding a big international conference scam (F you, Emmanuel Foundation)
g) New apartment!
h) Writing up new grants for Public Foundation Challenge
i) Film club attendance increase
j) Basketball club branching out to volleyball and soccer, and one extra hour (Sunday 12-3 PM Pavlodar School #4)
k) Mid-day birthday celebration and banya with my director’s husband, Папик.
l) Slow day at the office following said celebration
m) Giving my rat a shower.
n) Mastery of the potato and all the ways to cook it due to unique budget situation
o) Nice apartment warming party for fellow volunteer, Jeff
It’s not all smiley faces and LOL’s. I missed birthdays! Happy birthdays to Antonia Elizabeth, Rebecca, Cassandra Leigh, Joshua Alan, John Cabell, Mr. Lanser, Chris, Deborah Jean and other people that aren’t on facebook.com.
Free Political Commentary, Come One, Come All
Recently read a great example of a writer seemingly writing only to fill a word quota with nothing but racing innuendo and poll watching: The Kaus Files on slate.com. I should write a book about watching this primary election season play out with no more than one-hour of actually hearing the candidates speak and absolutely no television pundit discussion, but equipped with the reading of at least one hundred articles on each candidate and the transcripts of four debates (Well, Edwards, Clinton and Obama on one side; Romney, Giuliani, Paul, Huckabee and McCain on the other).
Too much fun to take notice to the words chosen rather than how the words were spoken and further dissected.
Monday, March 17, 2008
NBA JAM
Little Timor sends up a shot
ChampionsOne of my side projects is a youth basketball club. It's held every Sunday afternoon, and it's a time to feel the power of the gym teacher (whistles!) and the joy of Dikembe Mutombo (Rejected! Finger wag). Basically, the basketball club is full of kids that like to run around a gym and I get to teach them some basketball and exercise properly, and maybe some English, along the way.
Photo-op for some of the playersAnd just for kicks, a scene from the market.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
She came!
She's cute with the sheep
Not so much.
Men in hot rooms. This is my director's husband, flashing off his richness (belly).
Our sleigh driver, whom fell off a few times due to a few too many liquid coats.
Students celebrate Valentine's Day at the Pavlodar Library
‘This is an act of mercy,’ is what shot through my mind when my loving girlfriend told me that she had purchased a plane ticket to visit me in Kazakhstan. Mercy from someone upstairs allowing her to come here unharmed and with a fair amount of swiftness, and also mercy from her in actually accepting my work in the world and coming here in the depths of the near-Siberian winter. This coming from the girl that is comfortable in the temperatures normally only found during the small windows of September 10th-15th and May 3rd-May 6th, these being the perfect days for 70° F in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Her timing to visit seems doomed to be unpleasant and nearly impossible, like a little brother pestering to play Wiffleball under a canopy of power lines and overgrown maple trees.
But she came! Flying across the world, past the expected and all too frequently used adage, ‘on the opposite end of the Earth’, all the way to Almaty, Kazakhstan, she came! Not to slight the musical appeal of the dombra, but she did not travel from America to Kazakhstan for the culture. It was a tertiary aim fo sho, but it is clear why she came so far. She came for me and her and so that we could be us for a brief period. To be together.
Her gesture was remarkable and she is stunning, making her beauty and valor and wholesomeness and understanding and allure to be regarded as legendary and therefore told through the ages.
We did many fun things, including:
-Riding a one-horse open sleigh across the steppe
-Meeting the former power lifting champion of Russia and Kazakhstan, unfortunately who is now missing all of his fingers
-Getting our personal photos taken alongside nearly all the significant artifacts in the Pavlodar Natural Museum of History
-Eating ten onions
-Playing with goats and baby lambs
-Making beshparmak (national dish of Kazakhstan)
-Smacking each other with birch leaves in a hot, steamy room
-Teaching three Spanish lessons
-Bathing a rat
-Preparing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s chef/head of food distribution
-Dancing like idiots
The point attempting to be conveyed here is that my girlfriend, whom has supported me in her own reluctant yet loving way ever since I knew I was going to Kazakhstan and for one and a half years called me nearly everyday since my work here began, totally broke out of her comfort zone and spent a great deal of time, money and faith in order to come visit me—and the recipe of us two together led to cooking up the greatest month ever.
As I am currently not in possession of fluxcapacitor-infused Dalorean, I can’t go back to that greatest month. This makes the next few months a bit trying.
I know there are many people out there that complain about long-distance relationships—tough no matter what the mileage—but there is an increasingly tangible goodness in this self-imposed unhappiness that I’ve put myself and her through. I’m not looking forward to my work here to be over anytime soon, as I feel accepted and useful here to a myriad of causes, but I am looking forward to actually being with the woman I am with for more than two months out of two years, and finally grabbing that carrot that has been dangling in front of us for so long now.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Monday, January 14, 2008
Let's talk about the weather because the rest is something entirely different.
-20 normally with a low of -35 so far. Also, there is snow.
My plant, Phosphorus, stoically stares out the window.
Had a productive meeting with a gym teacher and school director this past week, discussing plans for a basketball club and potential tournament between other schools in Pavlodar. This opportunity is really exciting, as I get to teach kids the fundamentals of basketball—there will be many practices on the Zen of boxing out—as well as get a little exercise in the process.
The school director mentioned that it would be a great chance to keep his students from sitting around, playing computer games and eventually turning to drinking or whathaveyou later on. I agree.
I must procure a photo of the school director, as his appearance conjures up thoughts of Humpty Dumpty, but with suspenders. Also he has a beard and wears flannel shirts, so perhaps he's more comparable to that of a rounded Al Borland. He is Legend.
Happy Old New Year.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
ring a ding ding
The man seems too short and young to be the man. He’s also uninspired, but what can you say about agreeing to sing the same two songs in at least ten different cafes over the course one evening. It’s not the most fun way to spend your New Year’s, though very lucrative.
The man in question is Serik Musalinof. Supposedly. He is known across the great Republic of Kazakhstan for singing a little diddy that harmonizes all the main cities of this nation, and another song about Pavlodar. People all dance and sing along to his songs, but a fair amount also let out a groan whenever they hear it as well due to its unbridled pop nationalism. It is a relationship similar to New Jersey with its Bon Jovi.
We’re at a restaurant, BierXanna, to ring in the New Year. We, as per the end of 2007 definition, are Adam, Nick, Nick’s brother Chris (visiting from LA), Jeffrey (new cool volunteer) and me. The restaurant reservation is a lovely treat, compliments of Chris. It turned out to be the usual fanfare of greatness: food, conversation, dancing with Santa Claus, belly dancers, beverages and President Nursultan Nazarbayev giving a speech at the midnight hour. Follow up the mid-day wake-up with a banya steam session, and you have yourself a proper payment of respects to 2007 and a necessarily clean welcome to 2008.
2007 was spent, minus for three weeks in the US, twelve hours in Germany, six over Europe and ten or so over the Atlantic, completely in Kazakhstan. It brought me a fine amount of accomplishment (AIDS awareness project, summer camps, English and film clubs, tutoring, translations, children’s clubs, book donations, etc.), frustration (communication problems regardless of language barriers), sickness (lick those rubber suckers, put em’ on my nipples and strap me to a radiator to check my heart rate again, nurse), and health (running, swimming in the Irytish, basketball evenings, basketball club).
I started it living with my good friend, Baurzahn Ablyavich and I have ended it living in my own apartment, now going on seven months. I started with attempting to get a mouse out of my suitcase that stowed away in my bag from a train ride and ended with me having a pet rat that either has an unfortunately placed tumor or has extremely fertile carry-on luggage (it’s a male, and quite male at that).
Most importantly, it started with a growing sense of doubt over my decision to join Peace Corps and over exactly how I could be of assistance to people here, and ended with a growing sense of excitement for the opportunities available and the pressurizing time left to accomplish works of importance.
My main organization shows signs of regular professional improvement, from the implementation of project planning, weekly volunteer meetings, transparent financial oversight even for the smallest items, gaining confidence in working with international health groups and simply a confidence knowing that we have worked as a team.
My secondary projects show signs of progress in that I helped send sixteen students to the US last summer for work, tutored two that will pursue their undergraduate and graduate degrees overseas, assisted one with international business presentations for a conference in Afghanistan, aided students to finally ask me a question other than “how are you?” when they greet me and have a different response other than “fine.”, showed students a different side of America and the world through independent films, camps and concert performances (with the grand assistance of the perpetually active volcano that is fellow volunteer Adam Henricksen), and laying the groundwork for a youth basketball club.
Run-on sentences happen. A lot, in fact, happens.
I received an e-mail from a dear friend of mine this past week that covered the topic of young adulthood and the questions that linger within. What is the point of work? What comes next? Why is it is so hard to compartmentalize the graying aspects of life so they can actually be dealt with? Add a little side order of confusion over relationships and a longing for the joyful past, and you have a lost path that I think is all too frighteningly common.
Putting aside the fact that we are dear friends, and no one else can substitute for that kind of understanding, who am I to answer these questions? I’m a young adult with constant questions of what is the point of this work? and what’s next? except there lies a very obvious expiration date to find the answers here. But taken flatly in a context outside of friends’ understanding, the answers fail to materialize quickly. This past week, however, and the experiences of the past year that led up to it, made me confident in confronting these questions and others.
My old friend Baurzahn invited me over to his home before New Year’s and we reminisced about the silliness of last year; how we barely spoke any Russian, the awkward dinner visit in which he slyly fed me a complicated toast in ode to a particular woman’s beautiful eyes and figure (whom I had just met), and an assortment of other daily happenstances that hold a special place between us.
Nick’s brother provided a very fresh, very American perspective on Kazakhstan—particularly on the raw emotion that people show here so often. I found myself ashamed that I was taking these displays and people for granted, as if living here for sixteen months makes them less interesting. Routine can do that to many, but why was I already in a routine of hum-hum acceptance? Why at age 23 in Central Asia while speaking Russian while meeting kind, seed-selling street corner grandmas and politically pushy drunken uncles, and eager-minded students, and open-hearted social workers and squeeze-box playing musicians, and yoga-teaching sport enthusiasts with funny English, and working with a memorable-quote-per-minute boss, am I in a routine that makes me not notice how great it all is?
So I snap out of it. I take notice once again, and again and again.
There is no time to compartmentalize anymore. Block scheduling is over. The dewey decimal system is useless. I have stopped my search for the period. Life is a run-on sentence.
2008 is up and running.
The man in question is Serik Musalinof. Supposedly. He is known across the great Republic of Kazakhstan for singing a little diddy that harmonizes all the main cities of this nation, and another song about Pavlodar. People all dance and sing along to his songs, but a fair amount also let out a groan whenever they hear it as well due to its unbridled pop nationalism. It is a relationship similar to New Jersey with its Bon Jovi.
We’re at a restaurant, BierXanna, to ring in the New Year. We, as per the end of 2007 definition, are Adam, Nick, Nick’s brother Chris (visiting from LA), Jeffrey (new cool volunteer) and me. The restaurant reservation is a lovely treat, compliments of Chris. It turned out to be the usual fanfare of greatness: food, conversation, dancing with Santa Claus, belly dancers, beverages and President Nursultan Nazarbayev giving a speech at the midnight hour. Follow up the mid-day wake-up with a banya steam session, and you have yourself a proper payment of respects to 2007 and a necessarily clean welcome to 2008.
2007 was spent, minus for three weeks in the US, twelve hours in Germany, six over Europe and ten or so over the Atlantic, completely in Kazakhstan. It brought me a fine amount of accomplishment (AIDS awareness project, summer camps, English and film clubs, tutoring, translations, children’s clubs, book donations, etc.), frustration (communication problems regardless of language barriers), sickness (lick those rubber suckers, put em’ on my nipples and strap me to a radiator to check my heart rate again, nurse), and health (running, swimming in the Irytish, basketball evenings, basketball club).
I started it living with my good friend, Baurzahn Ablyavich and I have ended it living in my own apartment, now going on seven months. I started with attempting to get a mouse out of my suitcase that stowed away in my bag from a train ride and ended with me having a pet rat that either has an unfortunately placed tumor or has extremely fertile carry-on luggage (it’s a male, and quite male at that).
Most importantly, it started with a growing sense of doubt over my decision to join Peace Corps and over exactly how I could be of assistance to people here, and ended with a growing sense of excitement for the opportunities available and the pressurizing time left to accomplish works of importance.
My main organization shows signs of regular professional improvement, from the implementation of project planning, weekly volunteer meetings, transparent financial oversight even for the smallest items, gaining confidence in working with international health groups and simply a confidence knowing that we have worked as a team.
My secondary projects show signs of progress in that I helped send sixteen students to the US last summer for work, tutored two that will pursue their undergraduate and graduate degrees overseas, assisted one with international business presentations for a conference in Afghanistan, aided students to finally ask me a question other than “how are you?” when they greet me and have a different response other than “fine.”, showed students a different side of America and the world through independent films, camps and concert performances (with the grand assistance of the perpetually active volcano that is fellow volunteer Adam Henricksen), and laying the groundwork for a youth basketball club.
Run-on sentences happen. A lot, in fact, happens.
I received an e-mail from a dear friend of mine this past week that covered the topic of young adulthood and the questions that linger within. What is the point of work? What comes next? Why is it is so hard to compartmentalize the graying aspects of life so they can actually be dealt with? Add a little side order of confusion over relationships and a longing for the joyful past, and you have a lost path that I think is all too frighteningly common.
Putting aside the fact that we are dear friends, and no one else can substitute for that kind of understanding, who am I to answer these questions? I’m a young adult with constant questions of what is the point of this work? and what’s next? except there lies a very obvious expiration date to find the answers here. But taken flatly in a context outside of friends’ understanding, the answers fail to materialize quickly. This past week, however, and the experiences of the past year that led up to it, made me confident in confronting these questions and others.
My old friend Baurzahn invited me over to his home before New Year’s and we reminisced about the silliness of last year; how we barely spoke any Russian, the awkward dinner visit in which he slyly fed me a complicated toast in ode to a particular woman’s beautiful eyes and figure (whom I had just met), and an assortment of other daily happenstances that hold a special place between us.
Nick’s brother provided a very fresh, very American perspective on Kazakhstan—particularly on the raw emotion that people show here so often. I found myself ashamed that I was taking these displays and people for granted, as if living here for sixteen months makes them less interesting. Routine can do that to many, but why was I already in a routine of hum-hum acceptance? Why at age 23 in Central Asia while speaking Russian while meeting kind, seed-selling street corner grandmas and politically pushy drunken uncles, and eager-minded students, and open-hearted social workers and squeeze-box playing musicians, and yoga-teaching sport enthusiasts with funny English, and working with a memorable-quote-per-minute boss, am I in a routine that makes me not notice how great it all is?
So I snap out of it. I take notice once again, and again and again.
There is no time to compartmentalize anymore. Block scheduling is over. The dewey decimal system is useless. I have stopped my search for the period. Life is a run-on sentence.
2008 is up and running.
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