Coming of Age

Announcing the Publication of My New Book

2011-09-23T21:11:00.001+06:00

Announcing the publication of my new book - If you've had fun reading this website and following my adventures, or simply wandered onto this page because you're also considering joining the Peace Corps yourself, you may be interested to know that in the past 3 years I've been working on a collection of Peace Corps stories from Central Asia called "A Small Key Opens Big Doors: 50 Years of Amazing Peace Corps Stories from the Heart of Eurasia."

You can buy the book now on amazon, it's available at Amazon through this link:

A Small Key Opens Big Doors: The Peace Corps at 50: The Heart of Eurasia

This book is the best bang for your buck if you're interested in the PCV experience in the area, as you get over 40 stories from the Eastern Europe / Central Asia region. Featuring stories from Kazakhstan, Iran, Turkey, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Albania, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Turkmenistan, and many more!

On the news

2008-05-16T17:23:00.003+06:00

Here's a small clip of a news report on me and some other volunteers in the area. For arrogance's sake (and the trouble with my bandwidth) I'm only uploading half of the video. The half with me. More to come.

Recap of Last Few Days

2008-02-04T18:17:00.000+06:00

This probably isn't all that interesting for the general reader, but...

January 31st 2008 - Ust-Kamenogorsk to Almaty
Rode on a Tupolev Jet. The thing felt like it was about to fall apart as we left Ust-Kamenogorsk Airport in the snow-covered airport.

January 31st, 2008 - Almaty. Stuck here for 8 hours as the flight to Beijing is delayed. CRAP.
However, I did get to eat a poor excuse for a hamburger, and the airport has free wireless! Score.

January 31st, 2008 - February 1st, 2008 - The airport delay means getting into Beijing at 3:30 in the morning. CRAP. At least the food was decent.

February 1st, 2008 - Picked up by Uncle Qu and Dad. Home. Right to bed.

February 1st, 2008 - Went for a walk around the neighborhood close to my Dad's apartment. Ate at Ali's Xinjiang Muslim Restaurant, where the waiters all remember me from the last time I went there because I greeted them with an "asaalam aleykum." Lunch consisted of:

Lamb Shashlyk
Lamb Chop (Grilled)
Naan
Some sort of pepper-ground beef fresh laghman (noodles) mixture.

Excellent.

February 2nd, 2008 - February 4th, 2008. Didn't leave the house, working on the SPA grant. (Details later).

February 4th, 2008 - Beijing to Hong Kong. Food sucked on the plane - a pat of rice and two "beef" things that looked like shriveled up cut-off fingers.

February 4th, 2008 - Hong Kong. Sitting in First Class lounge. It's good to have a Dad who travels too much. More updates later.

Recent dealings, Blue Bay, Photo updates

2007-08-21T16:29:00.000+06:00

The photo section has a been once more updated! In this update:

Portraiture Collection

Blue Bay Trip, August '07

Lost Sledding Photos, circa January, '07

These, and other photos, can always be found at my Photo Album.

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A few posts back I had written that I wanted to start writing more about documenting day-to-day life here – usually I felt the need to write only posts that had some poignant meaning at the end of post, but I’ve realized that this actually results in few posts than I’d like.

I’ve returned from my 30 day home leave back from the states. In the Peace Corps, if a person elects to stay for a 3^rd year, they get an free plane ticket back home and back to the country of origin for R&R. I even get a fat per diem of $12.00 a day while in the states, so that was good for like…half a pizza.

Being back at home was nice, certainly better than the last time, since this time I was home for longer than two weeks. Being able to see all my old friends again, (especially long lost high school friends who seemed to crawl out of the woodwork and congregate the local Starbucks) as well as my family was actually very refreshing after being away for so long. I completed most of the things I wanted to do, including going the beach, eating Mexican, Japanese, Chinese and Fast food, buying new clothes, swimming, and so on. The in-and-out burger was an epic part of my trip home, I have to admit.

Upon my return to Kazakhstan, I hung out with Ashli and Amanda, two remaining Kaz-17s who are a part of the Kaz-19’s training. After that, I got back on a train (through plotzkart, unfortunately) back to Ust-Kamenogorsk.

I suppose it’s hard to say a city can change much in 30 days, but it certainly does seem to be a bit different. The local Coffee Blues (a coffee chain situated among Pizza Blues, the local Pizza joint monopoly) has started offering unlimited wi-fi internet for free, something that Sam and myself discovered with much delight. Previously internet was bought through prepaid cards, a normal card being 10 megs upload/download (good enough to check email and surf a few sites) for a ridiculous price of 500 tenge, just under 5 dollars.

So today, Sam and I just basically sat here for most of the day catching up on some long needed internet access on our own computers.

A few days ago we returned from Blue Bay, a local lake resort area about 2 hours outside of town. You can see pictures in the posted above link. Locals usually go every summer, for weeks at a time, to relax by the lake in owned dachas or rented 'domiks' [little house] and apartments and go swimming or enjoy watersports. Basically every watersport you can think of is here, including windsailing, jet-skiing, and sailing.

My trip here was a long time coming because locals rave about how great the place is during the summer yet I've never been able to manage a trip out there in the two years that I've been here, since the process of renting a place and getting out there can be a little difficult. Fortunately, Sam's counterpart, Sveta, invited him out. Upon hearing that I was back, her niece called up a friend that was nice enough to pick me up and drive me the whole two hours out.

Blue Bay is, interestingly enough, a man-made lake - half a century ago the entire area was nothing but a large valley that was intentionally flooded under the directorate of the USSR for a purpose that isn't entirely clear to me just yet. Regardless of the reason, in its present day state it's a place for people to go swimming and jet-skiing, apparently.

There were many beach-like areas, and it was great just to go and lay out by the beach. Our gracious hosts were great to us, feeding us, giving us a place to stay, entertaining us, etc, all free of charge.

Sam's counterpart, Sveta, is amazing with the bayan, a Russian-style accordian and the two nights we were there the group partied it up in the most classic russian style way possible. Drinking and Singing. Loudly. Until 3 am. Until americans have long gone to bed. Until the neighbors came pounding on the door demanding silence.

On the first day, Sam and I took the little air-pumped boat out to the center of the bay, actually quite far from the beach (and dangerously close to the paths of jetskis and motorboats, we soon discovered), and proceeded to watch a paddle that had a crack in it sink into the water, leaving us with one paddle and turning around in circles. Wonderful. After about 10 minutes of struggling in circles, we decided, that being rational adults, we would figure something out. Although a bit awkwardly, we eventually rowed canoe style back to the beach, paddling one side, then the other.

On day two, Sam and I went for a hike around the bay, trying to get through to other side by foot. 2 hours, dirtied pants and scratched arms later, (and watching Sam try to jump across a ditch which he proceeded to fall into) we eventually go to the other side. However, we were to return to the other side of the bay by 3, which was getting dangerously close. We eventually decided to split the cost of renting aa rowboat with a kazakh guy and his girlfriend, where we would row across and they would proceed to take the boat out later.

At 3, we went out on a little catamaran that took us out to an isolated part of the bay, where we had a picnic of shashlyk (skewered bbq meat) and vegetables with Sveta and her friends. I have to admit, I was a bit afraid I wouldn't be able to get a fire going, but we managed to do so without much problems. This was easily the best part of trip, since it was fairly well isolated had lots of scenery without man-made objects to screw up the view. Belly full of meat and vodka, we returned back to shore and proceeded to lay out at the beach for the rest of the evening, chatting with locals.

Definitely something to attempt again later next summer when the rest of the volunteers get here. Good times. Rested and relaxed, I'm pretty ready for school to start.

Ust has also treated me well, since I have a few weeks before school actually starts. I've already met up with lots of local friends already, as well as dealing with my Landlady to negotiate rent for the new year. Coming back, I went out with Dana, a 21 year old english teacher that worked at the kazakh school down the street from my house. Actually meeting her on the train down to to Almaty, coming back and seeing her after a month was actually a bit strange, but I had a good time getting to know her.

Good times ahead. New University year, Newspaper Projects, Grants to write, Orphanages to work with, English and Leadership clubs to start, new volunteers, etc. etc. To the 3rd year.

Cheers!

2007-08-07T06:45:00.000+06:00

I've been getting a lot of emails lately regarding on what to bring to KZ and for advice for the 19s. I've included this here for the K-19s arriving soon. If I get anymore questions I'll be sure to add more.

1. How is life and work in KZ? What advice can you provide to help me adapt to KZ? What advice can you give me to successfully complete my service?

I'll give you a few pieces of advice.

1. Throw away any preconceptions of what you 'expect' out of your experience, because those oftentimes are unrealistic and can lead to disappointment. The best way to go about the whole thing is to keep your attitude aligned with two absolute truths about Peace Corps service:

a. "Service is a rollercoaster." There will be highs and lows, and they're probably going to be some of the highest highs and lowest lows you've ever experienced, so when it gets rough, just hold out and grasp onto the belief that there will be highs.

b. "Volunteer Flexibility and Attitude is what makes or breaks the service." If you're prone to blame other people for your problems or tend to be a competitive person, it's time to drop that nonsense because your work here is for the local community, not to make yourself feel better about yourself or compete. Realize now that comparison of ‘accomplishments’ between volunteers is meaningless. You're gonna meet lots of people who are different and I guarantee you you'll find people that are difficult to work with (locals and volunteers), and at the end of the day, you can only control what you do yourself and be as positive as possible. You're gonna fail a few times, but the real question is what you do after that – you either pick up and try something else or you can sit and complain about things you can't change. Don't be the latter.

2. If you have a boyfriend/girlfriend in the states right now, it might be a good idea to break up. Lots of volunteers who have relations left behind in the states end up going back early and quitting, or end up suffering quite a bit while dealing with the stresses and strains here and going through a break up. The two of you will take extremely different paths in the following two years, and it's difficult to sugarcoat that.

3. When you get to site, try not to spend too much time with other Americans. Chances are you're going to be in a village and a ways away from other volunteers, but if you do end up in a situation where you can potentially spend all of your time with other Americans/volunteers, don't. Make lots of local friends and spend your time with them.

4. Be wary the ugly American. Unfortunately there are quite a few volunteers that took their opportunity of working here and treated it as essentially a second college experience, whether drinking heavily, womanizing, etc. I'm not saying you shouldn't drink socially or find a boyfriend/girlfriend while here, but PLEASE know that locals are going to be judging you and other Americans/PCVs through your behavior, so be careful and act like an adult. Your method of dealing with stress is also important to your service – try to be concientious of how you may come off to locals when stressed out. In addition, realize now that “The American Way” isn’t necessarily the right way.

5. . Life and work here has been great for me, I'm actually extending for a year, so I look forward to working with all of you – I'll probably even drop by your training for a bit. I've gone through a lot of rough times while here, but things have pretty much stabilized and I've got good work. A lot of volunteers would argue that I'm having a good time because I work at a University in a city, but most volunteers are close enough to the city centers that they can come in a few times a month to enjoy R&R. In addition, it’s important to realize that site doesn’t necessarily dictate how good or bad of an experience you had – there are plenty of stories of volunteers that share sites and one having a great time while the other has a terrible time.

6. A general good rule of thumb for service, life, and everything: Don't be a retard. ;-)

How was work as a TEFL teacher?

I teach at a university, so I don't have to deal with a lot of the stresses that secondary school TEFL teachers deal with (which, chances are, you will be). My students are generally well behaved, and since I teach 2-4th year English, I can teach more advanced topics like essay writing, TOEFL prep, conversation and proficiency, conduct home reading, and give lectures and tests. Safe to say, I love it, and I do lots of other community activities in addition.

While I don't have to worry about disciplinary problems that secondary school teachers face, my lessons are also on the whole a little less interesting because I can't do as many 'fun' activities since my lessons and content are fairly controlled by the administration. So doing things you can do with kids – i.e. plays, dances, many sorts of word games, etc. are out.

What things do you recommend bringing? What not to bring?

I made the mistake of bringing *too* many things because I wanted to be prepared for every situation. You can buy almost everything you need in Almaty and in oblast centers (where you're guaranteed to be no further than 3 hours away by bus when you go to site), so it's not necessary to bring everything.

Certain things might be useful that you can only find in the states:

- High quality thermal underwear, top and bottom in the thickest you can find. (UnderArmor is a popular brand that isn't available here)

- Gifts and trinkets from America. Key chains, dollar-wrapped chocolates, bottle openers, etc. Be sure to ration it out a bit over your service, as you'll be making all sorts of friends and you'll never know when you want to give a little something as a token of appreciation/memory for locals. Cheap crap like that is also popular with children as a prizes. It doesn't have to flamboyantly American-flag sort of stuff. Volunteers also usually bring presents that somehow represent the area they’re from. Nothing needs to be expensive.

- Wrinkle-free dress shirts and dress pants. Having wrinkle free clean clothing is VERY important here, so having wrinkle free shirts will make life easier so you aren't always ironing.

- Stickers and Markers are great for children.

- Waterproof hiking boots.

- Good pair of thick thick waterproof/resistant gloves. You can buy light ones here for early winter, but the thick ones will be useful during the coldest of winter.

- Good thick thermal socks.

- If you have a GSM cell phone now that's unlocked and internationally enabled, you can consider bringing it, because you'll end up buying one here anyway if you don't. If it's locked call your cell phone company and ask for the unlock code.

- Digital Camera. You'll be taking lots of pictures. All film developing places will print your digital pictures if you need prints.

- iPod or reasonable mp3 player will help with the long train rides.

- Laptop

Things you don't need:

- Heavy Jacket/Winter Coat. Whatever you can buy now (in Reno, NV in the dead of the summer, god forbid) is not going to be heavy enough during the winter. Save your money and buy one when you get to site. You'll find one that will fit fine. Bring a light waterproof jacket instead.

- Most other winter gear. People have been living in the kind of winters they get here for generations. You'll find whatever you need.

- Language Textbooks/Dictionaries – Unless you have one that you're absolutely attached to, Peace Corps will provide you with everything you need.

- Most medicinal stuff. Peace Corps med office has practically everything you need, unless you absolutely need the brand name of one particular product or another. They won't provide you with contact lens stuff, though, so bring those on your own if you plan on wearing them.

- Travel Guides. The newest lonely planet guide is coming out later this year (I actually helped write the section on Ust-Kamenogorsk), but it won't be that useful to you since you'll be learning everything firsthand and through volunteer chains anyway. Plus there's plenty of those lying around the peace corps office.

- As a rule of thumb, just remember that people have been living this way in this country for hundreds of years, so people get by fine without whatever doohickey you're on the fence about.

I plan on bringing a laptop. How are computer and internet connections? If you brought one, did you have trouble connecting to KZ outlets? Do I need to bring a surge protector?

- I'd recommend you bring a reliable laptop, because it'll be difficult to get fixed here since internet is spotty. Internet is generally available in every city and oblast center – I can get a decent dial-up connection from home, but it's about $12 for 10 hours, so it's not cheap. There's slightly more reliable connections in local internet cafes, but they can be just as slow or unreliable. It just depends on the site.

- I'm a big nerd, so I ended up having to have my friends send me a portable hard drive since I ended up collecting quite a bit of media from other volunteers. You might find it useful as well to exchange stuff with other volunteers.

- I've heard of volunteers in the villages being able to get internet connections as well, but again, it depends on the site. At the very worst, you'll have to have bus 2-3 hours into town to access the internet. At the very best, you'll have internet access at home (the occasional volunteer even has DSL).

- You can buy surge protectors here though it might be expensive, but you can bring one too if you like.

How difficult was it to stay in touch with family and friends in the US?

Email, chat are viable forms of communication. My family all skype me on my local phone or cell phone, so those are fine as well. International phone calls are all received fairly easily, so it's not a big deal to keep in contact.

What advice can you provide me for learning Russian and Kazakh?

Training will be frustrating. Do the best you can, but don't feel like you have to know or memorize all of the rules. Russian AND Kazakh might be a bit ambitious unless you have a huge talent for languages or already have a background in either. Don't take it out on your language coordinator if it's frustrating either. But everyone suffers, so don't worry about it. As a rule of thumb, Kazakh is supposedly easier, and locals will love you for learning it, BUT, Russian is much more widely spoken, so communicating is much easier. There are pluses and minuses to both. However, there's been a national movement towards Kazakh and rejection of Russian on an official level, so Kazakh might be more useful if you plan to stay here long term or come back in 3-4 generations. But I think we're getting ahead of ourselves ;)

You should also figure out what kind of learner you are and focus on studying through those methods. I'm an audio learner, so no amount of staring at rule charts really helped me as much as just getting out there and speaking and having conversations as much as possible.

How was training? What exactly do you do during training?

Training consists of technical training, where you learn methodologies of how to teach in Kazakhstan and work with children, medical training, cultural training, etc. The bulk of it is taken up by intensive language training, however.

I would argue that in reality, training is also a sort of crucible in which volunteers are melted down to see what they're really made of. In general, it generally is pretty stressful, and this is the real test, to see how you deal with that stress. Some react by leaving, others laugh it off and work through it, others resort to complaining and/or partying/drinking heavily. Like really, you're gonna find out a lot about yourself during training and service, and really important is being conscious of the person you want to come off as.

Training is a lot like high school, because there are volunteers from all backgrounds – rich spoiled kids, poor kids, nerds, potheads, jackasses, idealists, pessimists, student body types, emo kids, etc. etc. the trick is not to get caught up in the drama that will inevitably happen during training and be on your best behavior despite how other people act because you'll be judged throughout training by your trainers. But despite how much I tell you all this, you're gonna deal with the stress however best suits you, you just need to be aware of how it comes off to everyone else, volunteers, locals, trainers, etc.

Did you travel much through KZ? Through Central Asia, Russia or China? If so, how was it?

Your primary job is to stay at your site, but I have seen a lot of Kazakhstan through various work-related functions as well as vacations. The train rides are long, but a part of life.

I haven't gone through Russia or the rest of Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan is a popular destination, as well as Thailand), but I've gone a few times to China and Taiwan from here since I have family there. I already speak Chinese, so it was great for me.

My "I Love Lucy" Moment. Or: How I got introduced to all of my neighbors and why they think the American living in their building is a retard

2007-06-17T20:10:00.000+06:00

I had an “I Love Lucy” moment today.

You know those moments, don’t you? It starts off innocently enough – there’s some minor technical problem that’s been bothering you and you think you can solve it easily enough without anybody’s help. So you go out and do something about it. Maybe Ricky's been really tightfisted again with the money. Maybe getting a job packaging chocolate at the chocolate factory to earn some pocket money sounds good, but then suddenly, before you know it, you've got a mouth crammed full of chocolate and you're shoving more into your shirt pocket as things start spinning out of control.

I’m lucky enough to live in the city in an apartment with a washing machine. However, this presents its own complications, as I discovered today.

Upon my return from Pavlodar, I realized that the hose connecting the hot water to my washing machine had been slowly leaking. In addition, the handle to open and close the valve connecting the washing machine had broken off some time ago, which isn’t *that* serious, since it’s all in a closed system. However, the leaking was no doubt in relation to the fact that the valve was always open. See exhibit A.

Easy enough to fix, right? Buy a new handle to close the valve, and some plumber’s tape to seal off the leak on the hose. I tramp off to the bazaar.

There, I sift through a mess of valves until I find what seems like what I’m looking for. Apparently you can’t buy the handle buy itself, so you have to buy the whole valve.

“Eto russiski, 400T.” This is Russian-made, the woman selling pipe fittings tells me. “Esli ti hochesh kitaiski, 200T.” If you want the Chinese-made, it’s half the cost.

“Are the Chinese ones bad?” I ask her in Russian.
“It’s probably why the handle on your old one broke. Buy the Russian one.” I pay the woman for the new valve and some plumber’s tape and set off back home.

At home, I happily unscrew the handle off the new valve and install it on the new valve, beaming at my ingenuity. I don’t have a good monkey wrench, so I’m scraping by with a small pair of pliers I found in a tool drawer in the house. I turn the pliers, following the righty-tighty rule until it’s tightened to my satisfaction. All right, time for a test run.

I turn the new handle. It doesn’t move.

Huh, that’s weird. Maybe the hard water finally got the valve inside and it’s mineralized shut. I try again, this time pushing a little harder. Should be easy enough once I get the valve moving.

The valve gives a little bit. I can feel it turning ever so slowly, so I apply some more force to turn the handle all the way to the ‘closed’ setting.

*CRUNCH*

Hot water begins to shoot out of the hole where the valve once was (now firmly in my left hand, still attached to the handle) like a fire hose. Hot water. EVERYWHERE.

My first instinct, of course, while the water is blasting and soaking my whole body (and my shorts, which contain my wallet, sunglasses, passport, and digital camera) is to cover the hole with my hands and shove the valve back into the hole. I'm screaming like a little girl, using every curse word in the book in every language I can think of as I'm pushing at the hole where the water is shooting out through.

This of course, is futile, because it seems that I’ve snapped the valve in half, and a part of the valve is still stuck inside the pipe itself, preventing anything from being screwed back in. In my desperation, I jam my palm onto the hole itself, and this only serves to spray the water upwards towards the ceiling, shorting out the light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

So now I’m standing in the dark, soaked shirt to shorts, with water slowly flooding the floor of my bathroom. The floor begins to feel weirdly soapy as the water gets to the box of detergent on the floor as well. I grab a plastic basin and try to redirect the water flow towards the bathtub, where there’s a drain. This, like the palm, only proceeds to redirect the water over to where my dry clothes are hanging from the last wash, when suddenly it occurs to me that there’s a water shut off valve in the toilet room. (the toilet and bathtub is in separate rooms).

I slam the door shut to prevent the water spraying out into the hallway and run to the next room where the water shut off is. I turn off the valves. My leaky toilet stops leaking as I turn the water off, but the water valve in this room seems to have had little effect on the sickening “Pssssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh” emanating from the next room as the hot water fails to cease.

Time to call for reinforcements. I run out into the hall, soaked head to toe, and knock on the door of my neighbor, desperately. Sergei, a gangly Russian teen living next door, answers the door in his white briefs.

“Sergei! Is your dad home? The valve to my washing machine from the pipe broke and it’s spraying water everywhere! I need to shut off the water!” Of course, this is in my broken Russian, and so it probably came out more like “Sergei! Your dad home? Water washing machine! Broke! Water! Hot Water! How close water!?”

Sergei’s dad is not home, of course, but Sergei runs to my bathroom and offers to use the plastic basin to try and redirect the water back into the tub while I get help. “Go downstairs to the first floor and find the super, it’s a black door.”

I run downstairs, leaving a trail of water as I get to the first floor, and I pound on the door. A woman answers the door, I look inside, it looks like an office space.

“Yes?” says the woman, her eyes slightly open with surprise, as she looks at the strange foreigner, soaked head to toe, gibbers at her.

“Super, he here? Water! Hot Water! Water, Washing Machine, Water Broken! I need close water!”

“Not here!” she says, as she tries to close the door on me, no doubt thinking I’m an escaped mental patient. I jam my arm in the door to stop her from closing it, and I gasp,

“Where’s the super? Who can help me? Please, help me!”. She seems to respond to this, and tells me to go to the second floor where the super apparently lives.

I run to the second floor, and ring the doorbell.
Of course, no answer.

So I run back down and pound on the black door again, begging the woman to help me.
“I don’t know how to turn off the water,” she says. “The master water valve is in the basement, but it’s locked, and you need Nikolai Ivanovich (the super) to open it because he has the key to open the basement.” I beg her to make some calls for me, to which she agrees.

I run back upstairs to my apartment to check on Sergei. My wet shoes squish with each step. Sergei is stripped to his underwear, fighting the futile fight to stop the floor from flooding. He’s bailing the water from the floor to the tub. I tell him that the super isn’t in. Sergei, without looking at me, screams back,

“There should be an extra key to the basement with the director of Lumix, the clothing store on the first floor of the building!”

I run downstairs, and tell the first woman on the phone (who is now frantically calling all of the neighbors to try and find Nikolai). She says okay, and runs out to Lumix to ask the director. The director comes out, and tries the one key she has, but of course, it doesn’t work.

“You need to find Igor Anatolovich, the director of the sport equipment store.” I run over with the woman to the sport equipment store on the other end of the apartment building, and find Igor, who denies knowing anything about any key, ever.

Keep in mind, this is over a span of 15-20 minutes. Everytime I run upstairs to check on the apartment its starting to look more and more like a sauna. Steam is everywhere. Walking into the apartment is like walking into a bad Halloween haunted house with a fog machine gone wild.

After some more frantic pacing, Nikolai Ivanovich decides to show up, and I rush him to open the basement door so we can shut off the main hot water valve.

“I can’t do it,” he tells me. “The café on the first floor is remodeling, and they blocked off access to the main water line, so I can’t access it from here. What’s wrong with your valve? It’s a Chinese valve, isn’t it? Can’t buy the Chinese ones, gotta go with the Italian ones.”

I’m about to tear my hair out. The origins of the valve is the least of my concerns at the moment. I NEED TO TURN OFF THE WATER.

“Okay, what do we do next?” I say to him through gritted teeth.
“Well, we have to find Igor Yevgeninovich, the owner of the café to unlock the back door.” Nikolai picks up his phone, and starts making calls again.

I run up to check on the apartment. The bathroom is flooded and comign out into the hallway. I run back downstairs to find Igor arriving at the scene, who luckily lives in the apartment building down the street. Nikolai again insists on pointing out and debating with Igor the inferiority of Chinese valves.

Igor slowly waddles towards the café back door, unlocking it and walking in while listening to Nikolai's wild proclamation on the superiority of italian valves. He goes down into another basement accessible only through the café with another worker, examining pipes here and there along the way, trying to figure out which pipe shuts off the pipe in my house. After about 5 minutes of poking and touching, he twists a valve and looks at me.

“Well, go see if it’s off.”

I run back upstairs, and I can still hear the sickening

“pssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhh”

from outside the door. I look inside, Sergei’s given up, stripped down to his underwear and just pulling on the door to keep it shut. The water isn’t off. I run back downstairs and report.

Igor and Nikolai both scratch their heads a bit, and think “maybe it’s in the other one basement? But we don’t have the key for that…we'll have to call the super of that section...”

"Maybe turn off all pipes? Try all!" I gibber more, having more or less accepted that I effectively have a pool in my house now.

On a whim, Igor pulls out a gigantic wrench and turns off another valve and tells me to check again. I run back upstairs. My assumption that it was just a pool was wrong. My house is actually a sauna. It's difficult to see anything in the house because of the amount of steam, but as I walk in, splashing water everywhere, I'm relieved to see that the water has ceased.

I go back down to report, and my neighbors call KCK for me, the city plumber service who arrive about 30 minutes later to repair the damaged valve.
"What happened?" they ask.
"Valve, broke off, water everywhere." I reply.
"Ahh... yeah, those chinese valves are worthless, can't trust those. Gotta go with It-"
"Italian or Russian, I know, i know" I interrupt. I listlessly hand them the new Russian valve that I had bought earlier and they fix everything for me.

After about an hour of cleaning and mopping up the new olympic sized swimming pool in my bathroom and corridor, while the plumbers are working, everything is finally repaired and the water is back on. I pay the plumbers and casually look over at the job and find that they had left old broken valve on my washing machine, the original source of all my problems.

*SIGH*

Thoughts on the website...

2007-05-28T22:53:00.000+06:00

I think it's important to note that my website isn't meant to document the experience of local people here in this country. Rather, it's meant to document the experiences that I, as a Peace Corps Volunteer, personally experience day-by-day.

The things I experience, whether it's traveling around to different cities in the country, seeing sheep carcasses on the train, using a vacuum cleaner from 1957, or handwashing clothes is not necessarily something that people everywhere in this country experience, so for you, dear reader, should never ever consider that all people who live in this country live this way.

The image that comes along with a Peace Corps Volunteer is often of that of a 'barefoot in the dirt floor hut" that has been perpetuated for quite a bit now. However, the reality is that being in Ust-Kamenogorsk, in Kazakhstan, one of the fastest-developing countries in Central Asia, I hardly live this way. There are people who drive mercedes benzes in town. I can get sushi if I want it. People have nicer cell phones than I do. People have nice washing machines, as well as new vacuum cleaners.

It just so happens that I don't have much money, so I tend to rent apartments and live in places that don't necessarily have those amenities. My current place of living boasts cable television (complete with CNN, though I can't watch that nonsense anymore), a washing machine, a real working electric oven, and I can actually access the internet from home (albeit via dialup). But in the past, as you can see from some of my photos, I did have an old soviet-era washing machine that required me to rinse and dry by hand - but even then, this is a step up from 80% of volunteers who live in villages and must hand wash their clothes to start.

Ironically, Americans who come as Peace Corps Volunteers often take a sick pride in the whole 'trial by hard work'. We love going back home to tell people that we handwashed our clothes or killed our own chickens for dinner. I relish in going to the meat bazaar to argue with the meat salesladies there and staring at the hanging carcasses of meat. The whole beating the rug thing was hilarious for me because i've never had to do it before.

But I've realized something - sometimes locals find that our pride in things like that to be strange, or sometimes even offensive, as if we're joking about them. But the reality couldn't be further from the truth - in a way, there's a sense of pride and admiration expressed for this way of life purely because I feel like that Americans are completely spoiled and living this way is refreshing compared to the original materialistic way of life I used to live. Having lived in this country for two years, I've found value in things purely past the materialistic aspect (i.e. a new car, cell phone, video game, etc.). The development of relationships, enjoying a peaceful, quiet environment, and simply observing and living in a beautiful new place alone were huge parts of my experience here. The simple appreciation of time alone and development of patience (away from the Franklin-Covey dominated American way of life) was worth the two years I've been here.

I don't want this website to ever give the perception that I think negatively of this country. Upon reading some of my old posts, I've realized that I enjoyed writing about the experiences that were novel to me, that is, those experiences that were different and unique to me because I've never experienced them in America. In addition, I've also used the website as a way of venting frustration during memorable events of the day - things that tend to stay on my mind and I had to write about it as a way of stress relief.

It's easy to seize onto one or two points here and there and make some conclusion that "all people in this country are like this or that," but readers should know that whatever happens to me, positive or negative, is solely a personal experience, and should never be extrapolated to locals, the country, or the Peace Corps as a whole.

I love Kazakhstan through and through. This isn't to say that there aren't faults or things I don't like, but no country is perfect, is it? Still, the experience has been so thoroughly rewarding and lovely that I've I decided to stay a third year. I've decided that with this third year I'll be sure to update the blog again with day-to-day activities and reflect not just on things that make me frustrated, but things that I love too. Stay tuned.

You're a dirty rug. A dirty, dirty rug that needs to be punished.

2007-05-05T22:46:00.000+06:00

Finally, the weather has been nice enough to warrant some spring cleaning. This means carrying out the rug and beating the crap out of it, local-style.

I live next to a busy street with the window almost always open, so dust collection seems to be the secondary job of the rug in my living room. My vacuum cleaner is literally from Soviet times, branded (1965), so it doesn't suck very well, meaning I have to beat the rug.

In every neighborhood there's a central area where metal bars are propped up purely for this purpose (but can also double as places to air dry laundry). You hang up the rug on these polls then proceed to beat the hell out of it with a rug beater.
Christ, look at that plume. I was beating this thing for a good 30 minutes and the dust kept comin.

Sam, a Kaz-18, gets into the act too, taking out some of his stress along with it.

New post to come in a few days..

Signs your immigrant parents aren't quite assimilated

2007-04-20T20:46:00.000+06:00

Today is package day! The wonderful, sweet time in a volunteer's life when he gets a box sent from home with all of the creature comforts of home.

This particular package comes care of sweet old dear mother. She had mentioned sending this package back in January, so my receiving it today means that the package was obviously sent by yak.

Regardless of the delay, it's still nice to get something once in awhile. Let's open'er up!

First is a very nice sweater from Banana Republic, thanks sis!

Bonanza! Long missed foods, like Korean Chachianmeoyong (Black Bean Sauce Noodles), Pasta Roni and Wheat Thins! Joy! Let's continue...
MMM! A bottle of rice wine, long desired. Time to make sushi. But wait... what's this? That red package looks oddly familiar...
WTF?!

Pup-peroni. Dog food. DOG FOOD.

My mother spent $53.95 on a package that was shipped over from halfway across the world by the slowest method of transport known to modern man to send me dog food. I DON'T HAVE A DOG. Obviously she was just looking through the pantry in the house for things to throw into the package and probably thought it was beef jerky or something.

The kicker?

She sent me not 1, but 3 packages of beef flavored dog snacks. Now I've got enough to share with friends!

Thanks mom! Nutritious AND Fun!

News Update: Turns out it was Dad.

Pictures updated!

2007-01-13T01:22:00.001+06:00

Big Ass Rocket 3
Originally uploaded by Kspince.

Pictures from christmas and new years has been uploaded. Have at it! Click the picture, or you can click "New Photo Site" on the right navigation column.

Post coming in a few days.

Bizarro World

2006-12-25T20:25:00.000+06:00

Russian Television, in many many cases, is a carbon copy of American television. I call this... BIZARRO WORLD

In Bizarro Home Improvement World, Bizarro Al goes "Я не думаю так, тимь"

Bizarro Wilson goes "Hidey-ho, сосед."

Bizarro Tim goes: "hwof hwof hwof hwof"

There’s always room for improvement…

2006-08-22T16:32:00.000+06:00

One of the things I’ve been proud of as of late has been my development in the Russian language – it took over a year, but only recently have I felt comfortable enough in my abilities to not have to lug around a Russian-english dictionary everywhere I go.

I’d attribute my speaking abilities to perhaps a 8 year old – often grammatically incorrect, but I can carry on a decent amount of conversation on various topics without problems, and I can communicate whatever I need to get across, albeit it in a rather simplistic form. So even though I speak like an 8 year old… it’s still pretty damn good to get to an 8 year old’s level with only one year of Russian, right?

Even though I feel comfortable, I still find myself at times at a loss for words, and I’m constantly forcing myself to learn new words by asking locals. Oftentimes this degenerates into a vigorous pantomiming of whatever it is I’m trying to communicate and a crude description in my elementary Russian. Most of the time, it’s successful, and I learn a new word.

Today I went to our local central bazaar, on the hunt once more for fresh meat and good cuts of beef. As of late I’ve been shopping for meat in a local western-style supermarket because I’ve been rather lazy as to take the bus to the central bazaar. However, the cuts tend to be rather limited there and are often frozen.

The central bazaar has a giant warehouse for fresh vegetables and fruits, as well as a fresh meat center, where whole giant beef pork carcasses are hung up on racks, and there are three rows of stalls, each manned by two ladies with hunks of various cuts of meat piled out on the table in front of them.

Never mind that the place isn’t refrigerated at all. But we’re straying from my topic here.

Now, you should know that our conception of cuts of meat aren’t standardized internationally, and the name of one cut of beef probably doesn’t translate. Hence, looking for and trying to describe a “Sirloin” or “Porterhouse” is practically impossible without the extensive use of charts and diagrams.

I decided to buy some beef ribs, because that’s easy enough to describe without bringing pictures of animals with little dashed lines going through them every which way.

So I walk down the bazaar aisle, scanning the various counters for beef ribs, and as I’m walking, naturally, all of the bazaar ladies are screaming at me to get my attention to look at their cuts.

“Paren! Paren!” (Guy/Chap!)
“Maladoi Chelavek!” (Young Person!)
“Oi! Tee!” (Hey! You!)
“Myahka myasa hoch, da?” (You want soft/tender meat, right?)

Rule #1 for walking down the meat aisle: Don’t make eye contact.
Rule #2 for walking down the meat aisle: Ignore EVERYONE.
Rule #3 for walking down the meat aisle: Scream back, “Tolka pasmatret, tolka pasmatret!” (I’m only looking! I’m only looking!)

So here I am, carefully looking JUST at the meat, and not being really able to recognize the cut I want, I just stop at one table with a pair of ladies that looked nice enough.

“Shto tebe nada, maladoi chelavek?” (What do you need, young man?)

Here’s where my awesome miming skills come in.
“Umm, I’m not sure what the word is in Russian,” I say to her in Russian. “When you have a cow…. It’s *this* part,” I say, raking my index fingers across the part of my body roughly inbetween my chest and navel.

“Ahh, vwot.” (Ahh, this.) She says, picking up two slabs of beef ribs with her bare hands.

The ever constant student in me perks up.

“Da, da. Kak skazat?” (Yes, yes. What do you call that?)

“Reyobra.” (Ribs.)

“yobra,” I repeat outloud. “yobra yobra yobra.”

Immediately, all the ladies around me that 2 minutes ago was calling for my attention break out into a laughter and cackling, everyone repeating what I had just uttered and giggling loudly. I shake my head. Crazy ladies. The lady I’m buying the meat from again, having finished her share of cackling, looks at me and corrects me.

“Nyet ‘yo-bra’, reeyobra!”

“Huh? YOBRA?” I say loudly. Cackles again.

“REE-YO-BRA!”

“Ahh… REE-yobra” I say slowly, fumbling a bit with the consonants. The ladies chuckle a few more times. I buy my meat, and wave goodbye, and they all wave goodbye to me too.

I go home, and check up what it was I exactly had said. Since there’s no word for ‘yobra’, I look up ‘yob’ and ‘bra’ up separately. I immediately understand why the cackles were so loud.

Dear reader, just in case you ever find yourself in Kazakhstan or any other Russian speaking country, and you find the need to say “Fucking Candleholder,” know that “yobra” means exactly that.

Roads to Travel

2006-08-14T21:43:00.000+06:00

There’s an oft-quoted poem by Robert Frost called the Road Not Taken about a man who is traveling in a forest and comes upon a fork in the road. He then has a choice – he can take the path that seems to be safer, well-trodden, or he can choose the road less traveled, grassy and without a well set path.

He takes the path less traveled, thinking that he can take the well-traveled road another day – but by the end of the poem, he realizes that he can’t go back on his choice, because one choice leads to another, and time passes quickly. He remarks at the end that this particular choice in his life got him to where he is today, and that “it has made all the difference.”

A year ago, I chose instead of applying to law school as was part of my master plan, to join the Peace Corps, and to me, it most certainly seemed like the road less traveled. Yet, there’s a part of me that constantly thinking back to how things would have been different had I decided against the Peace Corps, and just went directly to law school.

The person I am today is certainly different than the person I was a year ago – I recently just came back from a conference in Almaty and met up with a group of other volunteers from Kaz-17 to reflect on the first year and plan for the second. Much of our discussion was on future plans, and what to do next after Peace Corps. One of the most interesting aspects for me personally was that many of the volunteers remarked on how much they feel like I’ve changed – they told me that I’m much more confident and sure of myself than I was when they first met me a year ago.

In some ways, I definitely do feel that – my Russian is pretty good now, I have little fears about teaching English, and now I’m just generally enjoying my life here in Kazakhstan. In many ways, the feeling has carried on to make me feel more sure about what I want to do in the future – that is, travel more, and perhaps consider living and working abroad.

But again, after a year here in Kazakhstan, once again I’ve come to another fork in the road – do I start applying to law school now as part of the master plan? Or is there a part of me that still feels like I want to take that road less traveled once more? One of my fellow volunteers happened to mention that she was interested in going to Japan to teach English for a year after the Peace Corps, having fallen in love with doing such work, and immediately, the thought came into my mind, and I imagined myself in Japan or Korea, doing something I presently enjoy doing, living a modest life, feasting on regional cuisine, and learning a new language that I’ve always wanted to learn.

After all, if I can adapt to a country like Kazakhstan in a year, how hard could it be for a place like Korea?

One of the consistent thoughts (at least, from my perspective) that plagued me for the past year was this consistent pressure to ‘hurry up and finish my work here so I can get back to my real life.’ This is a view that I’m fairly sure my parents (and probably a good number of my friends) hold for me – that these two years of my life out here in Kaz are nothing more than wanderlust, and that I’m essentially putting my life on hold because I’m not in the states, getting on with my real life.

Oddly enough, sometimes locals feel that way too – a close friend that I dated here for awhile decided the same, that my real life was in the states, and that to stay away from the states for too long – whether for study, working, or hell, even for love, was a bad idea because sure, I could say at the moment that I’m loving this life and I want to continue living this way, who knows how I would feel in a year?

But then it hit me: this IS my real life. Every moment that I’m living is ‘real life’, and regardless of when I return to the states, these experiences are all apart of that. For anyone to say anything different is nothing more than a lack of understanding of my experience and at worst, ignorant. It’s no different if I had told a friend who decided to work for 2-3 years before going to grad school that he had better hurry up and enter before his ‘real life’ gets away from him.

When I was down in Almaty, my father had called me and basically went nuts when I expressed the possibility of staying abroad for another year teaching English, perhaps in Korea or Japan, stating that there were no other options but to continue going to school, otherwise I’d face the disappointment of the dreaded ‘family’. I lamented that evening to my fellow volunteers, whom of which all seemed to have families that more or less supported their decision to go to the Peace Corps, and basically had the freedom to do whatever they wanted afterwards with full support of their families. Maybe it’s the immigrant family thing? I don’t know.

Still, there are times that I find myself wishing that I had already finished grad school before doing this – I’ve witnessed more than one volunteer who had long finished grad school who met the love of their life here and eventually made the big plunge and got married. I know countless others who went back to the states to finish school, trying to manage a long distance relationship in the meantime.

But the whole love question is just one aspect. Had I finished grad school already and did this, I’d feel freer to stay behind an extra year or continue working abroad or doing whatever I wanted. But the inherent problem is just that – as much as I want to rebel against taking the well-paved road and do what my hearts wants me to do, there is indeed the voice that I hear that goes “you can’t do anything until you finish school…” ugh.

The interesting part of the poem “The Road Not Traveled,” though, is that he doesn’t remark on whether the difference was necessarily better or worse than if he had taken the road well traveled instead. Though the poem is often interpreted to inspire people to take less traveled paths, a close reading of it doesn’t seem to present the road less traveled as necessarily better… the road I chose a year ago has made all of the difference, and I don't regret it for a second... but what of future roads? It seems that in the end, the most important thing is to make a decision and make the best of it.

New Photo Site!

2006-08-05T15:31:00.000+06:00

I'm migrating to flickr at the moment for all of my photos since it's easier for me to upload to that service. Lots of new photos (all future photos also) will be posted here.

Click "New Coming of Age Photo Gallery" on the right for access.

Happy Viewing.

GASTROFEST 2006

2006-06-29T02:24:00.001+06:00

School's out. I'm enjoying my vacation. An interesting reflection on my first year here to come. But first, I'm going on vacation to the states for about two weeks on July 4th!

There, dear reader, I will then partake in some good old american style excess eating, a veritable tour of the world, that will stop at no less than the following places:

American
Fried chicken with hot sauce
Papa John’s Hand Tossed Pepperoni Pizza
California Pizza Kitchen
Pork Baby back ribs
Clam Chowder
Bacon
A big ass sandwich with turkey thin sliced deli meat, mustard, mayo, alfafa sprouts, tomatoes, lettuce, extra extra sharp cheddar cheese, bacon
White Chocolate Chip Macadamia Nut Cookies

Mexican
Tortilla Chips
A big ass burrito
Taco
Enchilada
Tamale

Asian
Pho (Super Bowl, of course) with everything
Banh Mi (Grilled pork sandwich)
Thai Green Curry (either with Duck meat or Beef)
Kimchi
Bulgogi
Spicy Pork
Bibimbab
Dragon Buns
Chinese Dumplings
Sushi

and of course...

MOM'S HOME COOKIN'

More to come..

Kazakhstan Diet

2006-05-12T23:53:00.000+06:00

Circa: June 8, 2005

Circa: May 11, 2006.

I was described as "slim" by a local a few days ago for the first time in the past 6 years. Huh.

Diary entry

2006-03-27T20:49:00.000+06:00

Just got back from the trip to Shymkent, will update on that particular trip sometime this weekend when the insanity that is my weekly schedule dies down.

Things have been getting more and more exciting with each passing day – with each passing week and hour of work I put in, I feel more integrated in with the staff and I see definite progress with everything that’s going to happen.

The week before I left, I worked feverishly with a group of students to put the finishing touches on an English newspaper to submit to the dean for approval – I’ll be meeting with the rector this Wednesday and hear the final verdict as to whether the University will support such a newspaper and be willing to pay for all of the printing involved in each of the monthly issues. Exciting news number 1.

Exciting news number 2? I’ve been given my own group.

Over the past two semesters, I’ve been doing what’s essentially called “supplemental teaching” – meaning that I teach 1-2 hours a week for a number of different groups, focusing only on specific things like listening and oral practice. However, a 3rd year teacher, Julia, left the faculty this past semester to return back to her hometown of Pavlodar. Generally, in cases like these the group is divvied up and split up into the remaining teacher’s groups. However, this development comes at an inconvenient time because the groups are getting too large as it is and is rather difficult to manage.

Given that I’m here, I volunteered to take the group under my wing and to make them my own group, teaching them all parts of the textbook, as opposed to just the listening and speaking sections. I’m confident I’m capable of it, but the only problem is that it’s going to take a lot more time on my part, and in a way, it’s at the expense of the other groups because I no longer will be able to teach those groups due to scheduling issues.

This week in particular will be hell on earth for me, as I have to juggle these new groups, finish up with my old groups, continue to teach the 2nd year students, having a rector’s meeting on Wednesday to discuss the journalism class, and lastly, substituting for Olyessa, a French and English teacher who is meeting with the French Attache (diplomat) this week.

As a continual example of how fast news travels in my particular university, I was getting text messages on my telephone from students protesting my decision to take the single group within 15-20 minutes of the decision being made.

It’s always a struggle, because it’s one of those things where everyone wants you to help, but there’s only one of you – and you can’t sav-

*8:37 PM: In the middle of writing this particular entry, Jay receives a phone call from the local English teacher’s association*

Hmm. Looks like I have a meeting on Sunday now.

Vacation in the South

2006-03-24T08:37:00.000+06:00

On my way back from a vacation in Shymkent, the southern part of Kazakhstan.

One word:

Kokpar.

Men on horses fighting over a sheep carcass?
I'm there.

New Digs, woo!

2006-03-07T23:27:00.001+06:00

Sorry for the lack of updates, things have been hectic and I – blah blah blah blah. You don’t care about that.

The real news, is that I’ve finally moved into my new apartment (well, I’ve actually been in here for a good three weeks now), and I’m enjoying living the bachelor life once more. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed living with my host family in the past – but the old apartment was rather far from the university, and I usually had to take a bus to get to work. In this case however, I’ve now moved to an apartment that’s literally a five minute walk away from the university, and I’m having a good time.

Apartment hunting is all about location location location, because in general, for my price range, there isn’t all that much to differentiate between apartments outside of location. In America, for a price range you can see all sorts of different apartments because new buildings are being constructed all the time. Here, however, the vast majority of apartments in a particular price range are essentially exactly the same. In fact, there were two main models that I had looked at – “Khruchevkis” and “Stalinskis”. They’re so aptly nicknamed because during the Soviet Union, part of the communist program was to provide every family with housing and an apartment of their own. Stalinskis, which are characterized by having a separate room for the toilet and a separate room for the bathtub, were built during the Stalin era, and Khruchevkis, the form of which I live in now were built during the Khruchev era, with a bourgeois single bathroom.

While the apartment is generally pretty nice and well maintained, there are lots of little peculiarities about each apartment that do remind you that you’re in a country that was in the Soviet Union at one point. For the most part, many apartment buildings you’ll find in this country almost always looks like it’s in a state of general disrepair on the outside. The buildings tend to be old and cracked on the outside – if you walk in the hallway, all the paint is usually peeling and old – in general, it looks frighteningly like something out of a project in the states.

Yet, when you enter into people’s homes, the insides are almost invariably extremely well maintained and clean. In general, during the soviet times the buildings were all very well maintained on the outside as well, but with the collapse of the union, so did such maintenance techniques.

Similarly, in many kitchens across the country, you’ll find old gas stoves and ovens – but with the end of the soviet union, gas pipelines in the city fell into disrepair, and people all moved away from gas appliances to electric. Hence, I have an old stove, but I’ve got an electric range on it to cook with.

Still, you gotta love some aspects. Rent is 150 bucks a month.

Tommorow: “Washing Clothes: A City Boy’s Guide in Kazakhstan”

Photo Gallery updated

2005-12-23T16:09:00.000+06:00

New pictures available! Click "Photo Gallery" on the right, then "Latest Uploads".

Post coming up in a few days, I need to go off and see if I can find bacon for sale in the bazaar.

Merry Christmas everyone!

"I'm still alive!" post number 7913

2005-11-22T15:33:00.000+06:00

I'm still very much alive! You can be assured, dear reader, that when I don't report back to you on the home front and write about all the stuff that happens to me on a daily basis, things are actually going quite well and I'm just plain busy and ass tired.

I'll be updating in the next few days, I promise. In the meantime, here's a picture of a giant frozen pig carcass that I woke up to on a recent trip down to Almaty on the train.

I think it speaks for itself, really.

10 more seconds

2005-10-27T23:59:00.000+06:00

So I was on TV yesterday.

It wasn’t all that special, really – but it was still exciting to see myself on the old soviet-era television that we have sitting in the kitchen of my host family’s apartment. If you recall, dear reader, last week I had the pleasure of being invited to Schola Nadejda (“Nadia Elementary School”) as the token American guest.

As with all new experiences of being the token American, it was a little strange, as I wasn’t entirely sure what the purpose of my presence there would be. After sitting and watching their performances, I surmised that it was the 7th Anniversary of the School, and the presentation was for the children’s parents and local people of power. A representative from ACAP, the political party run by President Nazerbayev’s daughter, for example, was there as well.

The school was a girl’s school in the past, having children ranging from preschool age to 10th form classes (essentially, elementary through junior high school in the states) and had just recently begun to accept boys, though even those were very few and far in-between. There were all sorts of performances, but the most sickeningly cute ones came from the 1st form children, where they had danced to a children’s song about a male cat trying to decide between several females. I recall my face hurting for a while after all the grinning I did after that particular piece.

Since my Russian is hardly up to par, especially when people speak fast, I had thought the only reason I was there was to be the token American – but of course, that would be too simple, and I wouldn’t be writing this blog post now, would I?

After the performances, the hostess made a speech and said something akin to “And now, we would like to welcome our honored guest from America, Jay Chen, who will pass out the certificates.” Granted, I only understood the words “America,” “Jay Chen,” and “Certificates,” – so naturally, I wander over to the front of the room with a confused look on my face as the director shoved a stack of certificates in my hands. It dawned on me that part of the celebration was a ceremony of rewarding local students who had participated in an English competition as well, and I was to hand out the certificates to the students who earned them and to congratulate them. Easy, right?

But of course, this is a Jay Chen story, so nothing ever goes that easily.

Afterwards, the director made another short speech, and handed the microphone to me, in which one of the English teachers then proceeds to whisper in my ear, “Okay, you have your speech, right?”

So here I am, in front of the whole school, with a TV camera shoved in my face, having discovered that they want me to make a speech. Luckily, years of model united nations in high school and teaching in classes had made me a pretty good BS-er and giving impromptu speeches. Whatever I blubbered out was hardily long, but I seem to recall saying something about how beautiful the school was and how lucky the children were to be able to attend such a school. Coincidently, I had also taught a lesson this past week using the quote, “To know that you are ignorant is the first step to great knowledge.” – of course, this stuck out in my mind, and I had to find some way to use it, in which I did. I launched into a 2 minute long lecture on humility and being able to find your way only if you realize the opportunities that were presented to you but not offered to anyone else.

I don’t quite recall the rest of the speech, but I think I managed a congratulations in there somewhere and the students cheered at the end of it, so I think I can call it a success. The event was recorded, and then I was on the evening news. No real interview there, since I speak Russian like a 7 year old, but definitely making my progress towards my 15 minutes.

In other news, the photo gallery has been updated again – use the “last uploads" button at the top to see the new pictures. Feel free to comment!

Shine on

2005-10-20T09:22:00.000+06:00

I found out yesterday that two more volunteers from our particular training group has decided to quit and go home. Given that, it makes a grand total of 11 volunteers who have now left our training group – from the original 45, now down to 34.

At the end of every training, the training groups are always given some sort of affectionate nickname based on the personality characteristics of the group itself – since we had 9 quit by the end of the training, ours was of course, called “Kaz-Quits”.

It’s a rather unfortunate nickname, but at the same time, it’s a bit incorrect, because when volunteers decide to leave, it actually reflects little on the volunteers that do stay – shouldn’t it be “Kaz-We-Grit-Our-Teeth-And-Bear-Its?” The rumors that have been going around as the ‘reason’ for the departures is that our particular group was generally much younger and more immature than other groups.

I’m not sure what to think about this – in general, our group has become so numb to the whole idea of volunteers leaving that there’s no dreaded stigma of being a ‘quitter’ to carry now when people leave. Sure, it might have been there in the first 2 or 3 volunteers, but once the numbers started going higher and higher, people honestly stopped caring and became more focused on their own work rather than judging other people. As a result, without the stigma, the mentality then becomes easier “Hey, 11 people have left, why can’t I?”

I can’t say the thought hasn’t crossed my mind, particularly during times that are lonelier, but I know that deep down in my heart of hearts, if I actually go through the process of packing up and going back all the way to California, I might be happy for a week, but I’d regret it for the rest of my life. In many ways, plowing through the bad times (which actually aren’t all that often) and suddenly realizing the next week that it’s been one of the best weeks I’ve ever had here is an awesome feeling.

I think the root might be more in terms of my feelings towards my service here from the beginning – my recruiter, John, told me right from the start that Peace Corps was not going to be all roses

”Jay, I’m going to tell you right now, when you make this decision to join, I want you to truly think it out and make sure you want to stay here for the whole two years,” he told me, “the Peace Corps isn’t always like it is in the ads – service is like a roller coaster, the highs are the highest highs you’ll ever experience, and the lows are probably going to be the lowest lows you’ll ever experience at the same time. Don’t go into country thinking everyone will love you, even the rest of your volunteers – you’re not going to like some of the other volunteers and they aren’t going to like you – but when it comes down to it, if you just get through the next day and deal with whatever you’ve got coming, you’ll find something to like the next day.”

John then proceeded to discuss worst case scenarios, like horrible students, blatant racism, and so on, and asked me to go home and think about the whole thing before I agreed to do anything.

I did. I went home and thought long and hard about it, for a good three or four days – would I be able to deal with it if people were throwing rocks at me everyday and calling me Kung-fu? Would I be able to deal with it if I had to wash all my clothes by hand?

I finally decided yes, I’d simply be positive and find things to enjoy – and since then, my motto, especially during training, was “I’m going to take things as they come, and deal with them one by one.”

I signed up for this and I sacrificed for it, and I don’t want to lose out on this opportunity – I knew that there were going to be bad times, but that’s what keeps me going.

Now, I look at my situation – I’m teaching in a university in a beautiful city to mostly brilliant students up in the north, and I can’t imagine being anywhere else. Would it be different if I had an opposite assignment? No idea – but again, take things as they come, and deal with it one by one.

Long overdue multiple posting

2005-10-15T01:21:00.000+06:00

It’s been a struggle for me to decide whether it’d be a more interesting usage of this blog as a repository of my daily thoughts and adventures or if it’s better to be used as an occasional area for thoughts that I personally deem to be eloquent or well written enough to deserve publication.

“Enjoying” writing as a hobby, you see, is actually quite the opposite – the tortured writer sits in front of his computer for hours at end, composing and writing, rewriting and erasing – and the work he produces is never quite good enough. For some reason, I like to put an intense pressure on myself for the quality of these writings – It must be witty! It must be intelligent! It must be well-written! I argue with myself.

The self-torture, then, results in extremely long posts that take hours to compose and blog posts are actually then done only once every few weeks as a result.

The other option is to just write a few day to day account of my activities here in Ust-Kamenogorsk, which I personally find distasteful since the activities don’t seem all that interesting to me for my reading public – but in a recent email, a friend pointed out as she chided me for lack of blog posts, “I don’t care if you’re shopping for clothes or drinking coffee or teaching a class – whatever you’re doing, because you’re doing it in Kazakhstan, it makes it much more interesting than whatever I’m doing here.”

Fair enough. It’s difficult for me to have a post every day, since I’ve discovered now that internet connection from home costs quite a bit of dinero, so I’ll only be accessing the internet from the library for short periods of time at the end of the week. What that means is the posts that I put up will probably come once or twice a week, and usually be a recap of the past week’s events. What will happen is that I’ll change the dates on the posts to reflect the actual dates, so if you really are THAT interested, you may have to scroll down a few posts to be caught up since I’ll be posting a few posts at a time. This week's starts from this past Saturday.

Photo Gallery Updated Again!

Friday, October 14, 2005

Went and saw a gymnasium today, which is essentially a private school for children from Kindergarten to 11th form students. The school was ridiculously fabulous, with a very nice cafeteria, dormitory, and many different rooms for various instruction. Students were uniformed, and every student spoke Russian, Kazakh, and English. It was amazing – some of the students spoke better English than some of our university level students.

The gymnasium started all the way with kindergarteners, which of course, made me think nothing more than "AWWWW, HOW CUTTTEEEE" when I saw them.

I spent some time working on their English tests for a competition that they plan to have – apparently next Friday I’ll be there as some sort of VIP, I’m not entirely sure how that’s going to work out, but reports then.

Outside of that, lessons have been going as normal – we’re finishing up the second lesson in the “American Dream” unit, basically discussing the student’s future plans and what they’re thinking about doing after University, as well as introducing the concept of the American Dream as a whole.

OH MY GOD

2005-10-10T01:08:00.000+06:00

Holy bejeezus, it’s snowing in October. Last time I saw snow I had to drive 6 hours into the mountains in February.

Temperature is steadily dropping, averaging 0 c (32F) these days. This is already colder than it has ever gotten in my 18 years of living in California. Teachers made fun of me quite a bit for sitting and staring at the snow in awe.

Plastic Surgery... that's uhh... a good topic..

2005-10-09T01:07:00.000+06:00

In the morning I went to Pushkin library to meet with Alyssa’s third year group. The group is easily some of more hard working students, and they had asked me to give them advice on how to make their club interesting. While in the past, clubs have been run by Peace Corps Volunteers, it was interesting to have a club that was English oriented, but was run by students. They chose the topic of “Plastic Surgery,” at the behest of Sultanat, one of the students in the group, who had seen a documentary a few weeks before on the National Geographic channel on the increasing number of Asian women who were getting eye-widening surgery for want of looking more “western” to be beautiful.

We worked for about 2 hours, as I just went through what they were planning on discussing and tossing around ideas on how to make their club more interesting – it’s a bit difficult to talk about things like plastic surgery when it’s not a huge problem in Kazakhstan, but hopefully they took my advice to get a local plastic surgery to speak, or at least, to find statistics locally on the matter. During the discussion, the students had mentioned how certain girls in the university were plotting to make me their girlfriend – or at least, were interested in me in more than a teacher’s way. Since I had already set a strict no student dating policy, it was strange to hear that, but I asked Sultanat not to tell me who the students were for fear of looking at them strangely.

Around 2, I hung out at the internet room in the library, went online and checked email. Went and grabbed lunch at around 3, hung out there for 2 hours with Dan and Hilary, fellow volunteers, until it was time for me to meet Rashaun and Gulya at Maselynitsa (a restaurant). These two were a pair of 4th year students that I had taught only once when I substituted for a teacher in the interpreter’s department. Again, two beautiful incredibly smart girls that spoke English impeccably – often times, it seems to be the ones that are confident enough with their English that are the ones that invite me out to ‘practice their English,’ which is interesting, but certainly it’s the worse students that really need the practice.

Winter is coming

2005-10-09T00:58:00.000+06:00

Today, I went shopping with two of my fellow teachers, Aizhan and Alyssa. Both are super awesome teachers that are incredibly nice to me (and to their credit, are incredibly busy as well). Aizhan is 22, and Alyssa is 23 – both recent graduates of the university. In addition to teaching English, they both also teach second languages – Aizhan teaches Turkish, and Alyssa teaches French at a local college as well.

Today’s mission: Winter clothing.

Winter is coming, to be sure – it’s October, and temperatures as of late have been around 5-10 degrees Celsius (that’s 41-50 degrees Fahrenheit for you heathen Americans). Being that I left from California in the dead heat of the summer meant that winter clothes were extremely hard to come by, and I was woefully unprepared for what was in store for me here in Kazakhstan. I’ve yet to buy boots, but I’m told I’m going to have go with fur-lined boots regardless of whatever crunchy-hippy feelings I have about wearing fur if I want to survive with all of my toes intact when it drops 40 below.
Aizhan and the Alyssa are actually two of the first friends my age that I made here in this town, partially because they’re closer to my age and that I actually teach classes for them. Some of the older teachers seem to have an apprehension against speaking with the foreigner for fear of having their English flaws criticized or pointed out, but the younger teachers are often humble enough not to worry about such and thus, are easier to talk to.

They took to me Zangar, which is essentially a mall (with much smaller stores, granted) that was very close to the bazaar. We looked through a few stores before settling on a new thick winter jacket (purportedly feather lined, though I have my doubts) that cost about 11,000 tenge (about $81.50). Here, I made my first ugly foreigner mistake of the day.

Having been trained in the pits of bargaining desperation that is China, I was under the impression that you could bargain nearly anywhere were you go – which is untrue, apparently. The difference is if you go to the bazaar, then you can bargain – here at the store, I asked for the jacket for a price of 10,000 instead, only to be met with a blank stare and a strong sense of social awkwardness – I look to Alyssa for help, who promptly explained to me that stores are stores and bazaars are bazaars, and you don’t bargain at stores. So I’m partially embarrassed, but I quickly write it off to ignorance and buy the jacket.

We continue to the next store, where I buy a new beanie that’ incredibly thick for 2,000 tenge (14.80). In actuality, the choices I had were between the new beanie or a new chapka made out of something no less than SEA OTTER FUR, which would have cost 19,000 tenge – well over $140. The hat was warm enough, to be sure, but the images of seal clubbing kept coming up in my head – combined with the fact that it costs half my living allowance, I decided not to buy it. I’m still trying to figure out if I want to buy the Russian chapka – the big round circular fur hat that is stereotypically Russian – they’re certainly available, and people really do wear them here, but I can’t quite bring myself to do it yet for fear of looking like a tourist.

At the Bazaar, I bought long underwear, and here I made my second ugly American mistake of the day – I bargained, but started my price at 500 tenge for a 1000 tenge set of long underwear. As I looked at Aizhan and Alyssa giggling in shock, I realized I made another mistake. Again, had you been in China, 500 would be the normal price to open a bargain – apparently here, anything more than 50 tenge means you’re an ugly foreigner. So I ended up purchasing the thing for 950 tenge.

Later in the evening, we went to Red Dragon (Purportedly a Korean restaurant, though from the Chinese décor and Japanese-Korean-Chinese dishes available you’d never know) with the ambassador’s assistant, Peter, who was a nice guy and treated us out to dinner. In the evening, a group split off to go clubbing and I went off to the group that went to Heather’s house and introduced them to Settlers of Catan.

New Photo Gallery

2005-10-01T03:26:00.000+06:00

So blogspot has decided to be evil with me and basically denies me any ability from reading my own blog.

Oddly enough, I can post fine.

I have written posts soon, but in the meantime, allow me to direct you to this new fancy-schmancy photo gallery I've created. Admittedly, I don't have a lot of pictures up right now, but I'll continue to upload until most of collection (at least of decent pictures) is up.

Feel free to make comments to the pictures also!

New Photo Gallery!

**update**
So it's not blogspot that's evil, it's the ISPs for Kazakhstani volunteers country-wide. I'd have called evil government conspiracy, but reading blogs works fine at the libary. Go figure.

Also, if you're interested in making comments in the picture gallery, I've managed to get rid of the ridiculous registration requirement for comments, so please leave comments on the pictures!

And yet... somehow life goes on

2005-09-22T23:26:00.000+06:00

These past few days I've found myself awaking in the middle of the night, and stretching out, fulling expecting to get out of my bed and standing in my room again in Berkeley. I'd scratch my back a little, then I'd have the hardest time trying to figure out what classes I'm supposed to attend today.

After wondering why I can't remember, I'd look around my room and suddenly realize once more than I'm currently sleeping in the living room of a Russian family's apartment in Kazakhstan.

Then it becoms clear - this is really my life. I'm sitting in a room, half-way across the world, and I'm speaking Russian and teaching English at a University.

It's amazing, I've been in this country for four months, and only now does the odd, dreamy reality of the situation start to settle in. This isn't to say that I'm regretting my decision at all - I enjoy teaching and the choices that I make, but one can't help but feel this general sense of loneliness that settles in after being here for 4 months (and one month at site. One starts to wonder, "I wonder what so-and-so is up to now?" or "Boy, I haven't heard from so-and-so" in a long time.

In a way, being cut off from the sort of everyday contact that's so easy in the states - 24/7 internet, calls whenever you like, or even being able to drive 5 minutes to see whoever you were interested in seeing - is humbling in a way, because news from back home trickles in once in a long while, and oftentimes the onus is on people back home to keep you posted since the facilities aren't available here. Whether it's by talking to someone for a few minutes by phone or getting an email, you start to realize that yes, even without your presence, people are still living their lives, and life is still going on back in the states. No doubt in two years when I return to the states I'll be even more shocked to see that *gasp* people have gotten jobs, have new boyfriends and girlfriends, have gotten married, have new interests, are attending different schools, have moved across the country, has taken up smoking, etc. etc. etc.

Extending the I-am-the-center-of-the-universe mentality even further, sometimes, in bouts of insanity one begins to get annoyed for little reason other than the fact that I have too much time on my hands - why doesn't he/she email me? Why doesn't he/she call me? Certainly they have the facilities to do so, I don't! Don't they mmmiiisss mee? I misss theeeeeemmmm...

And the like. Being in a different culture so far away from home lends itself to a certain degree of homesickness, which is what I'm guessing i've been experiencing lately. Do people even read this blog? Or is it just some bizarre therapy for me, writing to get my thoughts down but also secretly hope that people are reading, but simply aren't interested enough to leave comments? etc. etc. One wastes time on thoughts like these, you see.

Major news events from back home also tends to be a big part of this realization of being cut off - I'm a little luckier than some of the other volunteers being that I have some degree of internet access, but even I didn't hear about hurricane katrina until a week AFTER it hit. This is a little better, however, than say, some fellow volunteers that were in villages and heard about the hurricane just last week, perhaps 3 weeks or so after the actual event. It's amazing, really - coming from a news-addled 24/7 information system back home in the states to now relying on the occasional Kazakh news television report (that is, if you own a television) and newsweek magazines that come in every few weeks.

Just gotta deal, I guess. Write me an email! leave a comment! Keep in touch, folks.

Picture Time

2005-09-19T00:21:00.000+06:00

There's been complaints about lack of pictures lately, so here's some recent ones from the collection..

Some students invited me out to show me Kirov Park in Ust-Kamenogorsk. These are 3rd year interpreters.

American Music 101: Phantom Planet

Train Station at Almaty-1

Typical train stop - merchants sell their goods to hungry and thirsty passengers, as well as local specialities. Anything from hot dumplings to vegetables to cokes to dried smoked fish that smell like hell

Steppe. 90% of Kazakhstan looks like this, I hear. Thank the lord I have some mountains and rivers in Ust.

Teaching Local Teachers in the Villages outside of Almaty.

My counterpart at VKG University, Dinara Matkarimova.

Korean (basically Russian) Birthday Party for my host father's brother in the villages outside of Almaty.

More to come later..

Vuy Zamooshim?

2005-09-11T22:43:00.000+06:00

I haven't done much commentary on social life around here in Kazakhstan, and relationships have always been a source of fascination and terror for me here in this good old Republic.

One of the biggest fears that people often have about dating around here (at least, in Ust-Kamenogorsk) is that Kazakhstan, being an Islamic country, makes the country chock full of conservative fanatics. Indeed, prior to coming here, I fully expected seeing burkhas and covered heads wherever I went. Yet, in both places I've lived so far, in the more conservative south and now in Ust-Kamenogorsk, it's become clear that while much of the population of Kazakhstan considers itself Muslim, the fact that the country was on the far-reaches/outskirts of the Islamic empire, followed by years of Soviet rule, has actually resulted in a country that actually has very little of the Islam roots as part of the everyday culture.

Certainly, one can consider the culture to be... 'conservative' in some sense of the word, at least in the sense that the culture is very male-oriented. Women are expected to serve men here and to defer to their decisions - certainly, one of my first experiences in the south was being laughed at when I went and washed my own dishes, or told the family that I enjoyed cooking.

"That's women's work!" I was told, and basically forced to rest and watch television while the women in the family fussed over whatever else household chores needed to be done.

But what's confusing to me is that the male-orientation of the culture is oft-like a runaway train - the culture is not 'liberal' in the American sense, where women *can* be the heads of the households, or *can* make decisions on her own without a husband (although many cases do have it this way, there's still an illusion to maintain on a public forum), but it's not quite 'conservative', either, in the sense that a woman has to dress in long skirts and keep herself covered at all times. Indeed, the male-orientation of the culture, combined with many of the oxymorons seen in everyday society can drive many volunteers mad.

One of the first questions female volunteers here are asked are things like "Vuy Zamooshim?" - i.e. Do you have a husband? For male volunteers... "Vuy Zhinaty?" its more like the 4th or 5th question (if it's asked at all), after name, age, salary, and job. Both men and women get married at incredibly young ages (at least by American standards) - it's not uncommon to see girls ranging from 15-24 getting married.. by 25-28, women are considered old maids and people constantly wonder what's wrong with them for not having gotten married already. If a man and a woman is walking down the street, people will stop and talk only to the man and ask how he's doing, unless the person is very close to the woman instead. Many Americans find this maddenning.

Certainly, the women are also a part of the culture, and it's very much ingrained in their systems also - men are expected to go after women and be persistent - a pig? What do you mean a pig? He's just being a man, it's expected! Babushkas sitting on the street would gossip and talk to no end about a woman who has a lot of male friends who visit her home (and of course, MUST BE a prostitute), but only wink and smile at a male who's a womanizing jackass.

The mentality becomes even clearer in my discussions and lessons - during my practicum, I had my students write down their hopes and dreams for the future, with "In 1 year, I will.... In 5 years, I will... in 10 years, I will.." etc. It's the same mentality that's ingrained in the culture and part of everyone, man or woman, that lead one of my female students to write this particular gem:

Now you understand what I'm dealing with.

Going further into that, they also lack many of the same social taboos that we have in America - there are no "18 is age of consent laws" here, and apparently the idea of teachers dating students isn't taboo either, as I keep getting nods and jokes from the other teachers (all women, coincidently), telling me I will enjoy dating our students.

But it's important to understand - while the opportunities are here and wide open, I still also have my own American sensibilities to hold onto - whether or not I'm in a culture that actively encourages it, I have still have my original definitions of what is right and wrong, what I should be doing and should not be doing, and what a womanizing asshole is - something I don't want to be. Am I going to date my students? Of course not, that's a stupid idea - I even have withholdings about dating students who are in different departments of the university that I'd never ever have an opportunity to teach.

The funniest part is, whenever there are stories about volunteers who come in, find that the culture expects them to embrace certain piggish type behaviors (and 'rewards' them when they take advantage of that fact), it's going back to America that gives them the reality check...when they realize that no, they aren't God's gift to women, and that no, not just any woman is going to cook them dinner and clean after them.

No need for a reality check, thanks, I'll be just fine.

Last poop-related story, I swear

2005-09-09T11:08:00.000+06:00

I promised myself that I’d stop writing about poop-related stories, especially considering how it’s just not the most savory of subjects…well… anywhere, but I feel that being this is oftentimes one of the biggest fears of traveling (and certainly, experiences that will be burned into my memories for the rest of my life), these stories justify a paragraph or two.

Today, I’m in the 22nd hour of my 36 hour journey down from Ust-Kamenogorsk to Almaty. I arrived in Ust about 3 weeks ago, and now I’m heading back down again to Almaty for a Volunteer Action Committee meeting During training, I was elected as one of the two representatives for Kaz-17, and the group meets with other representatives and the administration 3 times a year in Almaty.

I find myself wondering at times what I’ve gotten myself into, because for a one-day meeting that will take a few hours on Friday, I have to leave on a TUESDAY night. I could technically get away with leaving on Wednesday, but I was determined to make my stay in almaty a little bit more worthwhile by staying longer. From Ust-Kamenogorsk, the train ride is 36 hours, because the train leaves from the city, heads north into Russia, then loops back down to the west of Ust-Kamenogorsk to head down towards Almaty. Literally, the train stops, Zashita Station in Ust and Almaty-2 Station in Almaty, are the end of the line for the whole eastern rail line.

I have to admit, back in America I had a genuine fear of public toilets – I’m not a germaphobe normally, but the concept of sitting on a seat where a thousand other strangers’ asses have sat before has always been a frightening concept to me. In the states, I avoided public toilets whenever I could, preferring to holding back the floodgates of nature until I was able to get home, or at least, to a friend’s home where I knew there was some degree of privacy and regular cleaning schedule.

Riding on a 36 hour train ride, however, presents some obvious challenges. A person has to eat, I’m sure you understand – literally, I brought about a day’s worth of food to eat on the train ride, since there’s no concept of a dining car here either. You’re on your own in that department. I prefer to keep it rather simple, being still terrified of un-refrigerated food. I brought sausages that are not unlike the beef sticks that you can buy at the liquor store, bread, and some cheese, along with some salad greens and red peppers. Things that are easy enough to eat, just slice and eat together. But I’ve realized people bring veritable feasts on here – the family in the beds next to me, for example, have brought not only cups for tea, but an actual teapot, chicken, prepared salads, roasted eggplant with tomato slices, and on and on.

In addition, at certain stops, you can get off the train to walk around and buy all sorts of food at the train stop. Shashlyk (shishkabobs), salads, manty (dumplings), bellini (sweet cottage cheese stuffed crepes), were available at the last stop, for example.

As I was saying, on a 36 hour train ride, you can’t live like you do in America, where your sweet, private precious porcelin throne is merely a car ride away. You’ve got no choices in the old train, buddy, so you just buck up and face your fears or cry.

Let me describe to you, the experience of going to the restroom here on the train.

I usually spend 30-40 minutes first debating whether I really need to go, or if I can hold out for another 12 hours. After realizing that it’s just not possible anymore, all one can do is take a deep breath, and prepare for the experience. With the industrial sandpaper-like toilet paper in hand, I put on my shoes and become deathly quiet as I attempt to mentally prepare myself – “it’s normal,” I tell myself. “You have no choice.”

Once again, it goes back to the old mantra – if millions of people around the world have been doing this for decades, I can too.

Sufficiently prepared, I stand, and walk down the aisle, steadfast in purpose and spirit.

I finally reach the metal door – on it, engraved the words “Tualet”. The door knob is battered, filled with dents and scratches from years of abuse – one particularly large gash, I imagine, is from a person throwing open the door in defeat, running cowardly from the terrors within and retreating as fast as they came.

I open the door, and immediately, the acrid smell of urine brings tears to my eyes. “Oh god, it’s horrible!” my nose screams. Immediately the breathing duties are switched to the mouth department. The compartment is tiny, perhaps the size of a shower. The floor is strangely wet.

“It’s only water from the sink,” I lie to myself.

One thing you quickly realize about these toilets is that when you’re in a train, any sense of aim or direction you had goes out the window, and no doubt the compartment was victim to countless amounts of people struggling to deal with the swaying and shaking of the train. What this amounts to is a metal toilet with a plastic toilet seat that is just absolutely drenched.

No such thing as toilet seat covers or even toilet paper here, mind you.

I look at my nemesis, wondering what to do. In the meantime, my stomach grumbles and gurgles, even it wondering whether it still wanted to go. “Quiet you,” I mumble, as I roll up the pant legs of my pajama pants for fear of touching anything.

Finally, the only solution becomes clear – I drop my pants, and holding it with one hand, I grasp onto the bar in front of the toilet. Balancing myself, I lower myself over the toilet, close enough to do my business, but not touching it, and I go. The whole time, I clutch onto my pants and the bar for my dear life, as I fight the shakes and rumbles of the train. I am determined that nothing I own, flesh or cloth, touches anything this horrible metal dungeon.

I quickly finish, and hit the little lever on the side of the toilet. The flap opens, and with a roar, everything is flushed away. I peer into the open flap, and I see the rushing of the ground flying by – then I realize the toilet was emptying out directly onto the tracks.

With a shudder, I quickly dress, and wash my hands in the metal sink, and open the door back out to my freedom. I allow my nose to resume it’s normal duties once more, and as I close the door behind me, I throw my hands up into the air, victorious.

Chauvinism is not dead

2005-09-05T22:29:00.000+06:00

I've been teaching classes this past week, and while the experience has been wonderful, I've come to quickly realize a few strange things about the classes I've been teaching.

I am the only male out of a department of 20 female teachers.
96% of my students are female.

That particular fact I've gotten over, actually... it's an interesting experience playing this role here at the university, which I'll get into discussion about later, but the REAL interesting part of this is the remaining 4% of my students - they're male, but they have tendencies that can be easily considered to be chauvinistic by American standards.

For example, the past few days I have been having my students write down 'identification cards' for me, so I can get a good idea of the students and their expectations for the class. This isn't unlike anything you've seen in America - a little card with your name, birthday, hobbies, things you like, and things you don't like on it.

The female portion of my class seem to write things that are harmless enough, like "I like to knit" or "I like to play volleyball". But the 4%... every single male that's written on the card so far has seemed to feel that it's necessary to include some sort of cheesy machismo assertion of their postions.

For example:
"Things I like: PLAYBOY!!!, fiction, history"
or:
"Things I like: beautiful women"

It's strange, but the behavior seems to be ingrained in the culture here - men cannot be men unless they hoot and holler at the woman passing by, and it even needs to come out during class. It's said that while many of the male peace corps volunteers have no problems dating locals here, oftentimes the female peace corps volunteers do, because they simply can't deal with men act like pigs here and don't offer them the respect that's expected in American culture. It's expected for men to go up to a girl and pursue her until she relents her number or what not - "no means no" is definitely NOT a known concept here, and in some cases, some volunteers take advantage of that fact. I'm terrified by the whole concept, personally - I absolutely detest the concept of using my position as the "American Teacher" as an advantage to date girls, and I know for sure that's going to be something that will haunt me if I do indeed decide to start dating here.

I've also realized that the girls here can be quite aggressive on their own - these past weeks I've been spending a lot of time doing lectures or activities in many of the classes, and for all of them, they were my first opportunity to meet the students and to discuss the coming semester with them. Today, for example, I taught 4 classes, and gave one lecture in my counterpart's "intercultural communication" class.

As I introduced myself to the class of 50, I quickly felt like I was being sized up - the second I mentioned that I was 22 years old, a titter swept through the classroom. I was confused by why people were giggling, so immediately I asked, "what?! what did I say?!" which only caused an even bigger group giggle in response. I look to my counterpart, who noted with a grin, "I think they like that fact."

Upon realizing what she was saying, I was at a loss for words, and could only give a strange, "uhh, okay" look to the class, which just prompted more giggling and laughter. Good gravies.

The class wasn't a normal one because it was in the interpeter's school department, not the english department, which I belonged to. When Dinara told them that I would not be teaching regularly for this class, some of them actually began to protest, and all I could say was "Dinara knows beter than I do as to where I should teach and can be the most effective, so I'm just going to leave it up to her."

Hope I don't regret THAT.

The most bizarre end to the whole day was coming home and doing some work - around 8pm I get a call from one of the students that had been in the class - since there were so many girls there I obviously had no idea who the caller was, and I was strangely creeped out by the whole situation. Apparently, after I had left, some girls had actually walked up to Dinara and asked her what my number was, and Dinara actually gave it to them.

I'm starting to wonder whether she's my counterpart or my matchmaker.

The girl asked me if I'd like to go "pa-gulyat" with her sometime, which is literally "taking a walk." Yet, I've started to understand that taking a walk doesn't always mean just taking a walk - it more often than not means a date, and knowing this, I was incredibly cautious as to making any specific promises. She was obviously nervous when she was on the phone, and my host mother was giggling the whole time I was on the phone with her, so it was just a strange situation as a whole. She told me she'd like to 'make friends with me', and she hopes that I liked teaching her class. Since I have no recollection of who the girl was or what she looked like... and the fact that I was very surprised by the call out of nowhere...nevermind my whole thing about cross certain teacher-student relationship boundaries, I was fairly noncommittal - I simply told her to leave a message for me at the office if she and her friends wanted to show me around sometime, as she had claimed.

As we were ending our conversation, she asks:
"Am I the... first girl to call you?"
"Huh?"
"I am the first student, yes?"
"Uhh... I guess so."
"Oh, that is good."
"Why?"
"Because, when we asked Dinara for your phone number, many girls were writing it down, so I was afraid they would call you first."

Good gravy.

Limbo

2005-09-01T09:02:00.000+06:00

So I've arrived in Ust-Kamengorsk.. The past few days have been relatively uneventful, as we've been spending time looking for host families to take me in for the next six months.

For some reason, there were originally 6 host families prepared for me from the start - 3 that Dinara, my counterpart had found. 2 families that Dinara found were axed from the start, because they lived across the river, meaning if I stayed out late at night, it'd be very difficult to get back out there because I'd have to hire a taxi for what is relatively ridiculous amounts of money, since the buses tend to shut off after dark.

Nevermind the fact that Dinara won't stop telling me how rich the family was and how safe the neighborhood and how great they were and how giant the rooms were - they were just a tad bit outside the city, so PC wouldn't have any of it.

Leaving 4 families, Dinara called every single day this past week only to find that 1 decided not to have a volunteer and another decided to remodel her house.

With 2 families left, both were out on vacation and it was impossible to get in contact with them - since there's some rule that says I should not be living at my counterpart's home for longer than 2 days (and I'm pushing 5 today), the fact that I hadn't moved out yet ruffled some feathers, combined with the fact that somehow a rumor began circulating that I was actually living with volunteers, which I wasn't.

As my counterpart was berated for 'not working harder' to find me a family, despite no fault of her own, all we needed to do was give it time until the families came back from holiday, which some did yesterday.

I'll be living in an older section of the city, named after a large pharmacy, "Sorok-Pyat Aptyeka," or "Pharmacy 45". It's a small apartment with a Russian lady and her son, and they both seem like a good family, so I think things will be fine.

In other news, the days I've been spending here have been rather tiring and boring, because my counterpart lives just outside of the city - getting to the city is a little inconvenient, and part of me doesn't want to spend a lot of time shopping around and stuff because I'll be moving out soon and I'll lose all orientation the second I move out anyway. Yet, spending the days at home have been not unlike any other lazy summer day in California, meaning my days are filled with doing nothing, at least for the next few days until I get settled in and can start work.

Watching my counterpart's kids remind me just of all the wasted time I spent at home in my own youth. Her 15 year old, spends the day sleeping or playing computer games, and her daughter, 11, spends literally, the WHOLE DAY watching Jetix and Cartoon Network, meaning, she sits in front of the television for 8 hours a day, watching Hey Arnold, Eeek the Cat, and so on. I really worry about her... yet I think back, and my sister and I were the exact same way.

No cable for my home when I get older. It's funny, because my counterpart had the same conversation my own parents had about the situation - she wants to pull the cable, but her husband can't do without it. Lovely to see the same problems worldwide. With American cartoons, no less.

The first night here I spent with Dan, Heather, and Ryder - Dan being an education volunteer and Heather and Ryder being two NGO volunteers - the group here seems to be a very close knit bunch and seem like a fun group, but it quickly became clear that the group here had acquired a notoriety for being hard partiers – whether I personally believe that or not doesn’t matter – certainly, it’s a bad rap for the volunteers here, one they feel is unfairly projected, but much of the time, perceptions can be a lot more damaging than the truth. Whether I was placed here to balance out the city is up in the air, but I made it clear that my choices were my own and I wasn’t there to tell anyone what to do.

New Address

2005-08-22T20:21:00.000+06:00

Note that my address is new:

A/A 2490
Ust-Kamenogorsk
Kazakhstan
492000
Attention: Jay Chen

Resume the letters and packages - my next batch of letters to those of you who wrote me will be coming soon, once I figure out the postal system here.

Train Ride to Ust

2005-08-22T19:31:00.000+06:00

Train stop in Jangiz-Tobe. Note remnants of soviet influence

The next day, after swearing in, began with packing up the car, and seeing my host family in Almaty for the last time. We went to the train station, at Almaty-2, about 40 minutes away from our home in the village. We got to the the train about 10:30 (it was scheduled to leave at 11), and since there are no customs checks or anything of the sort to get through, 30 minutes before is rather normal.

My counterpart was a little late, so I decided to go with my family ahead and load up my bags into the trains. The compartments are incredibly small, about four beds to a coupe, and very little room. Sitting down on one bed means you knock knees with the person across from you - but it's set up well enough that you can lie down and sleep during the night, since the trip to Ust-Kamenogorsk meant an approximately 32-hour trip.

Luckily, my counterpart had arranged for a stop at Jangiz-tobe, a stop that is 2 hours outside of Ust-Kamengorsk - the train ride directly into Ust is a 32 hour train trip because the railroad actually loops around from the west side of Ust, into Russia, then back around again back into Ust - stopping at Jangiz-Tobe meant we could cut off a good 10 hours off our trip, trading it in for a 2 hour taxi ride into town instead. Yet, it also meant that because Jangiz-Tobe was a 5 minute stop, I'd have to have all of my 2 year's worth of packing and luggage ready to go at the door.. so definitely a source of stress, but more on that later.

After we boarded the train, we were waiting for my counterpart, who arrived a few minutes later. Freida, (my site-mate), had her counterpart arrive already... but no Freida. After waiting for 30 minutes, we all became increasingly panicked - and at precisely 10:59 am, I look out the window, and I see Freida, sprinting down the train platform with her family and all of her bags, running her heart out.

Then everything went into slow motion.

Just as she got to the door, it's precisely 11:00am. The conductor shuts the door in her face, and she's stuck out there, pounding on the door... the train starts moving, and it looked quite clear that she missed the train. However, the counterparts shouted at her, telling her to catch the train at the next stop, and immediately, her and her family ran off the platform to catch a taxi that would take her to the next stop - and just like a scene from a movie, as our train was speeding alone, we could see her taxi speeding even faster, sideswiping other cars as it beat our train. Thankfully, the train stop at the next station was about 15 minutes, so she had plenty of time to get on board.

Another issue that seems to be common on train rides is that the conductors are often intensely corrupt, scrutinizing your tickets and documents for anything possibly wrong with it - my counterpart, who had brought her two children, was told by the Peace Corps that because the volunteers each received two tickets (one for them and one for their luggage), with Freida and I both having an extra ticket, her two children would be covered.

Of course, as with I’ve realized about everything else in this country, what you plan almost never works that way.

The conductor, a portly Kazakh woman, immediately latched onto the fact that her children’s name were not on the billet (the ticket), and began to threaten us my counterpart and I, telling us that we were doing something illegal, and that her children would have to get off at the next stop, and there she would have to send them back to Almaty. Nevermind the fact that I actually had enough tickets and there was more than enough space.

After arguing with her, I stepped in, and in my broken Russian I pleaded with her, telling her that I was an American volunteer here to help Kazakhstan, and that since I hardly knew how to ride the train alone, she should have been more lenient in helping us and finding away around her made-up “regulations”.

No dice.

The conductor left, and my counterpart began to dig for money as a bribe. About 30 minutes later, the conductor came with another conductor, and began to threaten my counterpart again – when my counterpart told them that we’d be getting off at Jangiz-tobe (our tickets were originally all the way to Ust-Kamenogorsk), the conductor became more lenient, because that meant they could ‘sell’ the empty coupe we left behind (from Jangiz-Tobe to Ust-Kamengorsk), and pocket the money themselves. This, along with a charge of 2000 tenge to somehow pay for the ‘tickets’ of my counterpart’s children, (which they also obviously pocketed), things were fine for the rest of the duration of the train ride.
As I mentioned before, the train ride is cramped and is blistering hot – it’s essentially a small metal box, and opening the window doesn’t seem to help much. No such thing as air conditioning or fans either, apparently, but there’s a bed, a little table to eat whatever you’ve brought with you, sheets and a pillow, and a little reading lamp. It’s comfortable enough that when you’re settled, you can go to sleep without many problems, if you can get over the cramped compartment and the heat. In the evening, it cooled off a bit, so it wasn't as horrible as it could have been.

We had a nice lunch of prepared foods, cheese, sausage and bread, and at nearly every stop you can run off and buy whatever people are selling along the stop, whether it be drinks or breads or many of the local delicacies of each city’s stop, such as bags of apples and dried smoked trout in Ushtobe. In the evening, we went the sleep, and it actually got quite cold, which may be why I’m fighting this sore throat now.

The rest of the ride was uneventful, if boring – I journaled quite a bit, and we watched a movie on my laptop (after locking the door, of course). But when we arrived in Jangiz-Tobe, the other source of stress came up.

Since Jangiz-Tobe is a 5 minute stop, we had to assert our position at the front of the door since we simply had so much luggage. So around 6:00, 30 minutes before our stop, we dragged all of our luggage to the door and stood there for awhile. I personally had 2 giant duffel bags with two smaller bags, and in between my counterpart, her children, and myself, we had about 14 bags total. Finally, we came to stop.

Hardly was my heart prepared for the sight I was about to see.

The second we stopped and the door swung open, I heaved one of the duffel bags onto my back and began to push my way down the steps – but this being a 5 minute stop, and this being Kazakhstan, there were literally about 20 other people pushing and shoving their way IN, while I was trying to get out.

Pandemonium ensued.

We were clearly blocking the entire entrance with our stacks of bags, and the line to get out extended all the way into the hallway where the compartments were – people threw themselves into me, and the door quickly became an impenetrable wall of flesh, bodies jammed everywhere, arms flailing, legs kicking.

I had no choice but to start playing lineback, and I literally shoved everyone out of the way, finding a tiny hole in the wall of armpits and crotches to push through the bags. My counterpart’s son found a way to stand on the steps, pushing off the horde of people with the bags I handed him, and some kind soul at the steps helped us get the bags down as well.

After about 3 minutes of screaming and shoving, we finally got everything off the train, the people that needed to get off got off, and the people that needed to get on got on.

God, I don’t think I’ve ever had an adrenaline rush like that ever in my life. At Jangiz-Tobe, we boarded our taxi and drove the 2 hours to the city where I’ll be spending the next 2 years of my life.

Swearing-In: Post-game commentary

2005-08-22T19:17:00.000+06:00

As of August 20th, 2005, I am now officially a Peace Corps Volunteer! It’s been 10 weeks of blood, sweat and tears, but it’s all been worthwhile. The ceremony is held on Friday morning, and on Saturday, I’m off to my worksite with my counterpart.

It’s hard to describe the feelings I’m having at this moment, because it’s a mixture of happiness, excitement, fright and sadness at the same time – not unlike any sort of graduation ceremony, you are happy because all that you have suffered for is now coming to an end, and you’ve achieved your goal, but at the same time, you fear what comes next, and you enter the next phase knowing you leave behind your friends into the fray on your own.

Still, passing training is receiving a mark of confidence by the administration, something not entirely easy to come by, and it’s quickly becoming clear that the quality of the site that you’re sent to is somehow related to what they think of you as a person, so I’m told I should come out of this feeling proud and happy, which I do.

The ceremony felt somewhat dampened and anticlimactic because the day began with the news that two volunteers were being sent home for some incredibly unfortunate choices they had made on Wednesday and Thursday, and unlike the past volunteers who had left early on, the two volunteers were very much a big part of the group and provided a good spirit to the group. I think they would’ve have made great volunteers, but to make one stupid mistake and to be sent home on that account one day before swearing-in, after 10 weeks of training… ugh.

Oddly, while our group felt sad on the inside, there wasn’t much of a reaction because the policy regarding their decision had been hammered into our heads so many times on an almost daily basis – had it not been, they might have had a case, but it was very difficult to argue against the administration’s decision to send them home. We took the news and had little reaction because we were so used to losing volunteers by this point, their departure making a total of 8 volunteers who have left our group. Having volunteers sent home devastates everyone, not just the Peace Corps who had spent so much money on them, but also the volunteers’ Kazakhstani counterparts and schools who had waited for teachers.

After the news however, we just deal with it – the rest of the ceremony went rather well. The elation of having completed our training and being together there, with our language coordinators, our host families, our counterparts, and our technical training staff was enough to overcome any feelings we had.

Held in a Sanatorium in Almaty, the ceremony didn’t have a lot of fanfare, but it was nice enough to serve our purposes – the hall was large enough to accommodate everyone, and afterwards they had a nice slideshow for us to watch as well.

The ceremony began with Kazakh performances, and speeches from our technical directors, followed by a speech by Kris Besch, our country director. We also had the deputy ambassador come out to make a speech, which was interesting. Three volunteers were also chosen to make speeches. The first two, by Morgan and Josiah, addressed the general audience – being the best language speakers in their particular group, they did their speech in Kazakh and Russian.

I made the last speech.

It was terrifying, because the last time I made a speech was back in high school – in addition, this particular ceremony did not have a podium, so there was nothing to hide behind or clutch onto. When I raised my hand, you could actually see it trembling, even though I felt fairly calm. Oddly enough, as a teacher I feel fine in front of a classroom or speaking extemporaneously, but it’s when I take the time to prepare and stress for a speech, I get nervous? Weird.

My speech basically considered the different expectations that we had coming into PST – mainly around things like adapting to a new culture, washing our clothes by hand, eating strange foods, but now those sort of challenges seemed actually quite petty and pointless. What has affected our training the most was not those sort of experiences, but the friends that we made here through training.

I finished the speech with a poem from a soviet poet, Vladimir Visotski, that talks about how when you meet stranger, and you’re not sure if he’s a friend or not – climb a mountain with him, and if he makes it with you to the top, then he’s a friend.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the speech, and I got a few good laughs out of the crowd. People also seemed to enjoy it because the speech was sincere at the same time. I also heard later on that the whole ceremony made it onto the evening news, and parts of my speech were shown.

After the ceremony, some of us went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant, and then we went home in the evening to spend time with our families.

Tomorrow morning: Ust-Kamenogorsk.

Swearing-In

2005-08-19T08:05:00.000+06:00

I'm passing training today! After swearing in today as a volunteer, I'm off to my worksite tommorow in Ust-Kamenogorsk.

Yay! Details later, it's early now.

Site Placement: Ust-Kamenogorsk

2005-08-17T11:00:00.000+06:00

I apologize for the lack of postings as of late - the past three weeks has been a whirlwind of activity.

What they often say about the Peace Corps experience is that because so many things happen, you only remember things in chunks. I can tell you everything about my first 5 minutes in Kazakhstan. Then the first day or two. Then what happened this particular week or that particular week. Now it's starting to go by in months.

Whereas a few weeks ago I'd run home and write down every new experience I've had, finding the time to simply sit down and write has been incredibly difficult. This mainly stems from my site announcement.

The last post you saw was of immersion teaching, where I had been practice teaching 6th-8th form children, 11-14 year olds. During these sessions, we are constantly being observed by Peace Corps staff - well, maybe not just during these sessions, as our attitudes and behaviors are constantly being evaluated throughout the whole training - but it's here where people make their mark on the regional managers who then go and decide where the volunteers will go spend the next 2 years of their life.

Apparently I've made some sort of mark.

For the past 6 weeks I've been trained as a secondary school teacher - I fully expected to be working with them, but when I opened my package, the first thing I saw was:

Ust-Kamengorsk East Kazakhstan State University

Holy crap.

For some reason, I was the only volunteer that was upgraded to the University level at site placement - we currently have 6 other university volunteers, and they're all at least 25, have either extensive teaching experience or a masters. Normally I'd never qualify for a position of this sort, but Ekaterina, the PST director, came up and told me that I had come off as a person who would be capable of handling this, and I should be looking at it as an honor of sorts, and I do.

Being in a university now means that I'll be getting a lot of amenities that might not be afforded to other volunteers - things like steady internet access, hot and cold running water, indoor toilets, etc. I'll be able to find almost anything I need in a city of 350,000. Comparing the assignment to my fellow volunteers, I’m in a pretty cushy position.

A fellow volunteer is in a town of 6,000, has one café that’s open only during the summers, and no running water, and a guaranteed outdoor toilet. It’s important to understand, however, that there theoretically are no ‘bad’ sites – I personally was prepared for the poorest, most backwards countryside village if they were going to give it to me, because I knew that when I signed up for the Peace Corps, I wasn’t signing up for a cushy job.

In addition to that, villages, while lacking in creature comforts like hot running water or washing machines, tend to be a little safer than cities, since you can usually count on your community in the villages to come out and help you and protect you. The other interesting piece of news is that I'll be teaching 18-22 year old girls, since these are typically the only ones who are interested in being future interpreters or english teachers. I think I'd enjoy that more, because if secondary school has taught me anything, boys are the jerks and difficult in class.

So here's the breakdown of Ust-Kamenogorsk:

The good news: It's a big city, it's got almost everything, and the surrounding area is supposed to be absolutely gorgeous, nature-wise. An excerpt from my site description:

"Ust-Kamenogorsk, a former Russian fort in in late 17th and 18th century, is located in arguably one of the most beautiful areas of Kazakhstan. There are mountains, vast lakes, coniferous flora and fauna. Local wildlife includes elk, deer, bears, and snow leopards."

Compare to some other site descriptions that said things like:

"Your site is in the Steppe. There is no local wildlife. Your town has 1 cafe, but it's advisable that you get any supplies you need while you are in Almaty."

So you understand, I'm quite pleased. There are tons of positivesa about my site - internet should be available at my university, infrastructure is better up in the north, and I'll be able to buy almost nearly everything I need.

Now the bad:
It's in Siberia. We're talking -40 celsius (-40 F) minimums in the wintertime, although average is closer to -30 (-22 F).

It's also supposedly fairly polluted because of all of the factories in town.. but the town itself is clean.

But all in all, the assignment is most definitely a step up for me, and I feel honored and glad to be working there - I've heard only good things, and the other volunteers there are supposed to be awesome.

Here's to 2 years of work. ::clink::

Still alive

2005-08-16T09:23:00.000+06:00

One week left to go! I'm still very much alive, I apologize for the lack of posts lately, but I've got a variety of topics coming up soon.

In the meantime, don't bother sending me any mail until I get to my new site and it's addresses, as I won't get the mail for awhile.

Posts to come:

Site placement - Ust-Kamenogorsk
Swearing-in
Teaching at University

Until then..

Over the Hill

2005-07-17T13:51:00.000+06:00

Warning: Today’s post has an amazing number of pictures of just me, so if your arrogant asshole detector is going off…. It’s accurate.

It’s the end of week 5, meaning that I’m now more than halfway through training. Let’s take a look at the scoreboard:

Number of volunteers who have quit: 6
Classes I’ve taught: 4
Times I’ve witnessed the slaughter of a cow: 1
Books I’ve finished: 2
Hours of Language Training: 80
Hours of Technical Training: 48.5
Hours of Medical Training: 9.5
Number of Vaccinations I’ve received: 8
Weight I’ve lost: 6.8 lbs
Maximum Number of Days I’ve Gone Without Bathing: 5
Number of Drunks I’ve had to step over to go to work: 4
Number of times I’ve eaten horsemeat: 3
Times I’ve shit my pants: 1

Writing this blog is difficult in many ways, because my time to journal is fairly limited – there’s so much that one wants to do, but given the fact that there’s only a certain amount of hours in the day (and the fact that I’m a lazy asshole) it’s been hard to keep up. The fact that I have to ride a 30 minute bus to the hub site for internet access also contributes to this, of course.

With training half over and the end of the first immersion teaching session, I’ve decided that a discussion on what’s been going on lately is in order.

Immersion teaching went extremely well – the whole process was essentially a 4-day session of working with real live students from Novoalexseeyvka. About 2 weeks ago, we were given weekly tasks to put our technical training to good use and to start writing lesson plans. I was to teach 7th form kids, meaning that the ages ranged from 12-13. Being from a university teaching background (in the loosest sense of the word – I was basically a fairly advanced writing tutor that happened to teach 1-unit pass/nopass adjunct courses) this was different for me – I found it difficult to skew my lesson plans towards something that was challenging to them. My lessons, basically encompassed a variety of topics – “What I like and what I don’t like,” – “Planning countries to go to for holidays”, “Animal Life,” etc. Animal life was easily the most fun out of all of them – the classes was focused on grammar, so I had the children do present-simple sentences regarding their favorite animals – which included doing an animal sound.

School life here is a little different from America – here, respect for the teacher is heavily emphasized. When you enter the room, all of the children stand up, and must say “Zdrasvutiye” to you first, in which you respond in like. In addition, materials are very difficult to find – it’s normal for classrooms to be missing chairs, and children end up sharing chairs, one cheek each. Whiteboards, Powerpoint, overhead projectors, etc. are all nonexistent, and you’re often left with an aging, scratched up chalkboard that seems to retain 10% of the chalk you’re actually putting onto there.

The other option is to prepare materials at home on recycled butcher paper – all of it has a grayish tinge to it, and is definitely of lower quality – but it’s cheap and easy to acquire, so you use it. For my particular lesson, I chose to go this route, drawing pictures of animals and the various phrases I wanted the students to learn on the butcher paper.

We began the activity by doing a warm up. At technical training, we’re taught to use communicative approaches to teaching, meaning we want the kids to think for themselves and to encourage independent thinking. For example, a question that’s commonly asked in English class is something like “What is the weather outside like today? Or what color is the shirt I’m wearing? What date is it today?” Using this form, the answer is predetermined, meaning the kids actually don’t have to think all that much. Instead, I chose to ask questions like “What did you eat for dinner last night? Or why do you like the color blue?” – something that gives the children an opportunity to think for themselves.

It was terrifying for kids to think for themselves, apparently. Several of the students, even though they clearly demonstrated time and time again that they knew the English words for the things they had eaten (never mind the fact that I allowed for them to use the Russian names of the dishes they had eaten), would stand up, and essentially freeze up, saying something like “Last night, I ate… last night, I ate… last night, I ate…” over and over again like a broken record until I would come in and help them. “Last night, I ate pellimenni (a Russian dumpling).”

After the activity, I began by giving my lesson:

1. I am a….
2. I make this sound…
3. I like to eat…
4. During the day, I like to…
5. During the night, I like to…
6. When I move, I move…

And so on. Kids seem to love it when their teacher is goofy, so my first two demonstrative activities were rooted in cows and lions. They roared with laughter when I would do a booming “MOOOOOOOOOOO” in the classroom, or when I would roar, followed by clawing motions. I followed up with their choice of animal, which of course, turned out to be a monkey.

Getting everyone to do the monkey, of course, was a joy in of itself.

Then came the opportunity for all of the children to do whatever animal they wanted for themselves. I started by asking all of the children for names of animals, of which they came up with an impressive list – panda, bear, lion, dog, cat, crocodile, snake, etc. After doing say, I gave them all 10 minutes to draw their own picture and to write the sentences.

My mistake was not telling them that now Monkey, Lion, and Cow were out of the question. Perhaps 8 of the 12 kids did one of the three we had already done, certainly disappointing, since it didn’t really show that they had learned anything, but it was a lesson learned. The kids that got up to present had a fun time getting everyone to do their animal motions and sounds alone with them, so at least some of them understood.

The week went relatively smoothly, though stressful. One of the things that we’re consistently told here in training is that we’re always being evaluated – the presence of the regional managers during the immersion teaching was obvious, but they’re always thinking and watching us about other things as well, like the way we interact with staff and other volunteers and locals, and our attitudes and behaviors. Our language teachers also have a say in the matter since they tend to be most in touch with us on our day-to-day lives, knowing how we interact with things and how we deal with stress.

Somewhere along the line, I’ve acquired an image of being a good boy with the staff, and I’m told I’m well-liked. Kris, the country director, told me that there was something about my attitude and the way I interacted with other people that said a lot of good things about me as a person, and made me a desired commodity amongst the regional managers. The fact that I don’t drink and smoke is something of an oddity amongst my particular group, and seems like it may work out in my favor in terms of site placement.

The constant evaluation basically results in our suitability to be volunteers and the suitability of placing us in particular sites – as I had mentioned before, each regional manager has in mind a certain sites for certain volunteers, but there’s many different things to consider. In my particular case, I’ve heard, the fact that I don’t drink and have a certain level of technical ability may land me in a city rather than a village. 80% of us are going to rural villages, whereas the last 20% may have a shot at a city. The reasoning for this is that since the city provides many more opportunities to party and various distractions, I’m apparently more suited towards it because I won’t be as likely to be distracted. The technical skills aspect, of course, comes into play with the fact that villages are unlikely to have computers and internet access to start with.

While many volunteers desire to go to the city simply because that’s what they’re used to and they want opportunities to party and be distracted, I’m trying to keep an open mind about everything – certainly, in my mind, I’d like to go to the city simply for convenience’s sake – things are much more readily available there, and I’d love to have things like internet access all the time. However, at the same time, I realize that villages have just as much to offer – the sense of community there is much stronger, and you’re more likely to be afforded more protection as the villages tend to function more on a personal basis. In the end, all I know is that I’m going to keep an open mind about whatever I get, and that there’s good and bad to any sort of site placement – to sit up, hoping for a particular placement is only setting myself up for disappointment.

Certainly though, Kazakhstan is a huge country, about 4 times the size of Texas – most of the sites are far from Almaty, where I am right now, meaning a train ride anywhere from 20-80 hours away, so essentially we’re starting a whole new life after we’ve just adapted to the one here.

The other aspect is the dynamics of the group – many friendships have been born out of the past 5 weeks, and after site placement, we could all be several hours away from each other. Some of us, the only time we’ll see each other, will be at the mid-service conference at one year and at the close of service conference at 2 years. When you see people everyday and are used to their faces, the concept of that can be frightening, as you’re torn away from that familiarity and once again on your own.

We’ll have to see what happens in a week, and see how things play out as a result.

Heat

2005-07-10T10:23:00.000+06:00

It's been hot. Or as Alex and I refer to it, "muthafukkin zharka". That's Russian for Friggin hot.

July is the hottest month of the year here - it's bizarre, because Kazakhstan gets extremes on both ends - over 100 degrees in the summer, dropping down to 30 below in the winter time, and the consideration of 'mild' weather, found in the center of the country, is 90 degrees in the summer and 20 below in the winter.

Today, it was 40 degrees - that means, my friends, 104 degrees Farehnheit. It's odd, because I originally thought my hair would burst into flames and my eyes would melt if I walked out into that sort of heat, but it's suprisingly bearable since it's not humid. You just sweat like crazy, and search for shade wherever you can, which can provide maybe a few degree's worth of respite.

Funny that I used to cry when it was 85 degrees in my room in Berkeley during the summer - but with no A/C in the villages here, I get to suffer along with everyone else.

Go time

2005-07-07T09:25:00.000+06:00

It’s already the fourth day of my 4th week here in Kazakhstan, and boy, what a wild ride it’s been.

The past few weeks has been exciting, but the initial fun and excitement has died down quite a bit – the honeymoon period is over, and I’m getting ready for work and ‘real life’ now.

It’s been tough to take time to sit myself down and write since every day is incredibly busy – I get up everyday at 7 (although the past few days has been 5 or so) to get myself situated for the day – depending on what day of the week it is, I either have to get to Panfilova where the hub site is for technical training, or the “malenkey schola” (small school) for language class. Hub site training usually starts at 9 or so, but I have to take the bus there, so that means I usually leave my house by 8:15 at the latest. I try to get up earlier oftentimes in order to sneak in some internet time earlier, ahead of the pack – but even that hasn’t been all that helpful as of late. Leave by 8:15, and I’ll end my technical days by 5 or so, although I usually stay around to fool around for another hour or two afterwards.

Language days, M-W-F are from 9-1 in the morning, a break in the middle, resuming at 4:30-6:30 – the breaks are welcome, because I think that it’s usually close to around 11 am or so that my brain decides to shut down for the day, and any new material is just written down, but never filed away. Usually stuff I’ve learned last week starts to filter in just about this time, so I’ve learned to let it be an osmosis-type process and try not to be frustrated as much as possible.

Next week, we start immersion teaching – meaning, I’ll be starting to teach classes with real-live kazakhstani children, being observed by my fellow classmates to see how my lesson plans are working out. I try as much as possible to be open to new ideas, and like when I write, I’m the worst self-critic in the world about my lesson plans. My supervisors seem to think they’ll work fine, but I keep fearing I’ll be permanently damaging the kids somehow – pre work jitters, I suppose.

While I haven’t been horribly depressed, last week indeed had given me a general malaise that seemed to dominate my life for a bit – after 3 weeks, the honeymoon period of coming to a new culture to explore and love a culture begins to wear thin. I recall frantically writing every new word I heard to speed my Russian the first few days I was here – now I barely have enough energy to finish my homework. In addition to that, I’ve figured that my malaise came from the fact that I was having some minor stomach issues.

I think the fact that I was coming to grips with the whole reality of being alone again also played a large part – when you care so deeply for someone, talking to them every day for six and half years, transitioning so quickly to completely cutting off contact (or rather, just a general lack of communication as a whole) tends to cause a general damper on things, and there’s just really nothing I can do about it – I desire greatly for that same support and love I had in the past, but now that it isn’t there, going home now most certainly wouldn’t make relationships magically reappear, either.

Things like this are to be expected, in many ways – such emotions are completely understandable, and it isn’t fair for me to clutch onto something like it was in the past, since my being on the other side of the world now has completely changed things. To treat things as if they were the same isn’t fair, nor is it rational…. But damn, it’s painful to let go.

So those things were part of my general malaise – but this week I’ve been much better – coming to grips with a lot of the realities in my decision to become a volunteer has helped bring me down to earth quite a bit – I’m still determined in my cause and my reasons for joining, and again, it’s one of those things you simply have to grit your teeth about and move on and hope for the best. Sitting down and wondering what could have been or crying about it can’t help anything or anyone, and if I quit now, things would hardly return to what I wish it was like. All I can do is love and hope, as all other paths would lead me to be the sort of person I don’t want to be.

This week has generally been better – I’m no longer feeling sick, and the sense of loneliness lessens a bit when you do get the occasional email from home, as well as changing your attitude about it. Hearing from my country director that I’m well-liked by the staff and the other volunteers is very encouraging as well, as it tells me that I’m at least doing some things right.

As the week wraps up, all I can do is brace myself for the next half of the training – immersion teaching starts next week, and it only gets crazier from here.

Holiday in Kazakhstan

2005-07-05T09:18:00.000+06:00

The past weekend amounted to be something like a 4-day weekend because of all the activity not related to language or technical training.

On Saturday, we took our first class trip to Almaty – the former capital of the nation. I had been there the previous weekend with my host family, but seeing different places this time still made it exciting. In many ways, I would describe the entire city akin to Taipei, or perhaps some parts of Los Angeles. Relatively modernized and beautiful, but the city has a gritty urban edge to it that’s difficult to describe – perhaps it was just the hustle and bustle of the city that made it seem foreign to me, since I’ve been inhabiting a village in the past few weeks that seemed to be in another entire time period in history.

The contrasts were obvious – supermarkets with nearly everything you can think of, touristy-things, plenty of casinos, dance clubs, and restaurants everywhere. It was definitely a city-type of town – my first trip to Almaty with my family resulted in my meeting an incredibly beautiful Kazakhstani-American who had grown up in New Jersey – after talking to her for about 30 minutes, she immediately invited me out to a dance club, something I turned down because I had to go home with my family that evening. The odd thing here is that I would never have expected to meet English speakers here during my stay – nor would I have expected to meet women that were so forward as to invite me out. One of the contrasts of a city vs. village.

I liked the trip, as we got to see much of the city and make some purchases difficult to find in our villages – the supermarkets were not unlike supermarkets back in the states, although they were a little bit more cramped and crowded. Things there were expensive, however, so I’m not sure how often I’ll be visiting it. The trip to Almaty was meant to see the Peace Corps Office, a Mosque, a Russian Orthodox Church, Panfilova Park, and a Bazaar – all of which we had done, but the trip was definitely getting on some group members nerves (including mine) because there were simply too many opinions going around – one absolutely had to buy something, another didn’t want to, another has to make a phone call, refusing to listen to whether it’d work or not, etc. etc. – after 4 weeks, one realizes that oftentimes it’s just easier to make people make mistakes on their own rather than warn them. I’ve learned to simply shut my mouth, since taking charge, though more efficient, can usually make you a target for anger - simply see it as a game as to how much you can suffer, and everything becomes that much easier.

The mosque was beautiful, as was the Russian orthodox church – I learned quite a bit about both religions, although more so the mosque since we had a Imam come and speak with us about Islam in Kazakhstan.

On Sunday, we had the day off as usual, and I spent the day relaxing at home, reading and washing my clothes.

Monday was the Fourth of July, so we were rewarded with a trip to see Petroglyphs. Essentially, they’re 8th century carvings in the rock face of Buddha, right around the time China’s influence on Central Asia ended. It was amazing, to be able to get some so close to the carvings and just thinking about the amount of time it took to carve that was amazing.

The real treat, however, was being able to swim in the River Ili. I love swimming to start with, but the fact that we had traveled 3 hours to get to the place, over unpaved, dusty bumpy roads with scenery seemingly filled with nothingness, then coming out and seeing this beautiful river right smack in the middle of nowhere, was wonderful. The weather was extremely hot as well, so jumping into the river and swimming there, with its strong current, was definitely an experience.

That evening, we came back and hung out at a local restaurant for a few more hours, as I drank my coca-cola, chatting and shooting jokes with my increasingly inebriated fellow volunteers – all in all, a great weekend.

River in Kazakhstan

2005-07-05T08:51:00.000+06:00

If you asked me a year ago where I would be the next 4th of July, I don't think I'd ever have answered: "Swimming in a River in Kazakhstan alongside 2000 year old petroglyphs of Buddha carved into the rock."

On Ethnicity

2005-06-30T10:30:00.000+06:00

Yen is one of the Uzbekers who came to join our group after the evac there – here we’re doing the classic Chinese picture pose after the concert. Like most of the wonderful people here in our group, she’s just as beautiful and pretty on the inside (brilliant, I should say) as she is on the outside. Our friendship is particularly valuable here in this case because we’re the two of the three Asian-Americans here in this particular group – the fact that she’s Chinese was a particularly welcome feature since we can have plenty of intelligent conversations about Chinese culture as well.

In many ways, sometimes I feel that I’ve been too sheltered – though in America I’m considered a minority, almost all of the places I’ve lived I was the majority – at CHS, where 90% of the student body was Asian, and at Berkeley where close to 50% was Asian. Intellectually, I realized that I was in the minority, but I had never felt it until I joined the Peace Corps, being that I was one of the three Asians in the group of 48.

Seeing Yen’s face in many ways a relief to me, because who else can I talk about asian familial culture with, who knows what kind of Chinese foods are real Chinese foods and which aren’t, who has enjoyed the same culture and language that I enjoyed?

Yet, joining the group, working and having fun with everyone has largely made me realize that my active, constant thoughts about my ethnicity were essentially misplaced – most people don’t care what your background is – it’s about who you are as a person that matters. I feel that most of the people around me are genuine, intelligent and open people that share a connection, despite the lack of a similar ethnic background.

“Dear Mom, maple syrup is delicious…”

2005-06-21T13:42:00.000+06:00

I found out yesterday that a second trainee had decided to “ET”, or early terminate, meaning they leave early. Hearing such news isn’t necessarily surprising, but it’s disconcerting, because it reminds the rest of us of the fact that there’s always an option to go home, regardless of our attempts to push it out of our minds based on sheer will of finishing the job we’ve sacrificed so much to start.

This isn’t being judgmental by any means – you have to do what you have to do, and I’m sure decisions to ET aren’t made lightly, especially after having sacrificed so much to get to this country. The double edged sword of working as a Peace Corps volunteer, essentially comes down to that – you’re a volunteer, and nobody’s going to try and convince you to stay. In certain cases, like having problems with the host family, can be fixed, but how do you solve something like homesickness? As a volunteer, you’re not ever forced to stay (since this isn’t the army), and it’s always better (to Uncle Sam, at least) for you to ET earlier than later, since the sheer amount of resources it takes to support you as a volunteer is mind boggling. This is assuming you will be ETing, that is.

And that’s the problem. Hearing about other people ETing reminds me that you, Jay, also have that option of going home. You’ll have tons of family waiting for you at the airport with open arms, tears of joy streaming down their face, welcoming you with open arms, telling you that “you’re home now… no one’s here to judge you.” Which I’m sure is true, but the self is always the harshest critic. It’s a delicate balance – entertaining the thoughts of going home does exist in my mind, certainly, but another part of me tells me that while doing that would make me feel happier for the present, the act of doing so would be extremely traumatic and probably a source of regret for the rest of my life.

Even more disconcerting is what one of the Uzbekers (Uzbeker being one of the 4 volunteers who joined us in Kazakhstan after the evacuation in Uzbekistan) told me – every one in their class had passed training, which is a complete rarity – but 10 ETed within the first 2 weeks of moving to their sites because the change was so traumatic. After suffering through language lessons and training with the rest of your fellow volunteers for 3 months, you’re thrown into the lion’s den, all by yourself to sites around the country to start your work with much less structural support than you’re used to in Training (where your daily life is planned out for you to the hour).

So in the back of your mind, you always wonder. Am I going to be one of those 10? Nobody wants to be, but the fact that it can hit any of us, regardless of how we feel now, is certainly real. Life here has been filled with wonderful experiences, and I’m enjoying making friends and learning to do my job, but it’s not at all easy. I wake up everyday thinking I’m just on a long vacation that will end soon, and in many ways seems like a dream. Who the hell says they wake up every day to roosters crowing at 4 in the morning and walking out to see cattle in the street in front of their house in Kazakhstan? Am I really doing this?

I was joking with another volunteer about ETing – in that we both had made a mistake of making such a big stink of our joining the Peace Corps, that if we were ever kicked out or decided to ET, we wouldn’t actually go home – we’d just go and hide out in Canada for 2 years, and write home just as if we were still in the Peace Corps. I like maple syrup and all, but all I can do is hold on for the ride and play it as it goes.

“Meghan, I’ve got the greatest story to tell you.”

2005-06-20T13:37:00.000+06:00

This story’s a gross one, so skip it if you’re squeamish.

I totally shit myself today.

There are times in life when, man and woman alike, have the need to pass, how you say, a certain gas, that is, of the methane variety. Being in Kazakhstan and walking with my language mates Alex and Meghan, we were walking to the bus stop for a trip to Panfilova. The need overtakes me, and I figure, “Hey, it doesn’t smell like roses here anyway,” and so I decide to let it fly.

That’s when I got a little bit more than I was asking for, if you know what I mean.

So imagine the scene, dear reader, of my waddling down the dusty, dirt filled street, hustling and bustling with Kazakahstani life, cows and cars sharing the same road. Noisy, dirty, hot, windy. And me waddling with a serious case of mud butt.

Adapting to local foods is one of the biggest hurdles a peace corps volunteer often has to face – despite all of our efforts to remain clean, it’s just impossible to make sure everything has been kept to the standards of American ‘clean’ – I can’t always ask my hosts to bring the fruit they picked and tell them to wash it AGAIN in my distilled water, right? So my passings as of late hasn’t been of the best consistency, and what happened today seems to be a normal part of adapting to the food.

All I could do was laugh about it, though – I walk up to Meghan, and I say:

”Meghan, I’ve got the best story to tell you.”
”What?”
”I just totally shit myself,” I said, laughing hysterically.

Meghan’s look was fabulous – a mix of horror and hilarity in one – she hands me some toilet paper, and we go looking for a toilet.

No such luck.

So then the decision is made to simply clean up behind the bus stop, which is filled with trash and quite bushy and rather private (Meghan mentioned earlier that she had seen people taking craps right in the middle of the field anyway).

Again, I crack up at the sheer absurdity of the situation, and waddle over behind the bus stop. As I prepare to drop trow, oh boy, here comes our bus. So much for that. So we rode the bus to school, and once there, I waddled up the flight of stairs to the local squat toilet and cleaned myself up there.

They say part of keeping your sanity here is being able to have a sense of humor about everything – in many ways, I saw that applying to my situation today. So I pooped my pants, so what? It’s happened to other people, and I’m adapting to the local food. Getting a horrified look on my face and crying about it wouldn’t really solve the situation, so all I could do was step back and laugh about how funny the whole thing was.

Don’t be fooled though, when I got home I took the longest, hottest banya I’ve ever taken since I’ve gotten here.

I'm alive!

2005-06-12T17:54:00.000+06:00

I'm alive and well in Istanbul at the moment. After a 10 hour flight with a 2 hour delay, we've successfully made it, without some major mishaps, save some luggage that wasn't sent along. I'll update more when I get to Kazakhstan - but I'm going to take a nice long nap right now in my airport hotel.

2005-06-10T18:13:00.000+06:00

It's an entire fast food restaraunt devoted entirely to eating Cereal. 3.50 for a bowl of life cereal with honey and almonds (when I can walk two blocks down the street and buy a box with at least 15 servings in it for the same price).

2005-06-10T09:42:00.000+06:00

Heaven on a bun. One pepper cheesesteak wit onions and cheez whiz, please!

Hypocrisy

2005-06-09T07:00:00.000+06:00

Anxiety and Guilt.

That’s the feeling I have right now. I suppose anxiety and those sorts of feelings are easily explained – after all, it’s not everyday that a person decides to one day drop everything in their own lives and to what is literally the other side of the world.

But it’s odd too. Had you asked me a year ago what I thought going to another country to ‘help people,’ I would have said it’s a fantastic opportunity and something that everyone should take the time to do. To do something like that – sacrificing and putting your own life on hold for the sake of others is nothing less than a demonstration of the power of the human spirit. The only moral response, I would have argued, to the fantastic opportunities and wealth afforded to us in the United States is to give back somehow in a way that would genuinely require a change in lifestyle, and at the expense of our comfort.

But in the recent weeks leading up to this, I’ve found myself to be not trying to be a bastion of that famous indomitable human spirit, but falling into a behavioral pattern that I was trying to walk away from to start with – the sort of curious American cultural mentality that has us obsessed with our own comfort and conveniences. As opposed to thinking about Kazakhstan as a wonderful opportunity to experience a different life, oftentimes in want and simply learning how to do without, I spent the weeks leading up to my departure date buying everything that I “wouldn’t be able to get in Kazakhstan” so I could be as comfortable as possible. I did have some limitations of course – certainly, no down comforter and scented candles here, but I did obsess for weeks over the proper sleeping bag to buy, and I read all about the weather conditions in Kazakhstan so I’d be able to have the proper outdoor gear to match all of the elements, whether it was 100 plus degrees or -30 degrees outside (both of which are very real Kaz weather conditions). I ran out and bought name brand performance winter thermal underwear. “I don’t want to be cold,” I reasoned, “Surely I won’t be able to buy X or Y there!”

Never mind that people in Kazakhstan have survived for centuries without even having heard of North Face Jackets or Thorlo socks.

So that’s the guilt part. I’ve finally boarded my plane to Philadelphia, and the beginning of the next 2 years of my life and the next Chapter in the Jay Chen Life Story – sitting here, typing on my laptop, listening to my mp3s, wearing my Sony headphones – with 2 giant duffel bags of check-in luggage that ended up being 30 pounds too heavy.

Lord, I hope I don’t make the wrong impression.

Farewell Party

2005-06-06T06:34:00.000+06:00

After the farewell party, I had an odd sensation – I was choked up – jaw trembling, and tears welling up behind my eyes. Inside, I felt a fascinating mix of happiness and sadness, with a touch of helplessness to probably the best way to describe it.

I think that’s the feeling of gratuity.

I hadn’t really planned on having a farewell party originally – I reasoned that people would be busy and no one would really want to come to see someone they hadn’t talked to in four years. I’m not sure what made me decide to do it, but sometime a week ago I started looking up old friends and began to invite everyone. I invited everyone I could think of – many of those who I hadn’t spoken to since high school graduation, several that I met in Berkeley or during my internship in Washington, and even those who I had had petty rivalries with in high school and went to college glad I wouldn’t have to see them again.
I wanted to do this not only because it served as a de facto Cerritos High School Reunion (although many didn’t come from CHS), but because I wanted to see old acquaintances again before leaving for the other side of the world. I had done things in the past that I had regretted, but I wanted nothing more to have a sense of closure to those issues before I left.

I invited whoever I could, realizing that it was pretty much a crapshoot because the SoCal UCs were still in school and finals were coming very quickly – I was hoping that at least 5 people would show up so we could have some semblance of a party.

Over 30 people showed up. Several of which drove at LEAST an hour to come see me, and many others with finals looming on their horizon. I honestly can’t believe how much of a success the party was, because I never expected to see so many friends from the past all at once.

The added bonus, of course, was that everyone was hotter than I remembered in high school.

That odd mix of feelings I had that night wasn’t a sense of magnanimity or pride – it was a sense of humility and gratuity. The helplessness comes from the fact that I’m used to the one playing the ‘nice guy’ – I’m usually the one helping and supporting – but when the tables are turned on me, and so many people come to support me, I begin to realize that in my efforts to play the nice guy, I rarely let others in and I rely only on myself. Whether or not you showed up to the party, I am genuinely thankful and honored to have friends like you all, there to support me even after all of these years. A guy can only be so lucky to know all of you, and knowing that I can count on all of you for your love and support only makes me stronger.

The Invitation

2005-04-13T10:08:00.000+06:00

It came today.

From my initial serious consideration of the Peace Corps to my final invitation time, 10 long months had passed. 10 months of applications. 10 months of complaints. 10 months of arguments, 10 months of clearances, 10 months of documenting this, 10 months of documenting that, of stress, of interviews, of confusion, of insecurity...

It finally came today.

My invitation to the 3rd world. To a new host of experiences, and to leave behind the comfortable life that I know as an American. To make a difference.

The purpose of this journal is to chart out my experiences, from start to finish, as a Peace Corps volunteer. In the coming days I will be talking more in-depth about my motivations for joining the Peace Corps, and listing out the details (as far as I can remember) of every step I took along the way, from interest to application to invitation. Hopefully, in the coming months this journal will also be one where I can keep a journal of my activities in Peace Corps service, as well.

I'm excited.