Uralsk – You're in Europe! (Or you traveled so far, you might as well be!)

Uralsk is in the far western corner of Kazakhstan, and it currently has no volunteers, so any camps that want outside help have to bring us in. So three other volunteers and I made the impressive journey out there. To get an idea of what I did, look at a map of Kazakhstan, look at the far eastern corner, then follow the southern border until you make it up to the far western corner. You might ask, “Jessica, why didn't you just go through the middle of the country? There had to be an easier route!” The simple answer is no there is not. The easiest way, actually, goes through Russia and we aren't allowed on those trains.

When I first found out that living in Kazakhstan would mean a lot of train travel, my first reaction was to gasp with glee as I recalled the Hogwarts Express. I had images of people running around in their school robes, buying magical candies, and people pulling out their wands to practice defensive spells to counteract the Slytherin's hexes. Well, I am here to kill all those romantic notions as I say that riding the train in Kazakhstan is nothing like Harry Potter. People change into their train wear* not robes; people buy sausage, not snot-flavored jelly beans; and nobody knows any sort of spell, defensive or otherwise. Nobody even has a wand! It's a big letdown, and I thought I'd just clear that up now.

So after 68 hours of train, we got out and got into a taxi for another 5 hours to get to Uralsk where we were met by a really enthusiastic guy who was the camp organizer. He is a FLEX alum, which means he studied in America for a year in high school, and this camp is one of the ways he tries to give back a part of his experiences to the kids here. We were housed in a school and each of us given a group of 10 students (grades 9-11) to help for the week. The kids were amazing, they had to interview to come to the camp, so their English was really good, and they were just all around really creative and hard-working. The week came complete with English lessons every day (given by us), skits, American sports and a trip to the river to swim and get sunburns. AND a competition between the teams. They got points based on how well they did in sports, the evening activities, and (most importantly) their attitudes, and how much they didn't speak in Russian or Kazakh. My team started out really strong, (uhhh, I had one of the most competitive kids in the world on my team) so we won every sports game. Every single one. We even took first in the skits competition, but as the week went on they kept speaking Russian! I made a pie chart to show them that we could win every single game, but if we kept speaking Russian we would lose. Sports was only 18%, Russian/cellphone usage was 48%! Come on guys! I told them. It's SO easy to get these points! But in the end we lost 1st place to the Sunny Stars. It's ok, it was a close competition.

The camp ended with tears, the exchange of e-mails and phone numbers, and requests that we come back to Uralsk again. It was so fun to spend a week with the kids, to talk with them about the opportunities they have for their futures, to ask them their opinions about different topics, and to see them expressing themselves, really well, in English. Our “no Russian/Kazakh” rule had fully taken effect by the end of the week, and they were having private side conversations in English! Even little things like “are you going to lunch now? Let's go together!” It's incredible what a difference one week makes.

A second happy ending! We couldn't buy train tickets back because it's mid-summer and they were all sold out, so we got to fly to Astana. Granted, that is only halfway to where some of us needed to be, but I will take 3 hours of plane ride to replace 40-some hours of train any day. Just another 13 hours of bus, 3 hours of taxi and I am back, safe and sound, in my little corner of Kazakhstan.

Moral of this story: Kazakhstan is big. Really, really big.


*”train wear” means anything from sweats to underwear, depending on the person and how much they don't care that everyone can see them.