Brothers

Two weeks ago we had our In-Service Training which is basically four days of meetings with all the volunteers. Four days of information, and gossip, and pure-English-speaking fun. Just enough time to fall in love with everyone again, and then we’re back alone at site. So now we’ve made a quick trip to the city to “soften the blow” as my site-mate put it.

I’ve been getting letters asking about my “daily life” and “how are things different?” and I’m not entirely sure where to start. One small difference is that I have brothers. I’ve never had brothers before. I remember just after my sister was born, I wrote a song (and accompanied myself with a triangle) about how we wished she had been a boy. I sang it for my dad, because he is a boy, so obviously he would sympathize. Instead I got a “Jessica! We are glad Danielle’s a girl!” and thus, at the tender age of 4, ended my career as a songwriter. Anyway, since I will be moving at the end of this month, I’ll devote this post to some memories of my brothers.
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Maxat got home just minutes after I did. “Jessica! I was running and shouting ‘Jessica! Jessica!’ and you didn’t hear me?” I held up my MP3 player, “Sorry.” He looked relieved that I wasn’t just avoiding him in public.
**
The wrestling matches usually turn into loud races around the house. First you hear a rumble of bodies falling to the floor, then scrambling as one gets away and runs while the other follows. Eventually one winds up in my room saying “Jessica! Tell him to stop!” Clearly, I have no power here. However, my room has become something like a safe zone. Once one is here, the other doesn’t come in, but waits outside like a cat waiting for the mouse to come out of its hole.
***
Maxat and I were watching the Shawshank Redemption tonight. I recognized the music and ran into the room and told him “I love this movie!” (I’m really good at saying simple things like that in Russian). So we were watching it, but the phone kept ringing and he kept leaving, and I kept getting frustrated because he’s missing it! He’s not going to see just how amazing it really is!

Today we re-watched the Shawshank Redemption, starting where the first phone call interrupted, and I feel better knowing that he understands that I love a really good movie.
***
The phone rings off the hook for these boys. They’re 15 and 17, and just starting to get girlfriends (and I’m still not sure what that means here. From what I can tell they mostly just talk incessantly on the phone). Anyway, I now know how to say “I’m sorry, but Maxat/Mierjan is not home now” in Russian, and in Kazakh. I can also give a variety of answers as to their whereabouts, such as “He is at school” or “He is outside.” And I’ve found “I have no idea where he is” is also effective. I think a really funny answer (and one that would get the phone to stop ringing) would be to say “I think he’s at his girlfriend’s house” but they probably wouldn’t think it’s that funny.
***
With the power out, the computer games are not keeping Mierjan entertained when he should be doing school work. So he pulled out the checkers board and asked me if I wanted to play. I said sure, because checkers is easy enough… Halfway through, I realized that the rules here are TOTALLY different than they are in the states. So I lost. Then we played chess, and I was pleased to find that not only are the rules the same, but that I have what it takes to best a 15-year-old boy in a game of real strategy. I feel vindicated. Maxat watched as his brother lost and taunted him with “Ha ha! This is a smart person game! You have to THINK! THINK!” (Please note, he did not offer to play me either.)
***
Suddenly I heard music playing outside. Oddly enough, it was all the songs that Maxat and Mierjan usually listen to in the house. But it was not coming from inside, and it was definitely too loud to be coming from a car stereo. So I walked outside to find that they had taken the DVD player and some speakers and plugged them into the banya outlet so that they could shovel the hay and have a dance party at the same time. Those are my brothers, dancing with the pitchforks. About 20 minutes later the neighbors called and told us to keep it down.

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For the record, I’m happy now that Danielle is a girl.

Rings, A dress, and maybe one thousand dollars

It's springtime in Kazakhstan! This means the snow is finally going away and I can stop wearing long underwear! I didn't prepare a good post for this internet trip, and for that I apologize. But what I do have to share is interesting, I promise. A couple days ago was Nauryz, the Kazakh new year. My town had yurts set up in the center, and they looked really beautiful. My sitemate and I got to eat and drink some *interesting* things and then watch a concert. For the most part, just a good time in the yurts.

Later that night, my family had guests over, and two of them are the parents of my host brother's roommate in the city. They were asking how old I am, and I told them 24, and they gave me that look, up and down, figuring "just how much more time do you think you have to get yourself married?" So they told me they have a son, and that my family needs to start considering what they will buy for my Kazakh wedding (they were maybe mostly kidding...) So we agreed that my family needs to provide rings, a dress and maybe one thousand dollars, and they will provide the candy, the horse (to eat), and vodka for the ceremony. I'm not familliar with the price of horses, but they are a delecacy, and mom, dad, I think we sould consider their offer.

I'm not getting any younger here.

How to get rid of a stalker and make the 6th form behave

More excerpts, because I can’t possibly sum-up everything.

February 12, 2008

Last night I got a talk about how I don’t have a boyfriend and will I meet my husband here and stay forever? I said my mother would kill me (this is my usual excuse for “will you please marry someone here and stay forever?” Thanks, mom) and besides my Russian is still pretty bad and my Kazakh is worse so it would be difficult to marry anyone I don’t understand. She said “Don’t worry, we will help you find someone.” That’s great.

February 14, 2008

I have been avoiding the school cafeteria because my not-so-secret admirer has started to frequent it and make my lunch awkward by sitting alone staring at me… After club he showed up to ask if he could walk me home. I lied and said I wasn’t going home, so then he asked if I could give him a personal club on Saturday. I told him I don’t teach on Saturday. He raised his eyebrows and waved up his hand as if to say “so?” I gave him an exasperated look, sighed, and walked into the teacher’s room as he called out “I’ll call you!” I sat in the room for a couple minutes thinking about the best escape route, and decided my best bet was out the back door to the outhouses. That way if he caught me I would be all “I’m going to the outhouse, a little privacy here?” As I came down the stairs I saw him walking down the hall so I dodged into the back doorway as a student was saying “goodbye miss Jessica!” and I said “shhhhh! Goodbye…” and ducked out the back. I went out past the outhouses, then by the elementary school, onto a road I didn’t know and continued on the back roads until I reached the center, where I decided I deserved some apple juice. Looking back, I realize that was a really risky move. As I came out of the store I heard someone shouting “Jessica!” and my stomach dropped, but it was my host father with the car. A getaway vehicle! I jumped in, literally, as the car was still rolling.

This guy needs to take a hint, I can’t be James Bond every Wednesday.
[You might be asking, what’s so bad about this guy? Just trust me]

February 15, 2008

My 6th form class was terrible yesterday, so I gave them a 3 in their discipline grade book. That landed them in a whole world of hurt. First they were yelled at by their homeroom teacher who told them that if Miss Jessica had any problems with them she would call parents. Then they were yelled at by my counterpart. I felt bad that they were yelled at so much, so we did the Bear Hunt and I think we all forgave each other. Each one of them came up to me after class and said “Miss Jessica. Yesterday. I’m sorry.” I think that means we’re in a good place again.

February 18, 2008

I’ve been making unnecessary stops at the post office for stupid things like “is this addressed correctly?” or “is the postage ok?” mostly because I’m hoping they’ll be all “you have a package!” No such luck today.

February 19, 2008

My host brother brought the rabbits into the house today, “Shhhhh, don’t tell mom,” so that I could meet them. Apparently in this house’s glory days there were 30-40 rabbits running around. I’m sort of glad I missed that era.

February 24, 2008

My sitemate let me borrow the first season of 24, and I was a moron thinking I’d only want to watch half of it this week. I can’t believe myself.

February 26, 2008

On our way to school we were talking to a woman who lives on our street and she asked me how old I am. I told her 24. “Ahhhh, well done! You don’t look any older than 20!” And this is why I have problems teaching 11th form classes.

February 28, 2008

Again during novice club, the bell rang and they all groaned “No! Not yet!” Granted, they didn’t want to leave because they weren’t finished coloring their dream vacations, and not because of the English they were learning. That’s ok, I’ve got a formula for club that seems to go pretty well: 1) Silly song (the stupider I look, the better), 2) Introduce vocabulary or grammar, 3) little game to practice, 4) let them draw to their little heart’s content 5) short silly song, then send them away happy. [A special thanks to “We sing silly songs” most of my best warm-ups come from that tape or from camp songs I learned as a kid… who knew ridiculous songs would actually help me after college?]

Happy six months in Kazakhstan to me (and the rest of the 19s)!

Some words of Encouragement

This past month was pretty boring because we had student teachers at our school. The first round of teachers took over most of our classes, and I was getting moderately bored and then I realized we’d have a second round. That’s when I asked if those teachers would like to teach with me, and fortunately for my sanity they did. It was a lot of fun to get to hang out with different teachers for awhile. I did start an English Club for the teachers at my school who want to know English and it is pretty popular so far. I have more teachers at that club than I do students in my other clubs. And they’ve asked me to start a second club for Teachers who can’t meet at the first time.
My new family is good. I have two brothers who live at home and they crack me up. They’re only a year apart in age so they like to fight a lot, but that means my life is more entertaining for me. I’ve never had brothers before so I don’t know if the nightly wrestling matches are what normally happens with brothers or if it’s just mine. Anyway, one of them is fascinated with my MP3 player. He’ll come into my room and ask if he can just sit and sift through the songs, and as he was listening one day he was pushing the volume up and asked how far up it goes (he was at 24). I said I don’t know how loud it can get and he shook his head in amazement. THAT is America; MP3 players that have seemingly endless volume capabilities. (I checked later and found it goes up to 40, I’m not sure what that means exactly, but it’s probably not good for the ears.)

And now for your information and entertainment some journal entry excerpts:
January 17, 2008
It was -30 degrees at sundown, so -45 is expected which means SCHOOL’S OUT! I feel like all these school cancellations make up for all the snow days I didn’t get as a kid.
January 20, 2008
Tonight we banya-ed at our babushka’s house and it was the hottest banya I’ve been in. I almost passed out. I feel like such a wuss. But a clean wuss.
January 25, 2008
I realized something shocking today. In the U.S. we don’t have candy and cookie trays on the table for every meal. In fact, if memory serves me correctly, my mom did her best to not have sweets in the house. But what did we do without the candy? What did we eat with our after meal tea? …wait… wait, WAIT. We don’t drink tea with our meals in the U.S. We don’t have candy at least three times a day in the United States??? I can’t believe it.
January 26, 2008
I can’t decide if I love the banya so much because it’s actually a cleansing experience or if it’s due to the fact that by the end of the week I feel just so disgusting that ANY opportunity to pour water on myself is a miracle. Either way, I feel miraculously clean right now.
January 30, 2008
So at around 1am I got out of bed and went to the outhouse. Going to the outhouse when it’s dark/-40degrees is a process, both psychological and physical. I have to put on my outhouse garb (hat, gloves, light coat, and bicycle helmet flashlight – no helmet) and talk myself into just going out there. “Come on, Jessica, you know you aren’t going to go back to sleep unless you just get out there and do this…” So I get myself out there and back in the house and as soon as I got back in bed we had an earthquake. Had I waited any longer to go/ had it happened sooner, I could have fallen in. [Note: the outhouse doesn’t have a seat, just a hole. And it’s slippery in there because the temperature has not gone above freezing since late November, so falling in is a very real possibility.]
January 31, 2008
My novice club went so well the students wanted to stick around for 30 more minutes! I must be doing something right, yeah?
February 3, 2008
I had chai with them after and they asked me questions about life in America and what my family is like and one man said “This is great! We only ever see Americans on television, but one is sitting here, right now! with us! Drinking chai…”
February 7, 2008
While I was walking to the library with my site-mate a post-woman stopped us and said “You’re Jessica! I have a letter for you!” As I was signing she realized who my site-mate was and “I have one for you too!” [Special Note: MAIL IS AMAZING! Even the post lady is excited to give us our mail, so keep it coming!]

And I will leave you now with an apology for the way my address appears on the side of the blog. Unfortunately the internet I'm using right now is pretty slow and I can't change it... It looks like three little lines, but I promise it's there if you cut and paste.

Just the Facts

Fact: I have moved so my address has changed. See over there ------>

Fact: The most important thing I brought with me to Kazakhstan was my head flashlight. It is just ridiculiously useful for outhouse runs.

Fact: MAIL IS AMAZING! Thank you!!

Fact: Once again, I have no time to tell you funny stories. Next time.

Ok, one. My new host family is funny. My last family was too, but my new host father has this hilerious laugh and you cant help but laugh when he does, even if you don't know (or understand) why he is laughing. So last night I decided to use a new phrase I've learned basically saying "I'm stuffed as a dog" and he burst out laughing like you wouldn't believe. It must have been the funniest thing he's ever heard in his life. So there you are, I was funny in Russian. That's a victory, I think.