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.

The multi-purpose fridge

One noticeable difference between a kitchen in America and a Kitchen in Kazakhstan is the refrigerator. For a while we didn't even have one here. It's cold enough in the winter that we just put our stuff on the front porch, and in the summer... just don't buy stuff that spoils.

In December my family got a huge, new, pure white fridge, and I noticed something really weird - it stayed white. Nothing was posted on it, no pictures, no magnets, no notes. Nothing. It was so strange to see a plain, white, magnetic surface with absolutely nothing clinging to it. So at the beginning of the summer, I made a calendar for my family to see where I would be and when and I used a magnet to put it on the side of the fridge.

This was the best idea ever, according to my host mother. I returned after a couple weeks of camps to find it covered in notes to my host brothers. "Don't forget! Feed the dog! Do the dishes! Don't spend too much time talking on the phone!"

It is the beginning of a new era.

The nature and BFFs

I had this really great plan to put some insightful update here, and then I discovered the "we read" feature on Facebook, so I just spent a lot of time updating that... Sorry faithful readers (mom). So quick update:

Last week I was at a Frisbee camp at my friend, Jeff's site. It was really cool to watch the kids improve and eventually be able to play without our help. And it was fun to run around and not teach English for a week.

This week I've been in what has been called "the most difficult place to live" in Kz. I'm here with my friend Mary for what we've decided is "camp Jessica" since I am as into making friendship bracelets as children are. Mid-week we took a hiking trip into the wilderness and went up the highest "peak" in central Kazakhstan (stop laughing CO people, it's still pretty). After, we descended and stayed with a family in a village on the other side of the mountain which was cool. I am always blown away with how hospitable people are here. Here came three dirty, hungry, maybe grumpy travelers that they didn't know that well and they opened up their home, fed us and I made best friends with their 8-year-old granddaughter.

"Jessica!" She whispered at dinner
"What?"
"Where are you sleeping tonight?"
"I'm sleeping in the next bedroom."
"Yeah?" I could tell where this was going.
"Yes, but I think I'll be sleeping with the cats, and Mary might have to sleep with me."
"But Grandma sleeps in that room."
"She told me I'm sleeping in her bed"
"... Alright." She got up to walk away then whispered, "Wherever you sleep, I'll sleep."

I gave her a friendship bracelet to make our BFF status official.

Sum sum summertime

It's summertime! Things are green instead of white, the sun barely sets at 11pm only to rise at 3am (compare with winter's setting at 4pm and rising at 9am), and the children we teach no are the ones who actually want to come to English camp (as opposed to the children who are dragged to English classes every week). Summer life in Kazakhstan is not bad at all.

So for the next couple months I will be traveling to different sites and helping other volunteers with their camps, and hopefully I'll be able to put “highlights” here.

This is a picture of a camp held at Lisa's school, which is a couple hours away from my site. We reviewed the past simple tense, then gave them pictures of people and told them to write sentences about what they saw. So, naturally he said, “Yesterday, I killed this bear.”

Bunnies

Our rabbits had babies. About ten to be exact, and in order to prevent ten turning into 40 my host mother has been telling my brothers "You need to sell those bunnies. What do we need bunnies for? We don't eat them; they don't give us milk or eggs. Send them away! Sell them at the bazar!"

"What?! Do the bunnies bother you? What did the bunnies ever do to you?"

So we still have ten baby bunnies.