Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Fleece Vests and Acorns

When I started this blog it was to help all of you who do not live in Ust to stay abreast of current events happening here. Apparently the only way that works is if I actually write a blog more than once a month. Who knew, and here I thought all of friends’s blog’s just magically wrote themselves. Anyway, I will try to be more regular however last time I wrote a blog and did not send emails I got in trouble, so for now on I am going to try harder. :) Haha.

Well, I recently returned from my IST (In-Service Training,) while we were there, we celebrated 4 months of service in Kazakhstan, and at the beginning of September we celebrated 6 months of being in country!! Yikes! Time sure has flown by. As I stare out my window, the trees are changing, and I can feel the leaves crunching under my Teva’s as I walk to work. When we arrived snow was falling, and the country was patiently awaiting the arrival of spring. Now, the air has taken a colder turn, and I am starting to dig through my bags in an attempt to find the hordes of long underwear and fleece vests I brought. The trees here remind me more of my years spent in Missouri, the sidewalks and streets are littered with multi-colored leaves and falling acorns. The cafés (the majority of which are located strictly outside) are now offering blankets for cold patrons to wrap themselves in and yet, when I ask for chai with milk at the local café they said they were out. Ummm…tell me, if it is cold outside and this is a staple of the local diet, and when you are located right next door to a magazine (store) that sells both of these items, why do you not have chai with milk? It is not as though I am asking for an extra hot, skinny grande caramel macchiato. Really, I find myself adapting, but some things I will never understand.

On the whole, things are looking up. Summer was a crazy time filled with traveling (somehow I managed to spend more than a month on the road despite our 3 month travel ban,) vacations, and making adjustments. I am beginning work on a cancer awareness month for Ust, which is the largest project I have tried coordinating at my NGO. My previous experience in healthcare of any kind is pretty nonexistent but I am trying to learn the ropes (if anyone has any ideas please drop me a line, I can use any help and/or advice you have.)

I will be staying in Ust until Thanksgiving, and quite honestly, after returning from Almaty with a backpack full of dirty clothes, and a much lighter checkbook I was actually glad to be home. :)

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Initially this blog was composed of my traveling woes but then my friend pointed out that I already had a really negative blog and to add another is unforgivable soo in response this is just a quick story (because it must be told) and the rest is about vacation.

I got screwed over by an old Kazakh driver who took me to the wrong town, even after I told him I needed to go to Ushtobe in order to catch my train, instead he took me to Tekely, where there is no train station. Seriously though, my Russian needs work but I don't think Ushtobe sounds anything like Tekely. All in all, I ended up loosing over 5,000 tenge and had to spend 20 hours on a cramped old Soviet bus instead. Lesson learned: When I loose my temper my Russian improves dramatically, and if you sit on your luggage, it effectively communicates to the other person that you a) will not allow them to take your belongings and b) you will not pay 800 tenge when they take you to the wrong town. :)

On a lighter note, I arrived in Ust, ran to work that morning, attended some "meetings," met with some of the volunteers, and made the rash decision to join them at Blue Bay. Hey, I was completely stressed after that incident and I came back only to find my organization still had no work for me, so I just decided to go on vacation. Nothing like a little R & R to put things in perspective. We rented a dacha on a large lake in the mountains (kinda like Lake of the Ozarks but with less people, less plumbing, and the mountains are bigger (so really only the size is the same:)) Anyway, there were 7 of us who went (5 guys, 3 girls, all from the EKZ) and we just hung out on the beach, played volleyball, drank, ate, read books, and did a little bit of hiking.

Blue Bay is considered a resort so while I have been living here for 6 months and feel I have a fairly realistic expectation of resort, Kazakhstan though still manages to catch me by surprise. I think the "resort" part was the 20 stall bazaar we past on the way in. You could rent jet skis (is that one word? Sorry Liz, I forgot all of your lake lessons you taught me,) though, and we even saw someone water skiing. There was a banya (which we did take part in) and a cafe plus karaoke (no such thing as a good vacation without the karaoke (no we didn't do that.)) Or if you want more local experiences I recommend sitting on the beach watching drunk old Russian men in leopard print speedos tipping over paddle boats (yep, just like the ones at amusement parks in the States) or you could have Russian enforcers (he said he was a boxer from the mafia hhmmm...) come ghosting (visiting) with their pet albino rat.

All together, vacation was really good, pretty expensive, but definitely worth it. :)