First Glimpse

Zdrastvootyeh from Kazakhstan!

I have now been in Kazakhstan for over two weeks, but have only been into Almaty twice. I have been very busy with Russian lessons six days a week, observing classes at our schools, and adapting to living with my hostfamily.

For my living accomodations, I am living with a Kazakh family of eight, mother, father, four sons/grandsons, and two daughers, in a village of about 50,000 people outside of Almaty. The picture to the right is of the mountains near my house and a typical road in my village. I have my own room with a bed, desk, chair, and clothesrack. For the first week or so, my family was still cooking and eating all of their meals outside. We have a large patio area with a gas stove, refrigerator, and pantry. We eat a lot of soups and stews which usually include a lot of fresh vegetables, such as tomatoes and cucumbers from our garden, as well as a piece of meat like chicken or beef. Along with the soups, every meal also includes many cups of chai.

Attached to the patio is also the banya where I bathe as well as wash hands, brush teeth, etc. And behind the eating area is a small pen for my family's four chickens and one rooster and our toalyet (outhouse). The outhouse is an eight by eight cell with an oblong hole in the cement floor. Yes, I've used it every day since the first day I arrived.

My typical day includes waking up at 6:30, breakfast at 7, walking to school at 7:30, observing classes in the mornings or having technical sessions related to teaching, lunch from 12-2, then Russian lessons from 2-6. After all of those Peace Corps activities, I walk home, eat dinner around 7 or 8, and study Russian until bed around 10 or 10:30. It is an exhausting schedule, but I am very glad to be here and I am overwhelmed with the excellent quality of the training we are receiving, both with our Russian lessons and with the technical training related to teaching in Kazakhstani schools.

I have only had a few chances to play soccer, once at the school with some of my fellow trainees and a few other times at my house with my younger hostbrothers. Aside from soccer, we trainees occasionally go to the cafe in our village for lunch and a beer or go for a walk around our village.

I have yet to buy a cellphone yet, but today I went to the Barayholka Bazaar and bought some dress shoes for 2600 Tenge (~130 Tenge to the Dollar) with the help of a friend, Darkhan. The man selling the shoes listened to Darkhan and I speak and found out I was American so he asked 4500 Tenge for the shoes. He was speaking in Russian, but I was able to make out "American" and "4500 Tenge" and knew that this was way too high, so Darkhan and I left his stall. Then he cut his price by almost 2000 Tenge, so I went back inside and was able to finally settle on the final price. I thought this was a success considering a Volunteer who has been here for three years already said he paid around 2500 for his shoes.

More exciting than buying the shoes was the bazaar itself which stretched for acres. It was all housed under many large metal roofs that were probably 20 feet tall. Each stall was actually two large metal shipping containers stacked on top of each other. Today, Sunday, is the very busy day for the bazaar so there were thousands of people there, buying clothes, shoes, food, electronics, basically whatever you were in the market for. Though I've been to large markets in Brazil, this definitely took the cake in terms of size and number of people.

In conclusion, it has been an exhausting few weeks here thusfar, but I am upbeat and enjoying life. Feel free to comment on this posting, but I have no idea when I will next be online to read it. Thanks for reading. -peace