Quick Update

Just wanted to do a quick email update to let you into the loop. Our swearing-in ceremony was yesterday, so we became official Peace Corps Volunteers! My first official act was to . . . sit in a train station for five hours . . . and then board a train for 21 hours. The train ride was actually pretty relaxing. Our kupe was insanely hot at first (mostly because we had dragged about five bags each onto the wagon), but we opened the window, played some cards, and cooled down a bit. We got a lot of sleep to make up for the counterpart conference at Kok Tobe over the past few days, so it was nice to just relax and not worry about much for a while.

We arrived in Astana close to 4 PM, and my counterpart and I then took a taxi to माय village, which is about an hour and twenty minutes away. It's a very, very small village (only a thousand people), but I haven't seen much of it yet except houses and fields and part of the communal dairy farm (my summer goal is to learn how to milk cows!). The plan is to go to school tomorrow, meet the authorities, take a tour, and meet my potential host families.

I will try to keep you updated! It seems like internet is pretty easy to find around here, so hopefully either my host family will have it or I will be able to use it at school. My first goal is to find the post office and finally mail my letters that I wrote a month or two ago. And by the middle or end of the week I should have my new address. So be ready! :D

Love you all!

Week 5

Hey, all! There's not a lot to report this week. Things were very busy with lesson planning and teaching. My lessons went better, especially the Little Red Riding Hood-themed lesson on Monday. I'll begin teaching 8th grade as well this week, so I will have four lessons total. We'll see how those go! The group from Baltabai came yesterday for a scavenger hunt around Esik, which was enjoyable and a chance for us to do something other than sit around awkwardly in our host houses for a Saturday afternoon. We saw various sites around town - the hospital, the gynmasia, the stadium - and had to find some random things - a sleeping black dog, an old woman wearing a blue head scarf. Once we found and took pictures of all fifteen items, we had to describe them with adjectives or write a sentence about them. Points for creativity and timeliness. The winning group will get a night at PC HQ in Almaty, which means pizza and wireless internet. Wow! Not sure who will win yet . . . Tonight, our group is going to our Russian teacher's apartment to watch an American movie. Serenity has been suggested, but Easy A is also on the shortlist. Either way, we get to hear nothing but English for two hours. Weeee. :P (Not that I don't love Russian, but it's nice to have a break and not have to worry about sounding stupid because you can barely speak in full sentences.) Hope things are going well on the other side of the world! Talk to you kids soon.

Weekend

What glorious weather we're having today! It's warm and sunny and just gorgeous. It's mid-afternoon, and I'm definitely feeling that pleasantly sleepy feeling one gets on wonderful spring days. I just want to find a park and read a book! :D Well, some interesting stuff has happened this week. I think I already told you that we had dinner at our country director's apartment in Almaty last Sunday. That was fun because we got to go with another village and catch up with some friends, but also because we ate delicious food (cake!) and chatted about American things without feeling out of place. It was also a super nice apartment, so we got a view of the high life in Almaty. :P I talked a bit with a PC worker who'd visited Esik in the fall and met a brother at the Russian Orthodox church. He apparently spoke really good English, was very friendly, and offered to take her and her friend up to the monastery in the mountains in the spring where they make wine and honey. So now my friends and I are curious about this monk and monastery. We're trying to plan a time to go meet him. I will let you know how that works out. Either way, we'd love to get to the mountains. Today, we got shuttled into Almaty again, this time for a concert. Apparently the Nauryz celebration goes on for about a month, and the music college was putting on a concert. It was really neat to see all the different instruments. I'm still tinkling around with my dombra, but I was never great at musical theory, so I'm working on finding a teacher. My language teacher said he'd help find someone, maybe the music teacher at the school. Hopefully soon! I'm getting antsy with it just sitting in my room. This week was also a little hectic because we started teaching lessons. In addition to Russian classes, technical sessions, cross-cultural sessions, and English club, we now have to teach two classes a week (four starting in two weeks). Let me tell you - it was sort of a disaster. My introduction on Monday was fine. I wrote a poem about myself (although the students had trouble with the words relating to Pittsburgh - how do you explain 'pierogi' without cooking them?), and then did a group crossword puzzle with them, which went over well. But then on Wednesday when I had to 'team'-teach a lesson, it was downhill from there. For a warmup, I did a Shel Silverstein poem, which, again they enjoyed even if they didn't quite understand. But then the teacher only did the grammar, so I ended up doing the practice and production levels of the lesson. The students got confused during the practice, because we were doing exercises in the book, but I asked them to change the name in the example to the name of their partner at the desk. Not a good idea. Then they didn't understand when I asked them to write sentences and it was a little bit of a mess. I may not be good at this! Anyways, I have a Little Red Riding Hood-themed lesson planned for Monday, so hopefully they will be more engaged and be able to better understand that. Phew. Right now, I'm going to relax and enjoy the day! Maybe take a nap. ;) Catch you guys on the flip side!

Tidbits

Trying out Mail2Blog via the kindle.

So this has been a strange week. We had dinner at the country director's apartment in Almaty on Sunday, which was slightly surreal. A flush toilet! A flatscreen! The New Yorker! Crazy, but fun to relax and see the group from Baltabai.

Then we had school intros on Monday and first classes on Wed. My intro went well. I wrote a poem about myself and did a group crossword, which the kids liked a lot. But my class yst was a little crazy. Not sure I am cut out for this teacher thing yet!

Tidbits: Got more yarn for my scarf at the bazaar today. Learned the Russian word for 'shiny.' Reading Secret Garden and Scarlet Pimpernel. Found the post office but am in class when it's open. Going to Almaty on Sat for a concert of some kind haha. Missing hamburgers!

And I miss you all of course. :P 'Til next time! Go, Bucs!

Hello!

Not sureif this is going to work (on my kindle). Sorry for typos.

First of all, Kazakhstan is pretty cool. In a town called Esik. Gorgeous mountains! Snowed a good bit at first but it is warmingup.

The food is very good Lots of bread and pastries. Yum. Drinking lots of tea now, but I managed to find somehot chocolate in the store last week.

Went into Almaty yesterday. Saw some sights. Hope to get some pics up for you soon. Bought a dombre at the bazaar today. Next mission is to learn to play! Also got some yarn and a crochet needle. Hopefully I can make myself something warm.

Read Far From the Madding Crowd. Now on The 39 Steps. Happy birthday to Liz! Still cannot find the post office lol. More soon hopefully Mtfbwy. :)

Update from DC

Just a quick update from DC to let you all know I've made it through my first day as a Peace Corps Trainee (henceforth known as: PCT)! It was a lot of orientation material - what to expect, what our aspirations and anxieties are, even a few icebreakers - and now I'm pretty exhausted. After checkout tomorrow, we board buses to Dulles. Our flight leaves at 5:50 PM EST, we've got a fairly long layover in Frankfurt, and then we're scheduled to arrive in Almaty at 12:25 AM local time on the 11th.

I'll try to update soon and let you know what it's like, but I have no idea when I'll have internet access! In the meantime, take care! Love to you all. :)

Inaugural Post

First post! I really just wanted to get a post in so I could finally give out the blog URL to everyone. Also, my contact info is there to your right for your address books. :)

Well, I've got about two weeks left in the States, so I'm (not so) frantically trying to figure out what to pack. There are the necessities, of course - long underwear, warm boots, Chuck on DVD - but also little things to think about. Do I have all the e-books I want? Is there an artist out there I'm dying to listen to but whose CDs I keep forgetting to buy?

Which is where you come in! If you have a book, movie, or some music to recommend, please do so! I have downloaded the Kindle for PC software, so I'm able to take e-books with me. I will also have my mp3 player and my laptop with music. I'm sure I could use some more tunes for the plane ride! :)