Frantic final farewells fuel fears of former

This is the final blog for Kazakhstan… for now, at least.

I did it. 27 months of life in Kazakhstan, most of it in Pavlodar. And though I still haven’t left, I’m already looking back through pictures, savoring each one like a French meal chased with some rare Bordeaux. Each picture tells numerous stories, most of them laughs and smiles, but some of them pain and sadness as well. I dwell on them all.

Arriving here at 22 and leaving at 25, I’ve certainly grown and matured as a person as well. I’ve had to learn to rely more on myself, my skills and knowledge, and my instincts to get by sometimes. And while no person is quite the same they were 3 years ago, I feel like my change has been at an accelerated rate because of the conditions: living abroad, living far away, different language, mentality. Everything I once knew was stripped away and replaced with something new. Now it’s being stripped away once again, but this time it’s like I’ll be returning to a memory of a life once lived. The strange and weird became normal and preferred while the other life was simply a source of stories with which to regale locals.

My plan for return to America will be simple: visit friends and family, work catering part time for the time being, and not share much from my past 2+ years. There is no way we can relate on a day-to-day basis for the past two years and no small talk or quick conversation can make you understand what my life was like. Just know it was very different and coming back is going to be perhaps a bigger challenge than was leaving.

I look forward to seeing all of you and hopefully rekindling the flames of our friendships. Much love and hugs.

Nina and me at a museum, where Samal's youth took a trip.


Olga and I having fun with my hats.


Falafel


Final meal in Pavlodar - Sushi and African wine.


Met and had fun times with the Kaz21 Language teachers - Lena and Zhenya.


Volunteers taking the official Oath of Office.


Shannon Huett is a Kaz21 who will replace me at Samal.


Nina Petrovna and Barack Obama. He travels far just to meet Peace Corps Volunteers.


A yurt that people actually live in.


Me overlooking Almaty, near the TV tower.

Latinos, life-long links, and leaving love

With less than a month in my volunteer service, I would be lying if I said I haven't been delaying dealing with all the emotions that come when one packs up a life into a suitcase and says goodbye to dear friends. Because I have been and I haven’t done so yet because I don’t know that I want to deal with all of that. Having broken up with Olga was a big deal for me for a lot of reasons, one of which is because she’s such an amazing person and has a good heart and head. I never felt that close to anyone as I did with her and though I hope we'll become life-long friends, it will still be really hard to leave her.

Work has been piling on in the final two months and it’s been a good distraction for me. As Karashash said the other day, volunteers should be here for three years because they really get into things their last 6 months or so, and so far, it seems that she’s right. With the website projects, the translating I’ve been doing, the final reports for other projects, and writing even new projects that Samal will do without me, I haven’t felt more successful as I do now. By the way, we are finally getting internet and a projector, two things I’ve been trying to get for two years. Too bad I won’t see their use, sigh ;-)

Other events – I helped pour a concrete floor in my friends’ banya we’re building out at their village house they bought. It would be nice to use it once before I left, but it all depends on whether they get the money together to finish it.

I celebrated Asiya's 24^th birthday with her and we had a fun time bowling and then walking around the city all night. She and I also went to a Latino Dance Party last weekend and had a fun time!

A couple people from “Samal” hosted a good-bye party for me with the other volunteers at a nice café two weeks ago and I’ve never eaten so much in my life. We had fun talking and dancing and it was the first time most of the volunteers had met my director and a couple other staffers before.

The answer to the million dollar question is: November 18^th, 3:50pm. That’s when I’ll be flying in to Dulles Airport. A herald trumpet fanfare with exotic animals, cobras, Italian grapes, aged wine and cheese, and palm branches cooling me off would be preferred, but I’ll still be glad to see any who show up :-)

My international table - chinese spices, soy paste, black mushrooms, Georgian (the country) wine, and hot peppers from Chechnya.


Redesigning Samal's image is something I've been working on for a while. That's our new logo on the new business cards I had printed for my director. Pretty swift, eh?


To make 1.5 gallons of marinara sauce, I used many many tomatoes. All fresh garden tomatoes from the cute little grandmother's who sit outside and sell their excess produce :-)


Got a couple green tomatoes in the mix and decided to go Southern in my kitchen.


Asiya and I hanging out in the park by the river on a nice autumn day.


Samal and oblast volunteers enjoying themselves - На здоровье!


We opened the 2009-10 school year at Samal with a concert and a classroom presentation.


I call it the "Fresh Start." Thanks to Vika for letting me use her Magic Bullet, I made breakfast smoothies from raspberries, Juneberries (never heard of that in English - ирги), and Kefir. Can you believe that they have no plain yogurt here!?

Normalizing neighbors and the net

I have a good life.

Yet another chilly summer day, the market is bumbling busily outside. I'll be on my way momentarily to buy eggs, sugar, and bread. To be honest, I don't have much new to say. I had a plan for this blog in my head, but I lost it, so I’ll be haphazardly trying to remember what I wanted to say.

Last Wednesday, we invited some of the local neighborhood teens to come and do some games with our youth outside in the courtyard. Apparently we've had issues with some of them in the past, drinking and smoking on or near our property or just being pesky in general, so our director decided to invite them, which I thought was a really cool and ingenious way to deal with the problem. They came and played with and some even starting chatting with our disabled youth. It was really neat to see that.

I've finally been making progress in my website studies and as a result, am feeling more motivated to work. My translation project is coming along well also. Things are looking up :-)

Nina, my counterpart, was talking to me the other day about how she's kind of tired of Russian fare sometimes and how they use the recipes with the same few ingredients. She likes the idea that I experiment with different local ingredients to make some strange dishes. And I got to thinking. Dangerous, normally, but I'm trying to figure out what kinds of departing gifts I can give to my close friends here and I think I'm gonna make a bi-lingual, nicely designed, color vegetarian cookbook. So I've started taking pictures of the different dishes I make and working on a basic layout.

Neighbor teens together with Samal's teens.


Luisa (wheelchair), Maxhat (red shirt), and neighborhood teens.


The Samal Russian homepage.


The (new) "Challenge" home page.


Chips and three-bean salsa.


Pesto tossed with pasta and tomatoes.


I canned two jars of pickles.

Mushroom meals and motivation

To be honest, these posts are getting tougher and tougher to write. I’m about out of creative ideas. Things that were once interesting to me to write about aren’t anymore – they’re just secondary things that happen in life these days. Good timing, I suppose – November 2^nd is my last day as a volunteer. I’ve been reading more and more about my friend Zach’s suggestion to travel through Tajikistan for a week or so after we finish our service – and it looks fairly attractive. I have a couple safety concerns, but I’m sure Zach will talk me into it anyhow. The biggest issue for me at this point is logistics. I’m thinking that perhaps we take a train from Kazakhstan to Tajikistan and then back, I’ll be able to fly home with few problems. But if leaving from Dushanbe, then there’s a lot of research to do.

I got a new chair at work… I know, big news. It’s an office chair with wheels and it swivels (swivel chair is вращающийся стул in Russian, by the way. That is a Russian present active participle, which I’ve been studying recently). It goes up and down also. Basically, it’s a nice chair. That’s my chair story for the week.

My motivation to get motivated is dwindling as well, which is also a problem. If I can’t motivate myself to get motivated to finish a couple last things, then I don’t know what’s going to happen. I have a physical therapy manual to finish translating into Russian and two websites to build – well, one to rebuild and another to completely create. If I can finish those things, I will consider my service successful. I’ve been reading and doing a lot of trial-and-error with DreamWeaver™, an Adobe product for creating websites. Publisher turned out to be a bad choice, so starting over again.

I went to a sports camp for disabled kids this past weekend and while I didn’t do much except not get sleep because of circumstances outside of my control, I did get to enjoy the beautiful nature up there and go mushroom picking. Kevin, a fellow volunteer teaching English in a village an hour away from the city, and I went for a walk across the steppe along the edge of the pine forest – really gorgeous. The shear size of the steppe is boggling sometimes and tends to put you in your place, something I need more often.

Enjoying the "fruits" of their labor - making fruit pizza.


Asiya and I went for coffee and our favorite cafe, Krendel.


Drinking a beer from a very cute Winnie the Pooh glass at an outdoor Uzbek cafe.


Sagar and Sally making curry - mm!


You be the judges - which looks more authentic? Sagar, the Indian, made one and I made one.





A wheelchair obstacle race.


Tug of war!


Johnny Mushroomseed


Jackpot! Kevin on the left, Nina on the right.


Cleaning and preparing the mushrooms to be boiled a bit.


My variant of a chinese dish we got at the cafe by my apartment.


Colorfully designed drinks at my favorite coffee shop.


Olga and I at dinner at the "Old Englishman."

Weird weather, walking with wheelchairs, and weddings

I deal with a lot of pictures and documents – I have 9,115 pictures and 17,460 documents. And that’s only counting Peace Corps stuff. I’m always capturing new moments and reading, writing, editing files, etc. Reports, translations, emails with 5 attachments – I save it all. I download everything or save everything to my desktop until I’ve figured out into which file it should be catalogued. Needless to say, my desktop can get a little crowded if I get behind and this happens often. I usually sit down every couple weeks and sort pictures and files so that it’s clean and clear and under control (your welcome for the pitch, Johnson & Johnson). Why the explanation? Because people wonder why I don’t post more often and it’s usually because it’s too messy to make an update.

That being said, much has happened! We prepared for and held a rockin’ summer camp and I was the best man at my friend Maher’s wedding. Other smaller things happened like I’m finally getting my CV together, I lost my cell phone, and I got a little cold (but it’s going away).

For the camp, six other volunteers joined me to help make this camp a great success! Thanks go out to Emily, Zach, Mary, Sagar, Corinne, and Nick for helping to do crafts, nature walks, games, sports, and assist with wheelchairs, etc. Without your help, it couldn’t have happened. Big shout out to the Almaty International Women’s Club as well for funding most of this camp and thanks to mom and dad and Redeemer Lutheran Church for their donation via the BBQ fundraiser as well! Besides the pictures below, check out more HERE.

The wedding was also nice. It was really great to see Maher and his wife, Victoria, united in marriage. I literally haven’t seen a more photogenic couple than them. She was beautiful, he was handsome, and I liked that the reception wasn’t huge, it felt more intimate for everyone. About 18 volunteers were able to make it to the wedding and see my great city at the same time (in weddings there is always lots of driving around to take pictures around the city). It was just a really nice day and evening, no stress, and no problems.

Tired Americans on the way to camp.


S'mores! The kids loved them, but then again, who doesn't love a healthy dose of sugar just before bed?


This guy works at the camp as a gardener and came to play his accordion for us at our fire - awesome!


The six volunteers who helped me all week (with kids).


Relaxing after a long day, watermelon was a tasty delight.


Playing "Red light, green light."


DJ Swede mixing hits and gettin' his dance on.


Morning exercises.


I love this shot - the colors/textures are awesome.


Katya, our local volunteer, with a tie-dyed shirt.


The lake.


Taking a hike in the mountains.


Igor playing with a child.


Inna and I taking a paddleboat ride.


Dance club.


The map of the lake (the middle one) and the surrounding area.


Zach and Emily making banana boats from bananas and chocolate chips.


Woohoo! I'm flying!


Walking out of the registration to confetti.


What a gorgeous couple!


The groom, maid of honor, and best man (me) had to dance to "The Nutcracker Suite."


That glass is full of vodka - I saw the waiter pour it myself - he drank the whole thing in about 4 seconds. That's what, 8-10 russian (15ish american) shots?