One-One (Burr-Burr) or My Christmas (the semi-disaster)

So this morning was alright.  That is until I left the house.  I hate the sort of blogs that ramble on about a while day- but I promise you, this has got a point.

The world Christmas morning wasn’t white.  It was brown.  And grey.  And covered in an inch of ice.

Having of course fallen down a set of stairs on the ice yesterday, I was a little reticent about this whole ice thing.  But the half-an-hour to school wasn’t getting any shorter, so I forged ahead.

Like an idiot I didn’t bring gloves.  Or a hat.  And I wasn’t wearing my boots, I was wearing my tennis shoes.

Way to be a winner, Laura.

So anyway, I fell twice.  The second time I literally failed my arms on the ground and threw a small tantrum.  Since I was going in early to cook with my students, I had dishes and ingredients in a box I was carrying.  I broke my honey (which is very expensive here) and my host mother’s dish.

It was not a good morning.

So I get to school and making gingerbread cookies is an epic fail.  The chocolate chip cookies I set up as a ‘back-up’ were also a giant failure.  Luckily my kids were good (great really, I invite the ones who do excellently in class to come to cooking), but I just couldn’t let go of the failure of it all after the morning that I had had.

And my hand (which I hit really hard when I fell the second time) was throbbing.

So then, my teaching day starts.  I gave presents that I had wrapped to students (apparently they don’t give wrapped presents here- this was a HUGE deal), we watched ‘Elf’ in every class, and I generally tried to be cheerful.  Despite (yes I know I told you, but I’m going to tell you again) a wickedly throbbing hand.

Then enter 7A.  Generally the golden class, that had a short and very simple translation test.  Guess what?  They bombed.  And all my ‘I miss my family’ thoughts, and ‘Shit, this is Christmas- this blows’ thoughts- plus the fact that my 7A didn’t study for a test I’d reminded them about for weeks—- well let’s just say all of that plus the hand— they didn’t stand a chance.

In atrocious Kazakh I told them that this (teaching them) was my life for two years.  I pointed out all the things I prepared for them: the card games, the board games, the every-thing really.  I reminded them how much more work it was for me to prepare for their classes.

And I told them, in no uncertain terms, they could at least study.

Okay, so maybe it doesn’t sound so bad, but I’ve never come close to raising my voice to any of my kids.  And I was pissed.  So even if the grammar would have normally caused them fits of giggles, they didn’t move.  I shamed the hell out of them.

And then, of course, I felt bad about it.

And my hand was throbbing.

—-

You can imagine when I was finally done teaching how thrilled I was to be done.  I just wanted to slide on my butt across the ice home, lock myself in my room, and go to sleep.  I was exhaused: physically and emotionally.

And then mylovely co-workers informed me that I had to stay to prepare for “New Years.”

Right.  Frickin’ awesome. My holiday sucked, and what I want to do now is prepare for yours.  That’s what I want to do.

But of course I did.  Miles of glitter, ridiculous amounts of fussing and several hours later it was beginning to look dark outside.

This day was just getting more and more awesome.  Walking the 30 minutes  home on the ice, in the dark, alone.

Hurray.

All of  a sudden Aida and Tokjan whisked me upstairs.  All the young teachers had gotten together to throw me a Christmas party.  There was food and presents (the got me warm clothes and a hat! because I don’t dress warm enough!) and a lot of singing and laughing.  Here everyone around the table sings like it’s karaoke night every night.

I loved it.

They told me that they adored me, were so lucky to have me.  They said they understood that my family was far away, and that today of all days I would miss them.  They told me they were part of my family now.

And to top it all off, my teachers walked me home.  Linking arms none of us fell, because we all leaned on one another.  The stars were bright and air had only a slight bite to it.  We skated along, holding each other up, laughing.

I love the word for each other in Kazakh.  It’s what would sound like ‘Burr-Burr’ to you.   Burr is the Kazakh word for one, so it’s literally one-one.  And with the inflection, the meaning is perfectly clear.

Burr-burr.  One to one. We.  Eachother.

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A word on отбасы

More days then not it’s easy to be here.  I wake up every morning excited to go to work and see miy kids (who all bounce up and down out of their seats to answer my questions (yes, even the dreaded teenagers bounce)).

I love the people that I work with.  I have a phenomenal Kazakh teacher whose patience and friendship save me a lot of frustration (Рахмет, Аінөр).  I work with two amazing young teachers, whose zeal for learning new games and having fun inspire me to come up with more and more things to do (I’m thinking egg drop come spring, Айда және Тоқжан).  I spend days and travel money on materials for my classroom, and I don’t do it begrudgingly.  I love it.  Every minute of it.

But sometimes things here are a little difficult.  I miss my friends, I miss my family.  And that’s normal, and I accept it.

Today, I got some packages.  And believe me, when America comes to you, it’s all you can do to stay through tutoring and not think too much about the things with English print that await you.

I opened my boxes today, and I started crying.  I realized- it might seem trite, but it’s true, so go with me on this- that I didn’t really care what was in the boxes.  I was just overwhelmingly grateful for this physical manifestation of how much I am loved.

I don’t get hugs here in Kazakhstan.  There’s no “See you later.”  It’s: “See you in two years.”  So these boxes, they really meant something, and it didn’t have to do with Christmas or presents.

It had to do with mom sending me essential oils: lavender, and grapefruit- my two favorite smells.  She knew it.

It had to do with my sister, braving malls of all things, to find the perfect pair of jeans.  Kate, they are wonderful.

It had to do with my aunt, who sent me a box full of spices and flavors.  Not just any, but seriously spicy.  Aunt n, Uncle John, Elizabeth- I’m saying thank you, because I don’t have any other words to really say.

It had to do with my sister Leigh burning me music.  Shes knows I lost it all, and she sent me some of my favorites, music you can’t find anywhere else in the world but at home.

It had to do with my grandma, who sent me Crystal Lite.  That may sound strange, but when all you drink is tea, pink lemonade is a God send.

It had to do with my dad, who put up with all the nit-picking 4 women can do.  Thanks dad, without you, we wouldn’t have the things we do- we wouldn’t be able to do the things we do.  Without you, I would never be here.

So yeah, отбасы.  I’m building a little bit of a family here, but guys, I miss you.

Thanks.

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Already thinking too far forward

I’m worrying about the future.  Again.  I know it might seem crazy that I’m worrying about my future after Peace Corps even though I’m not quite 1/4th of the way through.  (Let’s be honest though, 1/4 is a significant fraction.  I have tons of goals for my stay here and I’m only just getting started).

So I was in my classroom, waiting for my 8v class to show up, and I got to looking at a world map.  I realized how many countries I’ve never heard of that are in my backyard.  So I started looking some of them up in this world atlas we have in English.  What an amazing part of the world I live in.  There are so many places to go and things to see- so many things off the beaten path that weren’t ever options living in America.  Sure, you can argue that people are people everywhere on this planet, but cultures are still astounding, amazing and mind-boggling.  I want to see it all, but more than that I want to live in it.  Living in another cultural, learning a language with a different alphabet and sounds that don’t exist in English- it’s been intensely stimulating and wonderful.  I love it here, but I don’t want to be bored- in two years I”m sure I’ll be ready for another adventure.  For somewhere else.  For something new.

Today I went to a friend’s house for her birthday party.  Her sister has this amazing 9 month old baby.  His name is Nurbol and he is perfect .  I mean it when I say perfect.  He’s a quiet baby, with these giant eyes, and he sways like he’s dancing to commercial music. He laughs all the time, his big marshmallows ceeks wrinkling with mirth.  I’ve seen a lot of babies in my life, but as far as I’m concerned Kazakh babies are among the world’s most beautiful.

So of course we’re sitting there,  and my uterus kicked in.  Nurbol has been thrust into my arms (believe me, I didn’t resist) and the only thing I can think is:  “I want one.”   This fat little baby in my arms had my heart doing somersaults over my head.  My head kept repeating a simple fact:  There are hundreds of orphans in Kazakhstan.  I could have one in a heartbeat.

Logic eventually wrestled my thoughts away from jogging to nearest orphanage and signing the papers, but let’s be honest.  I want that.  I want an adorable little human to watch over and protect.  To teach language to, to read to, to share everything I love with, everything I value.  That’s huge.  What an honor, what a gift.

But.  But, but, but.  There’s always buts, aren’t there?  If I chose to have a child, I would be choose to give up on so much more.  On a life of travel and adventure.  On the ability to teach and inspire and live in this amazing way I’m learning to live in.  I’m good at this.  Maybe even great.  Maybe that sounds conceited, but I mean it.  This is the job and the life for me.  It works.  And I love it.

Not to mention, I’m at the point in my life where I realize how incredibly short our lives are.  We don’t really have that much time.  All the choices we make matter, because really, it will done and over with and we don’t have accomplished near what we wanted.  That’s scary.  It’s scary to understand that, to accept that.  But it’s the truth.

So what do you do when the things that most interest and inspire you contradict one another so much?  What can you do if the things you want are so diametrically opposed, and life is such a really short thing?

I’m open to ideas on this one.  Shoot em my way if you’ve got em.

The world is calling- millions of opportunities are opening up.

I just don’t know which to choose.

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Odd Adoration

Maybe I shouldn’t like my students.  A lot of people I know are pretty frustrated.  When your ninth graders have been taught English since second grade, and they can’t count past ten, I understand the frustration.  I had that day.

But I can’t keep it.  My kids are amazing.  Wild gesticulations, infectious curiosity, and lively debates in Kazakh I can’t quite understand- they’re hilarious.  They’re entertaining.  They’re honest.

It’s so refreshing.  I love work.  I love trudging through the mud in the cold when it’s still dark outside.  I sing to myself, all the way, knowing full well that in 30 minutes I will have a captive audience in the palm of my hand.  They are so hungry for new information.  Ravenous for something different.  For something to change.

It turns out that not only is their enthusiasm catching.  After express directions not to go to school today from Dr. Victor, yours truly walked to school carrying 15 pounds of shit to make apple pie with.  The kids were waking up early to come in and cook with me- you didn’t think I was going to leave them hanging, did you?

Of course I wasn’t.  It was a blast, but of course I’m paying for it now.  Still- utterly worth it.  I’ll try to post pictures on photobucket.

So yeah, it might be odd.  But I love the buggers, I love my job, and I love this place.

Boy oh boy, did Peace Corps send me to the right place, or what?

Not too bad, Laura.  Not bad at all.

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That really obnoxious update post you might (not) want to read…

So, here’s my new life, as succinctly as I can squish it.

I live in south-central Kazahkstan.  You may think that means it’s warm here, but I assure you it’s not.  Then again, at this moment there isn’t any snow, it’s only been airbound.  There’s a ton of mud however.  I’m not sure if it’s encouraging or discouraging, to be frank with you I don’t really care one way or the other.  It’s just mud people.  (Locals here complain a lot about the mud).

Right, back on track.  So, my city is called жаңатас.  That’s Jangatas to you folks back home (the funny n with the tail sounds a lot like ‘ng’ only more like you’re choking on a small critter).

If  you’re one of those people I told I was going to learn Russian, sorry, I lied.  Turns out, at orientation I decided to do a 180 and learn Kazakh instead.  Kazakh, what’s that, right?  It’s a language that is used only in the country of Kazakhstan of course (though if you didn’t deduce that on your own, your gene pool is really against you).

Kazakh is like the Russian language, only on speed.  It’s really debatable which one is harder, but to make myself feel better at my lame struggle with the damn thing, I’m going with Kazakh.

The alphabet has an incredible amount of letters.  How many exactly I can’t quite recall at the moment, but here are those unique to the Kazakh language (it’s the Russian alphabet plus the following): ә і ң ғ ү ұ қ ө һ.  In case you haven’t guessed, the little h with the tale (that’s the ‘ng’ sound) and the little k with the tail (sounds like k only gutteral), are my favorite.  Adding that jaunty little dash at the end of them is fun.  The Ys are by far my least favorite.  They all stand for some select ‘o’ sound:  there’s ‘oooo,’ and ‘o’ as in the letter o, and uh (but the uh is rather y-sounding too).  I can never keep them straight.  You’ll note that two of these lovely letters are from my alphabet of choice.

After that, I’m not sure what else you’d really like to know about the language.  It’s a prefix and suffix (mostly suffix) based language, so you feel like a caveman when you speak correctly, for example in Kazak “I will go to the store tomorrow” is three words.  Of course, the verb is slammed with tons of prefixes, but that’s the basic idea.

So Jangatas (that’s my city, in case you’ve forgotten by now) was once this booming metropolis- that is, before perestroika (that, for those of you who don’t live in the former SSR, is the fall of the aforementioned).  Now, it’s rather deserted feeling, because there are giants streets for four lane traffic cars only occasionally zoom by on, and tons and tons of empty apartment buildings.  And then, of course, there are the apparently bombed out buildings from when all the Russians left Kazakhstan and went back to Russia.

Not the most picturesque of places, but I didn’t sign up for the beach, right?  Right.

The best part though, is the people.  Jangatas is basically all Kazak people.  They are friendly, polite and curious.  Not all of them, of course, but generally speaking.  And their children are not only all of that, but they are amazing students.  I love my school and my classes.  I actually just asked if I could teach my favorite age (8th graders) three times a week in the new semester.  I am seriously happy about this.  It’s awesome.

Yes there are problems.  No, it’s certainly not easy, and no it’s not hard in the ways you’d think.

But maybe that’s enough of an obnoxiously long update.

Let me know if you read this?  I’m not sure I’ll bother otherwise.

-L

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I haven’t felt like writing.

I haven’t felt like writing, because frankly, writing about what’s been up for the month and a half is a little overwhelming.  Today, though, something happened that made me want to write.  I promise to write soon about where I am and what’s going on, but I just want to say this:

Tonight, I was trekking through the mud after school.  Despondent snowflakes flurried in the air, knowing full well they’d never maage to cover the muck.  Classes were great.  I have amazing students, and they make my day, every day.  I was in a good mood.

Aida, one of the teachers I work with was walking with me.  She is this tiny thing- tiny even my Kazah standards, totally adorable with a wide eyes set in a wide face.  I adore her.

“I want to speak you… I mean tell you,” she said, “but I don’t know how.”  She laughed, I laughed.  We’ve been working on reported speach- it isn’t easy as a native speaker, so for her it’s a ton of effort, and she got it right.  She corrected herself.

I trudged on through the mud, hands stuffed in my pockets.

“I am happy.  I am happy now, that you are here.  Before I didn’t like this school, maybe, this job.  I didn’t want to be an English teacher.  I was not happy.”

I didn’t really know what to say.  I kept trudging.

“Now, lessons are funny (she meant fun), and I love to come to work.”

My heart kind of swelled for a minute, and I managed an awkward: “Thanks.”

It means more to me than she’ll ever know.

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