To the Kosmos!

It's been a little while, but things are going all right.  It's almost time to head back to the U.S.  It's a bittersweet point for me.  As of tomorrow I have a week left in Almaty.  As per usual, Kazakhstan is an amazingly well kept secret.  The best times I've had here, like always are with the friends I've made and how they've taken me into their homes and hearts.  I'm not really at liberty to go into it, but there's been some personality conflicts and things that have put me under a lot of stress and really made the time here a lot less pleasant than it usually was.

I'm not saying I've had a bad time here--far from it, but sadly this trip has probably been the least enjoyable one.  But I'm not here to talk about that, I'm here to talk about the good and to thank some of the people who have made this trip not just bearable, but enjoyable.

First person I want to thank is my good friend Marah.  I first met Marah waaaaaaaaaaaaay back in my old Semey days--back in '11.  She was a student at SSPI and she wasn't one of our teaching assistants, but she often came along to our campouts and helped us out.  Earlier in July she got in touch with me--surprising me with the news that she's now living in Almaty, with her own English language school.  She gave me the opportunity to help out with a few of her classes--which is always neat.  People here who are studying English are usually very dedicated to their study, motivated, and extremely friendly.

Marah's opportunity helped me to reconnect with people in Kazakhstan, which in a country of abundant natural resources are truly the best resource they have, in my opinion.  At the lowest points in my trip here, Marah reconnected me with people and made sure that I was having a good time in Kazakhstan.

The silver-haired gentleman is Bob (or Vladimir Satylaganov), a great guy and one of Marah's students.  Bob's a musician--teaches at a private school in Almaty, but when he's not teaching he's out and about or performing with his band at places like Hard Rock Cafe Almaty.

Marah's also been kind enough to bring me out to events or up to the mountains.  This past Thursday, Marah brought me along as her guest to the opening of an exhibition at Dostyk Plaza called "Kosmos," about planet earth.  I'm kidding, obviously it was about space, exploration, and the stars.  The opening was pretty well catered with Cosmos themed desserts--the parfay in particular was good, but too rich and since they only had mineral water (with gas) I couldn't finish it, since gassy water can never quench my thirst.  

It was a great night.  Really hammered home the vastness of space.  A little bit intimidating really, but it was fun.

Certainly not least of all, a good friend of mine came to visit from Saint Petersburg.  Dennis Krutko, one of my former students from EKSU, and I have been in contact through facebook since I left Ust-Kamenogorsk.  He's a great guy and we share a lot of common interests--sci fi, history, political discussions.  Seeing him again is great.  He's only here until Thursday, so we've made some plans to hang out again--last night we met at Yard House and had a few beers.  Dad--wait until you see the gifts he brought for you and me.  You are going to love them I think!

Anyway, just a short update, but thanks to these guys (and many others in Almaty) I'm having a great time here.

Slow am I...

I'm beginning to think there is some sort of natural law that whenever I'm sick or feel bad and I need to take a shower, there won't be any hot water.

Today was a rough, rough day.  I'm not quite sure why, but ever since I came back from the summer camp at Ridder, I've been sick off and on.  So today I woke up and was absolutely miserable.  Could barely even get out of bed, so most of today I didn't do much besides crawl to the toilet...talk about blargh.

On the plus side, one of the ladies who sits at the front desk apparently noticed I didn't leave my room today and came by a little while ago to check on me.  Not much she could do, but a very nice gesture.  I think if I'm feeling better tomorrow, I'll go out and get some flowers or something.  It's nice to know that if I disappear or turn into a zombie (that's kind of how i feel right now), someone'll at least come looking--though that is kind of a danger, if I do transform into a zombie and they come looking, that's an easy way to spread the infection.  Better lock my door so they can't get in.

Anyway, my two weeks in Ridder were a lot of fun.  The first week I spent it with the students from the Pushkin Library's "Access" group (Access is this US embassy program for disadvantageous kids to study English).  I was there with the other American who lived here in Ust-Kamenogorsk (He just left this weekend to go back home--after he hits Bangladesh first).

By the way--it was absolutely gorgeous and the cabins were far nicer than I expected!

After the "Access" group left, I stuck around another week to work with the students who were the children of the KazZinc workers.  KazZinc is the local mining/metal producing company here in Eastern Kazakhstan, and I learned that their union built this camp in Ridder, called "Sinegoria."  It is extremely beautiful--one of Dad's co-workers says it is like Montana.  But I wouldn't know.

I want to write more, but I'm still not feeling too well.  To cut things short--the camp was great, even though the students didn't speak english and I had to rely on teachers translating for me, it was a lot of fun and I felt like a minor celebrity.

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That's a old fashioned "Young Pioneer" style hat by the way.  Not a garden gnome thing.    The camp gave it to me.  I won't forget that camp for a long time..

To catch the devil

If you wanna have a good time, jine the cavalry.
If you wanna catch the devil, if you wanna have fun,
If you want to smell hell.
Jine the cavalry.

So it's been another week or so since last I updated. I'll finish up by explaining how a camp in the forest works, since I had promised that, and then I'll catch up with some more recent news.

We have to arrive here at the Institute at 0830 on Fridays to make sure that we are there on time for the bus. Eric and Jonathan don't really like this, because the bus often shows up late-we exect it at 0900, but it sometimes comes as late as 0930 and to get to the institute on time, they have to get up before 0800, which is unusual for them as they prefer to sleep until 0830. To be honest, their sleep schedule worries me sometimes because they might be late to class *which occurred today. (Mark isn't here either, but that's not really his fault as he literally has no clean clothes because the washing machine won't stop going--it locks up until it's done.

Anyway, we get to the camp by about 1000 and have a breakfast, which is kind of a poridge or something. It's very hard to secify what it is. It is yellow and has the the texture of oatmeal and is somewhat sweet. However, instead of oats, it has what are essentially grits in it. Jonathan is not a fan of it, but I like it for a breakfast food. It's warm, fills you, but doesn't seem like you are eating too much. After that, we let the students get settled and we teachers usually take a nap, which feels great because our room is the only room in this entire country (as far as I am aware) that has an air conditioning unit in our wall.

We'll generally then have lunch, which consists of a soup (usually Borsht, a sort of chicken bullion soup with potatos, onions, and no chicken, or a kind of lentil soup. I prefer Borsht, at the forest camp it is amazing. I'm going to really miss borsht when I leave.

Gotta start class, so I'll resume this soon--we're heading for a Kazakh wedding tonight (but not one of ours!)