A New Kind of Adventure

As I mentioned briefly in my last post, things have changed since I left Kazakhstan.  Shocking, I know! :)  Now I'm being sent to Baku, Azerbaijan for the next two years.  Of course it's been an adjustment, but I've pretty much accepted that He will send me wherever He wants me to be and that wherever it is will be the best place.  Plus it's kind of cool, working my way through a region!

I've been looking up some pictures of Baku to share with you.  It looks like a beautiful city, with an eclectic mix of very old and very new architecture.

What a view!!!

From everything I've heard and read, Azerbaijan is going to be completely different from anywhere I've been before.  The culture will be closer to that of Turkey than Russia, and while it is a secular state, Islam is much more prevalent than it is in Karaganda.  The Russian I've learned over the past few years will still be useful as many people there still speak it, but it is not the primary language.  Rachael, Colleen, and I have already decided that we'd like to take Azeri lessons, possibly together.  That should be fun! 

I think the biggest adjustments for me will be teaching and all the new cultural rules.  We will be teaching young children (5-6 years old) which I have never done before.  When I was a substitute teacher I worked at elementary schools several times, but I was never responsible for planning lessons or establishing classroom rules and structures.  I'm sure I'll eventually get the hang of it, and once I do I think it will be a lot of fun.  I love that age.  I'm just a little nervous about those weeks or (hopefully not) months until I do get the hang of it!  Those of you out there with children, experience teaching this age, or just any wisdom in general- please share it!  I need all the help and advice I can get! :)

The culture is going to be another big change.  We learned a little at training, but I know that there is so much more that we weren't able to cover.  I'm counting on the help of other expats living in Baku (of which there are many, it seems) and the generosity of the locals in giving grace to this bumbling American.  Here are a few of the things that I've learned thus far:

• There is a distance between men and women that we're not used to in the West.  I already knew a little about this, but learning all the ins and outs of everyday interaction is going to be an adventure in itself (one which I will keep you posted on, especially if it occurs in a particularly amusing way).  For example: despite 4 years living in Kazakhstan and Russia, where shaking hands upon meeting is not normal, especially for women, it is still an automatic reflex which I have yet to get the better of.  But if I attempt to shake a man's hand in Azerbaijan he could be quite offended, or at least think I am very strange. 
• Apparently leaving the house with wet hair is a sign of loose morals.  Seeing as that's how I fix my hair every morning, by getting it wet and letting it air-dry, I'm going to have some serious adjustments to make!  I will either be getting up much earlier or (much more likely) wearing a lot of ponytails. :)

All in all, while there are quite a few unknowns, I am very excited about this next year.  If it were all known, that wouldn't be much of an adventure, now would it?  I'm looking forward to exploring this new world and sharing my discoveries with you.  Just a week and a half to go!!!

Summer 2012



Wow.  It's been a while.  My only excuse is that this has been a pretty crazy summer.  I've hardly been in any place longer than a week and a half at one time. 

On the way home from Kazakhstan, I met my parents in St. Petersburg.  They never got the chance to visit me when I was there, but they wanted to see the place I called home and meet my friends there.  The trip didn't turn out exactly as planned... we somehow managed to show up at half of the museums/sights on the one day of the week that they were closed!  But as my mom pointed out, they were there to see me and my life, not the tourist destinations, and we did plenty of that.  We did a LOT of walking and gathered an impressive amount of blisters, but still managed to have a pretty good time. 

My parents in front of the Hermitage

After visiting a gorgeous Orthodox church in Petergof

One of the cool things we were able to do was to celebrate my parents' 38th wedding anniversary in a particularly Russian fashion.  It is a tradition in St. Pete that when a couple gets married, they put a lock on a bridge and then throw the key in the water.  We found the perfect spot on a bridge just across from the Church on Spilled Blood (only about 50 feet from the spot where my roommate got engaged the year before).  I took about a million pictures, but these are some of my favorites:

Once we got home, we had a week to get over jetlag before my mom and I headed to San Diego to spend the 4th of July with my grandpa and his twin brother Jack.

93 years old and still going strong-
good to know longevity runs in the family!

A few weeks later, we were back in California for the Mammoth Lakes Jazz Festival.  We heard some amazing music, and I took the opportunity to teach my dad some swing dancing.

On the way to the festival, we took a wrong turn that took us about an hour out of our way.  It was the best mistake we ever made.  We ended up going through an absolutely beautiful mountain pass and saw some unbelievable rock formations.  On the way home we took that route intentionally, and detoured to visit the Patriarch Grove- a grove of some of the oldest trees in the world.  These trees, bristlecone pines, can live up to 5,000 years.  The oldest ones look almost dead until you look closer.  One of their survival techniques in hard times is to redirecting all nutrients to a few limbs and let the rest of the tree die. 

We didn't see the Methuselah tree (over 4,800 years old) since it was too far a hike, but the oldest trees we saw were well over 4,300 years old.  They could have been there when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt!  I just can't fathom that!

I spent a week and a half in Atlanta, visiting my sister and her family.  I had such fun hanging out with my niece and nephew.  Will is 5 and started kindergarten a few days after I left.  He spent a fair amount of time riding his bike around with the neighborhood kids, but we definitely bonded over a soccer ball and a few imaginary shark attacks.  Carson was shy for about 2 minutes, and then she was attached to my hip for the rest of the trip.  She always asked me to sit next to her at dinner- that is, until my last day when Gammy came to town, when she asked me if I could move so Gammy could sit next to her! :)  Aunt Molly quickly became old news! 

The cutest kids in the world: my niece (Carson) and nephew (Will)

While in Georgia, I sold my car.  It's been there for the past two years, but now that I'm starting to think that my life will be working overseas, it was time to sell it.  It's kind of weird. Bit by bit I'm selling off/giving away my life in the states... first all my furniture, now my car.  I was a bit emotional over it (embarassing, I know) because it was the first car I'd ever bought with my own money.  I'm sure I gave the guys at Carmax a good chuckle when I asked them to take a picture of me with it.

And finally, off to Pasadena for training.  It's always one of my favorite times of the year.  Meeting all the new teachers, going to Conal's for milkshakes, seeing old friends... despite the work teaching sessions and training the new teachers, it really is a wonderful break.

My new roommates, Rachael and Colleen



Hanging out after the last night of practicum-
we may or may not have been a bit giddy :)

This training had something extra, though.  One night I was at Starbucks with two friends, Rachael and Elizabeth, and we noticed a lot of police cars and people in lawn chairs across the street.  We asked what was going on and it turns out that they were filming an episode of the TV show "Criminal Minds"!  We immediately gathered our things and went down the block to gawk like tourists.  The best part is that they were filming a scene with our favorite character, Dr. Reid.  I took plenty of pictures, mostly to remember what the scene looked like for whenever I see that episode.  It was a pretty great "We're in LA" moment. :)



So, that was my summer. It has been crazy busy, but great. And now I have two weeks at home to hang out with my parents, pack, and eat my favorite American foods one more time. I should be writing an entry soon describing the change of plans that happened this summer (I'll be in Azerbaijan instead of Kazakhstan), but right now, I need to go to bed. So goodnight everyone! 

Final Weeks

Here it is, the end of another year in Kazakhstan.  It has been different from every other year, and I've grown and learned so many new things.  But I'm coming away from my time here with some great new friends, a lot of wonderful memories, a few more good lesson plans, and a deepening knowledge of who Gd is and who I am in Him.  Really, what more could I ask for?

As we are preparing to leave, our focus has been on making the most of every minute- whether it is using our team time to go to all our favorite places and take pictures, getting to know our students in a more casual setting, or spending every spare moment with our friends. 

Since we had to turn in grades early, we ended up with a whole week of classes after the final tests and projects.  So we decided to simply have fun and hang out with our students.  On Monday we walked around the city taking fun pictures (and even some videos) with the different classes.

Our 4:30 groups, Chattanooga and New Orleans:

I love jumping pictures!

Our 6:15 groups, Boston and Seattle:

On Tuesday, we met near the park entrance for a picnic.  While the first one was relatively uneventful, the second picnic was an ill-fated affair from the start!  We set up in a fairly open place between trees so that we could throw the frisbee around.  We did not, however, take into account the absolute cloud of bugs (mostly gnats and mosquitos) that would descend on us immediately.  Within 5 minutes it was clear that no one was going to enjoy this picnic unless we did something about it, so Alex and I ran back to the store to buy some bug spray.  We returned to find people huddling under blankets and jackets, swatting sporadically at the air, and VERY happy to see us.

Once everyone had a good coating of bug spray, we sat down to finish our meal.  Then...

Drip.

Drip, drip, drip. 

You've got to be kidding me.

But no, it was definitely raining.  At this point, all we could do was laugh.  The girls all huddled together on one blanket and then spread the others over our heads, while the boys continued their frisbee throwing undetered.  I'm so glad our students were such great sports about it.  We ended up having a grand time laughing and feasting under our makeshift tent, until someone finally discovered that the woods nearby were dense enough to keep the rain off.

This is just how we roll...

It turned out to be a very fun and definitely memorable picnic, mostly due to their great attitudes.  But we did decide to have our next class indoors, just in case!  :)

As I mentioned, our last team meeting was spent walking around the city taking pictures at a lot of our favorite places.  We also discovered a few fun new places along the way. 



Posing as statues: it's a toss-up whether these
or jumping pictures are my favorites.

We found an abandoned children's amusement park: jackpot!

Today I had my last meeting with the English club I lead on Wednesdays.  It started as a lesson exchange.  Katya, my Russian teacher, gave me free lessons and I agreed to do a weekly English club with the teachers at her school.  Our topics varied from "I Love Lucy" and pet peeves to eugenics and discussions about the book "1984."  It wasn't always easy to plan topics that would interest and challenge them, but I loved getting to know them and enjoyed the many turns our conversations took.  Today they had a farewell tea for me and presented me with a flash card with a few classic soviet movies and some Russian music so I can practice over the summer.  Afterwards we all (except Elena) walked to Victory park for some pictures.

 

 

After the graduation ceremony last week, Jennifer and I went out to a cafe with several of our students.  In the course of the evening I mentioned how much I love certain Russian dishes and want to know how to make them.  So tonight Vera, Natasha, and Tanya came over to our apartment for a cooking lesson.  We learned how to make golubsi (stuffed cabbage rolls- much more delicious than the name would suggest) and a kind of chicken soup with homemade noodles.  That's right.  Home. Made. Noodles.  I was super excited about that part.  It got even better when I realized that we would be using an iron (as in for clothes) in the making of said noodles. 

If you want, I can make you some this summer, seeing as how I am ::ahem:: a bit of an expert now.  :)

Well, those are the highlights of the past few weeks.  It's been crazy but fun.  Goodbyes are not my favorite, but inherent in the sadness is the fact that I got to meet, grow with, and love these amazing people in the first place.  I am truly blessed.

And now it's time to start packing and getting ready for the next step (more on that later).  Considering the places He's brought me already, I can hardly wait to see what Gd has in store for me now. 

Bring on the next adventure!

Bowling!

About two weeks ago Jennifer and I went bowling with a group of students from our two evening classes, Boston and Seattle. It was great fun! When Adina gave our names to the person behind the counter, something got lost in translation- Ms. Stegmeier ended up as Mister Meyer, which I enjoyed all out of proportion with how funny it actually was. It was a fairly small group, but we had a great time.

There was some bowling...



...and some card playing...

But mostly, there was lots of silliness:

Our "normal" group picture (Boris, Aisulu, Vera, Adina,
Sabina, and Alex, with me and Jennifer in front)

but this is more true to life!

Have I ever mentioned how much I LOVE our students?

Afterwards a few of us girls decided to walk around the city a bit, and then Vera and I went to her place to watch an old Soviet comedy (with subtitles, of course), translated as "The Office Affair." It's the same one I watched for the first time last year around this time. If possible, it was even funnier the 2nd time around! I am definitely going to find a copy for myself, and I will probably spend at least part of the summer trying to get people to watch it with me! Consider yourself warned... :)

Nauriz- Kazakh New Year

Sorry I haven't updated in so long. Things keep happening that I want to write about, but then I decide to wait for the pictures and... wait- I think I've been down this road before! :) Anyway, if things go according to plan, there may be 2 or 3 new entries in short order to make up for it. We'll see. :)

Anyway, this past week we celebrated the Kazakh New Year, called Nauriz. It's a celebration of spring (although we had a blizzard on Monday, by Thursday it was really quite nice!) and Kazakh culture. One of my favorite parts of the festivities is when they block off the main street in town and all the major companies and organizations in the city set up yurts, the traditional Kazakh dwelling. Most of them had all kinds of food and amazing decorations and traditional items (artwork, musical instruments, etc). And though they seemed to mostly be reserved for people affiliated with the different organizations, my status as a guest in their country opened a few doors.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the day:

Inside a yurta with Vera, feasting on baursaki and chak-chak
(delicious local food) and kiwis (not so local, but still delicious!)

I've said it before and I'll say it again- what are holidays for if
not making a fool of yourself in public/taking crazy pictures?

Afterwards a bunch of our friends went to a restaurant and then over to our place to hang out. The rest of the long weekend was spent hanging out with them. One night we played Russian billiards, and I have to say- if I can ever master that, I'll be unstoppable at American pool! The table is at least 3 times as big, and the pockets are smaller. We went shopping for spring boots with Vera, and watched another classic Russian film (with subtitles of course). It was a crazy, action packed weekend. I was almost ready for the work week to begin again so I could have a break! But it was a ton of fun.

And now that the new year has begun, bring on the spring! We are sooooooo ready for it!

I Have a Dream

I love our students. They are such a joy to teach! Last week we listened to part of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. After we talked about it, I had them write and present their own speeches. They had to think of one thing they would like to change in the world and then come up with 4 'dreams'. They talked about a world without corruption, drugs, or the atomic bomb, and about protecting the environment, and protecting children. They did such a great job that I asked if they minded me sharing them. So here are some of their dreams:

• I have a dream that one day drug addicts will stop spending their time to find drugs. Instead I wish they will spend their time to make their life better.


• I have a dream that no parent will cry about their children who are addicted


• Corruption can send innocent person to the prison, corruption can change the marks, corruption can "fix" everything... but all the same we still have a dream that one day we will get what we deserve without paying bribes... that one day our children will live in the honest, trustful world.


• I have a dream that one day snow will be white everywhere


• I have a dream that one day there will not be any birth certificate with an empty space in the "father" field.


• I have a dream that one day no child will know the violence, and the bruises will appear only from the children's games.

Those are some pretty great dreams. And they gave their speeches with such passion! It makes me smile just to think about it.

Today we started our TV shows unit with "I Love Lucy." After a great but somewhat intense two weeks on the Civil Rights movement, Lucy's antics were a welcome change! And as much as I love watching her get tipsy on Vitameatavegamin, it's even more fun watching our students cracking up over it. Some even mentioned wanting to find more episodes to watch on their own.

The moral of the story is: I have the best job ever. Seriously... how did I get so lucky?

How Cold is Too Cold?

Winter in Kazakhstan is cold. I knew that before I came here. It is, in fact, one of the things I love about this place (coming from the girl who only ever saw maybe 5 inches of snow- total- her whole life before moving overseas). But this winter is so much colder than the years I was here before. Then, the lowest the temperature got was -30°, and that was only for a day. This past week, the temperature has been hovering around -40° for days, with the wind taking it down another 15-20°. So I ask the question: How cold is too cold?

• When you're outside for more than 20 seconds and your face starts to ache...


• When the wind brings tears to your eyes and the cold freezes them there...


• When I can't wear my glasses outside because my breath keeps them permanently foggy...


• When said fog freezes into a sheet of ice on my glasses that needs to be scraped off...


• When I can see my breath even on a heated bus packed with people...


• When cars won't start because the cold drains the batteries...


• When they cancel school (even here, in the land of snow and ice) because it's too cold.

And yet, even now I can't really complain (except when I'm waiting at the bus stop). We have warm clothes, a warm apartment, warm classrooms to teach in, and (usually) a warm car ride home from school every night. That is a lot more than some people have.

Plus, I know that there are those in places like northern Alaska, Canada, and Siberia who could say to me "-40°? That's nothing!" I guess it's all relative, huh? :)

Pictures, a Video, American Culture, and Pizza

As promised, here are some of the pictures and videos from December that I couldn't include in my last post.

All month, we had holiday-themed activities at our Friday night English club. One week Amy taught everyone how to make gingerbread houses (only we made them out of store bought cookies instead). It was great to see how creative they got. One guy finished his house and then made Santa's sleigh, complete with 4 reindeer and a bag of toys in the back!

Our gingerbread village

We had all kinds of fun at our class party on the last day of school. One of the highlights was them making reindeer antlers out of balloons and a pair of nylons, and then teaching them to sing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer".

Some students from our 6:15 classes, Boston and Seattle

On the 25th, after the opening of presents, we had dinner together as a team (an important tradition in Sara's family). It was an interesting combination of American and Central Asian foods- green bean casserole, mashed potatos, and shashlik! But it was delicious.

Then that evening, we took turns skyping with our families. Except for last year, I haven't spent the holidays with my family since 2005, so I'm kind of used to it. But I still got a bit choked up talking to them, so I asked them to gather around so I could take a picture!

My dad, sister (Katie), mom, and grandpa

And last, but certainly not least, New Year's Eve! This video is spliced together from two that Jennifer took that evening. It only shows about 12 seconds of the fireworks, but they lasted like this for almost an hour! It was beyond description. By the end we were no longer able to see the building across the courtyard because the smoke was so thick.

After that, we kind of took a break from everyone and everything for a while. It was great. We had a few lessons with our old students before the new semester started, but it was very laid-back. On Thursday we finally officially began 2nd semester and met our new students (we still have our old students, but the classes had gotten small, so we tested and admitted more). I'm so excited to be teaching my favorite class again, American Culture. It's going to be great! I can't wait to hear my students start quoting "I Love Lucy" or saying "We're not in Kansas anymore"!

This last Friday for our English club, we made pizzas. We provided the dough and sauce and they brought whatever toppings they wanted. It was a lot of fun, but we definitely had a lot of cooks in our kitchen! It was a bit of a cross-cultural experience. Apparently we make pizza very differently, and it resulted in a lot of "why are you doing it that way" comments. :) But we got into quite a rhythm of rolling out the dough, passing it off to the people in the other room to 'decorate' and baking. It was our own pizza assembly line, and we turned out about 7 of them in an hour and a half! It was fun, but I'm glad I won't be responsible for leading another English club for a few weeks!

That's about it for now. But hopefully I'll have plenty of new stories to share as we start the semester with new students and a lot of fun things on the agenda! Stay tuned...

Culture Shock, Holidays, and a Much Needed Rest

I've noticed a trend. I'm usually fairly regular in my blog posts. Twice a month, every month. Except November and December. The same thing happened last year. Two entries for each month overseas, until you get to the last two months of the year. Once I noticed that, it wasn't too hard for me to guess the reason. This time of year is when culture shock hits general end-of-the-semester exhaustion. And since culture shock usually hits me as weariness, you can imagine that the combo isn't such fun. It's not even that interesting, blog-worthy things haven't happened. I just haven't had a lot of spare energy to write about them. But here it is, New Years Eve (actually, it's already January 1st here), so I'd better write something before the calendar turns over!

Once we got back from Thanksgiving break, the rest of the semester just felt like a rush to finals. Between project presentation days, exam review, the final, and a party at the end, I only had to teach about 3 actual lessons. And even those were a little different than usual, as Jennifer and I ended up combining several of our classes. Our early (4:30) classes have always been small, but by the end it was bordering on ridiculous. Even when we combined the two groups, we averaged about 5-6 students. Thank goodness we're going to be testing and adding new students for 2nd semester.

The final party was great fun! We played a few games (such as blowing up balloons and stuffing them into a pair of nylons to make reindeer antlers) and did a white elephant gift exchange. In both classes it started out pretty tame, without any gift-stealing. But about halfway through they seemed to get into it, and that's when the fun began! One poor girl in our last class went home with an onion! We also taught them "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" along with the add ins (ex. All of the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names (like Pinocchio!)) At the end (You'll go down in history) where I had always heard "like George Washington" and Jennifer had learned "like Columbus," we let them pick their own historic figure. One class picked the president of Kazakhstan, and the other a famous Kazakh poet.

I have a few more fun stories to share, but they go so much better with the pictures, so they'll have to wait. Once I find my camera (it's hiding somewhere in our apartment) and with it my memory card, I'll upload them. Or, at least, that's my plan. We'll see. :)

What with our final English club of the year, gift shopping, Christmas Eve dinner with all the Americans at Margaret's apartment, and more, vacation didn't really start until the 26th. But all the craziness was fun in it's own way. In order to have plenty of presents under the tree, we decided to have a cheap gift competition: we made a list of categories (smallest, biggest, most artistic, noisiest, most American, etc) and imposed a 200 tenge (about $1.50) limit. The results were pretty hilarious, and it made for a fun gift-opening time.

And then there was New Years. I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but New Years in America has got nothing on New Years in Kazakhstan! We just chilled out in our apartment until midnight, at which point everyone and their mother goes outside into the courtyard and sets off approximately a million fireworks. And we're talking the huge ones they do for the city 4th of July shows. It's unreal. And it lasts almost an hour. While out there we saw two men dressed in a Chinese dragon suit (it's the year of the dragon) taking pictures with people, and 3 different Santas. We also met one of our friends who lives across the courtyard and she invited us up to her family's apartment where they had a table set with fine china, wine, homemade salads (the mayonnaise-y kind), and tea. It was great fun as we're good friends with all three of the daughters and their parents are pretty awesome too. It was 3am by the time we left them. Now that's what I call bringing in the new year!

So there you have it- December in a nutshell. As fun as it has been, I am so grateful that we have another week before classes start again. I have serious plans to go off the grid for at least a few days and just chill. It's gonna be great. And in my more immediate future, I have serious plans to go to bed. So I'll leave you with a few parting words (taken from our toasts this evening/morning):

I hope 2011 was a great year for you, and that 2012 is even better. May there be more good times than bad times. May your life be full of love, friends, family, and good memories. Happy New Year!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving comes at a great time of year, particularly for ESI teachers working overseas. It comes precisely when we need a break from teaching (and life in general) the most. A week of speaking only English and hanging out is exactly what I needed.

This year was different from my past 3 experiences in that we didn't go away for the whole week. Since I left the last time, it's become tradition for the KZ team to go to Karkaralinsk (a mountain resort in a town about 3 hours away) for the first part of the week and then return to Karaganda for the holiday itself. While I would have loved having a few more days to explore the mountains, I'm glad we were able to celebrate Thanksgiving with all the Americans in Karaganda.

There aren't many adventures to share, besides Jennifer making friends with all the stray dogs in Karkaralinsk and Katina and I making another beautiful lattice-topped apple pie (if I do say so myself). But here are a few pictures to share the fun:

Dinner in the dining hall

Showing off our snow-caked jeans (it was knee-deep in places)

An icicle duel with Sara (I won, of course! :) )

Group picture (minus Curtis): Sara, Amy, me, Jennifer, Katina

And just because it's my latest accomplishment, and I'm so dang proud of it- here's the pie Katina and I made (before the oven, of course):

I hope that all of you had a wonderful and memorable Thanksgiving as well! Happy Holidays!