Kokshetau, oh how I love thee

This previous week I visited my permanent site for the first time. And I am in love. I already sort of figured I would have this reaction, but it was even cooler than I thought.
Before leaving for my site, I stayed for two days in a sanatorium with other volunteers in Almaty. This was also the same sanatorium we had our orientation at. The food was not better and we got to eat milky noodles again, ugh. Here we met our counterparts (the teachers we will be team-teaching with for the next two years), attended seminars, and basically got ready for site visit. It was a nice break from teaching and Almalybak, and also nice because we got to see all the other TEFL trainees. We also got to meet some of the Kaz 19s, the volunteers who have been working here for a year, and hear their stories.

This conference started on Thursday and my train left on Saturday in the afternoon. Peace Corps gave us a bus to get to the train station in Almaty from the sanatorium. Peace Corps advised us to leave half of our luggage at our site once we got there, so all of us volunteers had crap loads of stuff. We basically made a pile outside the train station and went in groups to lug it in. The train ride was pretty fun, but I will talk about riding the train in a later blog.
When we finally arrived in Kokshetau after our 26 hour train ride, I was greeted by a group of my students, the director of my lyceum, and the volunteers working nearby. It almost made me cry seeing all of them holding up a giant sign that said "Welcome Jennifer!" in English. They then quickly whisked away my luggage and put me into a car to go to my host family for the week (I was suppose to stay with my CP, but her power was out, so a student at my school’s family volunteered to host me for the week). My host family was great and I quickly learned that the daughter, Indira, speaks English very well along with her boyfriend who is a translator for an agricultural firm in Kokshetau.

After the train station, we went back to their apartment and I was served Besbarmak (not sheep but HORSE) and ate at the traditional Kazakh table. The Kazak tradition is that the father of the home distributes the meat between the family, and I was given meat first because of my status as a guest. I was very surprised by the taste of the horsemeat; it was very much like beef. I also ate some horse liver, pretty ambitious of me since I have never even eaten liver in the USA. But I really liked the Besbarkmak and was excited to eat it because everyone other volunteer seems to have eaten it but me!

The rest of the week I was extremely busy going to school and taking care of business. I spent every day of the week in school from about 9am-3pm observing classes and giving question and answer sessions. I got to introduce myself to all the teachers in Russian and got to attend a staff meeting on the first day. Observing the classes was also interesting, I saw History, English, Kazakh, Russian, Ethics, and a few other classes. Most of the time I had no clue what was going on, but the president of the 10th grade class acted as my translator for some of it. I also taught 3 classes independently and team-taught three others. My students have Macmillan textbooks, which are amazing, so it was great to start teaching with these. My school also has a very close-knit group of teachers. Because the Lyceum only has about 200 students, there are only about 20 teachers. The last day the teachers even had a little party for me with cake, tea, and other goodies. I am really excited to be part of the school’s family and to work with everyone there.

During the week I spent in Kokshetau, I feel like I really got to know my family well. Indira, my sister is 17 years old and attends the Lyceum where I teach. She is also a contestant in the Miss Kazakhstan competition and drop dead gorgeous. Like many Kazak women/girls she is extremely skinny and has beautiful long hair. She is also a bright girl and seems to do well in school. When I asked her about her plans for the next year (after 11th grade students in Kazakhstan go onto Universities) she talked about going to a university in China to study business, and explained she needed to get a scholarship of some kind because her family has four kids and cannot afford to pay for all of them.

One interesting aspect of my week was the questions asked by students when I did a Q and A sessions in each class. Some students were shy and didn’t ask much, others asked some very interesting questions. I was asked what I knew about Kazakhstan before I came, whether I was a democrat or republican, if the USA liked Russia, who I was voting for in the election and why, what I thought of Kazakhstan now, why I wasn’t married( a very common question and something I will probably address later in my blog), where I studied in the USA, what the schools were like in America, if it was true that in America students could do whatever they wanted in class and wear whatever they wanted, etc. Many of these questions have easy answers, but some are pretty complicated. Students in Kazakhstan seem to realize that Americans know very little about their country, but I don’t really think they realize just how little we know. I was also asked about the movie Borat, which everyone hates here.

Overall I am very excited to be living in Kokshetau soon, and will have a hard time going back and not thinking about the things I am going to do there. My last two weeks will be in Almalybak with my original family and then I will be sworn in as an official volunteer!