Chapter 1. Arrival/Orientation

I figured I’d break this journal into logical chapters. I think I’ll get bored if I just regurgitate facts, so I might just put a few chapters in on particularly interesting issues and facts, like, diarrhea, for instance (I’ll explain later).

Well, I’m here finally, so I guess I’m actually doing this. I went to Philly last Thursday for a one day orientation, then we all (47 of us) headed out to a pub (Yoda, Yali, Yedi, or something, near the Westin where we stayed). It’s a good crew, not exactly the tree-hugging granola, left-wing Clintonites that I expected (sorry mom). Most are young, but there are a few of us old codgers. One guy is about 72 I think, and there is a couple that’s about 50. Again, normal people, which is scary. Even a couple IT bit-heads like myself. Nothing major to report about Philly, your typical touchy feely group bonding stuff, then hanging about doing NOTHING Saturday morning until a bus took us to JFK at 2pm for our flight.

We flew from JFK to Frankfurt, switched planes, and landed at Almaty at 2am on Monday, in the middle of a thunderstorm. The decent felt like we were on a bombing run over Berlin in 1944, taking flak. It took about an hour to get the stuff loaded, all the while I’m getting drenched, as are my bags. I haven’t looked in one yet, but I fear some bleeding of color (these are military canvas bags). One interesting point is the military guys here have HUGE busdriver hats, I mean HUGE. We finally got to our Orientation destination at about 5am, a place called The Sanitorium. Apparently, it was used by the old Soviet higher ups for some R&R. Now, its just a run down old hotel. I took some pictures, but I have to wait to send them, as I never got a chance to download them to my computer (part of another story that involves a female..hehe..read on). I’ll upload the pictures as soon as I can. So, we stayed in this Sanitorium until today, Thursday, when we moved to our host families. The three days were pretty intense, filled with presentations by various PC folks, and a start to the language training. Oh, and the Ambassador to Kazakhstan came and spoke to us. I asked a question, just to say I spoke with an ambassador (I asked him if we were going to get a break soon, and if that was his real hair). MAN, what an IMPOSSIBLE language to master. I will NEVER be fluent, at least not in this lifetime.

Not sure if everyone knows this, but the first three months I’m called a Trainee, and do nothing but study Russian and learn some of what I’ll be doing. After training, I will either (a) teach business in the high school, (b) teach business at the college level, or (c) work with an NGO (Non government organization) to help small/medium businesses get started. With an MBA, I’ll more than likely do either b or c, I’m leaning toward c.

Anyway, now for the female story. Last night was our last night in the Sanitorium, which has a small bar, so we hung out there for a while, relishing in the last night we’d actually speak to someone who understood us. What I SHOULD have done was to hit the sack early, so I could be bright and shiny for my new host family. What I DID do was to start talking with a group of five lovely Russian students, and ended up partying all night with them. Advice, don’t try to keep up with a Russian when doing shots of Vodka, male or female. At about 4am, I did a very risky thing. I let this very lovely young lady (20, ssshh) named Nadia talk me into going to a disco with her. Realize, if I got lost, I was DOOMED. I had no idea how to return. Anyway, I said sure. She kept her promise to get me back to the Sanitorium, and I hit the sack about 6am or so with a healthy buzz. I awoke at 1pm, a half hour before our host families were to arrive. Nice.

My host mother (39) and brother (15) arrived right on time, and I loaded my stuff into a beat up little Japanese clunker and we headed out for about a 45 minute drive to a little village. The driver was a neighbor (no one has cars here), who spoke no English. The mother does, though, I lucked out. She’s actually an ENGLISH TEACHER at the local high school, but her English is pretty poor. My family here is a mother, father (42), boy (15) and girl (10), with two dogs, a cat, three rabbits, some chickens, and a garden. The dogs are nasty, biting things tied up outside, the kitten is pretty unkempt too, but cute. Something weird here, though. I was out back watching my host pop (I call them mom and dad, and they’re my own age, weird, but they’re into it) put this strange chemical into a bucket of water, which had some smoking reaction in it. Then he basically spread it over the potatoes, to kill this bug that apparently came from Colorado. I hope I’m gone before they harvest those spuds. My Kaz-pop makes about $65 a month, she makes $113 a month. They say its about enough to buy food and that’s it. (so my $125 is great for someone with no bills). I walked around the village, visited three other houses that have fellow PC folks like me, had some tea, stared at each other for awhile. We had fish for lunch, it was a strange one, very greasy, boney, but I suffered through. Oh, and every damn meal has cucumbers associated with it, great. For dinner, we had perogy type things. MEAT is at every meal here. One morning at the Sanitorium, we had meatballs and pasta. Sort of harsh at 8am. Anyway, the perogy things were ok, I scarfed down a few, and had a beer. My Dad drinks beer (thank GOD), and not too much vodka, so I’m in. Vodka is a huge problem here, every guy drinks a fifth every night, and its hard to say no, especially when you’re me. He had me drink like four beers with him through the course of the night, I’m hoping that’s not a nightly occurance, I’ll be a blimp.

After dinner, I gave them a few gifts, we looked at some pictures I brought (mom, my hostmom wanted me to say hello to you from her, so…hello. I’d type it in Russian but its like 35 letters long). Finally, I took a Banya (which I’ll explain below) and headed to my room to type this, while watching “Dumb and Dumber” on my DVD player, which is working out great.

This place is pretty damn strange in many ways, so I’m going to list a few topics that are especially…unique:

Bathing: Its tough. The “banya” is a room with a few bowls in it, that you pour over your head and wash with. They have an outdoor shower, and the sun heats up the barrel of water, so you have to do it in the late afternoon. I’ll give that a shot tomorrow. Once a week, they heat up the “banya” with a coal furnace, under a barrel of water, which creates a Sauna, then you do the bucket thing in there, but its actually pretty comfortable. They do this once a week on Saturdays (known as ‘banyaday’), but they did it tonight for me. Bathing will be a challenge, but I knew that going in.

Numbers 1 and 2: Outhouse folks. Oh, and you can’t put TP down the hole for some reason, you have to put it into a trash can. Some of the conversations we’ve had over here are so damn gross, but hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go.

Diarrhea: Yep, it’s a topic of discussion. Apparently, every volunteer gets it severely at some point, from some bacteria. We had an hour presentation on this lovely topic at 9am one morning, then switched gears into how to remove ticks from your body, nice after-breakfast chats.

Metal in the Water: I had to bring this water purifier to this house, and am supposed to drink only purified water, because the water here is too metallic, due to the old factories polluting the rivers. It’s a bit awkward for me to ask this family to give me special water, so I blame it on the PC being alarmists.

Bread: You NEVER throw it away. If you don’t finish it, you save it, or give it to the birds.

My Village: Its called “Nova Alexeevka” in English, population about 5000. It makes Bradford, Maine look like Vegas. The roads have huge potholes, many not paved. I’ll be walking to class tomorrow, which is about a 10-15 minute walk. While we walk around here, we’re stared at, for obvious reasons. I didn’t mention, but they divided us all up into small groups of 4 or so, and put us into villages, to get this immersion training for language and culture. Basically, we have 10 weeks to learn the language good enough to go somewhere and teach business…ugh. After August 17 or so, I’ll be shipped to God knows where to work for two years. That’s pretty far off, though, first things first.

The People: I am pleasantly surprised. I expected a pretty unattractive bunch, and its not the case. They are either Kazakh or Russian, and both are attractive. The Russian women are all hot, I mean ALL of them, and the Kazak’s have a good look to them as well, they’re like a cross between Asians and Russians, but it looks good. Why am I so preoccupied with this?

The Mountains: BIG. BIG. VERY BIG. I’ll take some pictures of them, you’re gonna love them. 20,000 foot peaks. I went for a jog at the sanitorium, which was the most pathetic exhibition of athleticism ever seen. The elevation is a killer.

Well, its 1:30am, and I have to hit the sack for tomorrow. We have class from 8-12, then are headed into Almaty to practice taking the bus, shopping, etc. We’re going to a “bizarre”, whatever that is. We’re also going to the internet café there, so that’s why I wanted to get this done tonight. I should be able to get there at least once a week, maybe a bit more, once I figure out the bus thing. I also have to get you the address information so all who read these can maybe think of sending a snackage or two. I’ll send a list of ideas when I send the address.

Final thoughts after my first few days, I think this was a good move for me, I think I’ll lose about 20 pounds without even trying. What else can you ask for?