May 17, 2003

Happy Sunday Morning All,

Its Saturday night back home actually, I’m wondering what everyone is up to. Me, I’m just waking up (its 11am, sshh), enjoying a cup of instant coffee and a Danish-like thing, watching The Power Rangers, dubbed into German.

The thing about the Power Rangers is that they need no translation, they mostly grunt, sounds like a chorus of Monica Seles’ in her prime (remember that boys?).

So my birthday was this week, the first of two I’ll celebrate here. Birthdays in Kazakhstan, something to write about, as they run them a bit differently than we do. First of all, the person having the birthday is solely responsible for planning and executing the party (like funerals too, something I still can’t quite understand). Secondly, the party is, oddly enough, pretty structured. You lay out plates of fruit, meat, bread, sweets, a few bottles of vino, congnac, vodka and water, then sit back and let it happen. People then proceed to eat, talk quietly, and occasionally, someone will toast you. As I may have mentioned before, toasts here are works of art, not simple “here’s to you” utterances (or “slanshe” if you’re Irish!). The toasts can be 2-3 minute speeches, all praising the birthday-boy or girl. It’s a cool idea, but its sort of awkward when you have no idea what they are saying. You just smile and hope they’re saying good things.

Having said all that, I actually cheated and skipped the laid out party thing (which we usually hold in the conference room of Pragma) and simply invited everyone to this café along the river, which has outdoor seating. I called it “American-style”, where YOU come and buy ME drinks.

Not sure if the concept was completely understood, but I surely enjoyed it J.

That was birthday #37, a disgustingly undividable number. Birthdays are always days of reflection, and as this one occurred nearly a year after I arrived in Kazakhstan, its been an especially reflective week. Thinking back to the night we arrived in country, landing in a raging thunderstorm at 3am, then standing for an hour in the drenching rain waiting for transportation, wondering where the hell on Earth we were, I’ve come so far, SO FAR. I remember the first few days, when we were held close in this Sanitorium, afraid to venture more than a few hundred feet from the building, lest one of these aliens attempt to communicate with us. I remember my first view of the Russian language, thinking there is no way I will ever speak this language. I remember meeting my host-family during training, living in that sad, poor little village. I remember my host-father mixing some green liquid he brought home from his work at a chemical factory with a bucket of water, then spreading the smoking mixture over the potato crop in the garden to kill the infamous “Colorado beetle”.

I remember hoping the potato harvest would occur after I left training.

Anyway, its been nearly a year, half-time in my service, and my view of this country, these people, has evolved tremendously. I now have people I call friends that live in a country that 5% of Americans have heard of, with an even smaller percentage able to point to it on a map (myself included, a year ago last January).

Thanks to my friend Frank’s efforts on this website, the readers of this journal now fall into that 5%, and I think that’s pretty cool too.

Yesterday I was helping my friend Olga (can you GET anymore Russian?) doing some “remont” (repair) on her new fixer-upper apartment she bought, which if you saw the construction here, you’d kiss your hardwood floor (no comments from the EDS crew, you know why). Anyway, we were scraping old wallpaper from the living room, and I looked over at Olga as she scraped with fervor, excited to make this cold cement hole a home. I thought back to my friend Greg, another single person (for another three weeks anyway) who bought another fixer-upper in another polluted city far from here. He had the same unlimited energy I saw in Olga, an excitement to plant his own roots, and I realized once again how similar we all are (except that Olga looks much better scraping the walls, sorry Greg).

One comment on Olga’s apartment. She bought a place that is somewhat outside of town, because the gas here is so damn bad. The view from her balcony is of Ust, and you can see this film covering the town. It is an absolute crime that people can get away with poisoning an entire city population.

What the world needs is more lawyers J.

Switching gears, I taught my last economics class of the year Friday. I can’t believe I just taught a year of high school. I think I speak for all PC volunteers that are teaching when I say: I’m glad its over J. I’m negotiating with the School Director for next year, I’m trying to teach a night class for adults, as I’ve realized my ability to control 17 yr olds is non-existent. She’s lukewarm to the idea, but if I can spin it as a money-making opportunity, there’s some hope. For the summer I have some interesting plans. I will be working half-time at Pragma as I do today, so I have free time to fill. I’m going home in July of course (and hope to see many of you). I’m also planning on teaching a one-week Project Management course down at an Almaty university. In August I’m planning on doing a hike over the mountains into Kyrgystan, ending up at this awesome lake for a couple days. And just yesterday, I spoke with my friend Mike from PC who planted a seed of going to Turkey in August as well, which is a possibility. We basically get two days/month of vacation, which we have to take before next March. This equates to about 42 days of vaca, which isn’t too bad. I’m planning on going to Thailand next winter, and want to use the rest this summer.

(The Power Rangers are over, I’m now watching the Home Shopping Network in German. Did you know the George Forman grill can do sausages?)

Shto Esho (what else..). Work at Pragma is going great. I held a two-day seminar on building a consulting business, and now am working with those attending companies to help them get their stuff straight. Consulting’s a hard pill to swallow here. As one guy who does accounting consulting put it, companies decide to spend their money on either (a) consulting or (b) bribes, whichever is cheaper. And ya know, it makes sense.

Oh, last weekend I went on my first “outing to the nature”. Folks here go out of town, to some riverside patch of grass, and relax for the afternoon, not unlike ourselves. We built a fire, and grilled up some shashleek, which was incredible, until the next morning that is. I taught them to throw a Frisbee, we hiked up a small mountain, and just basically sat around, ate and got drunk. Again, not unlike the States.

(Hey, the Germans also have this amazing cleaner we have in the States, and if I call in now, its only 4.95 euros! Wait, I can’t call Germany..)

Some final words on this Peace Corps thing as I approach the halfway point. Was it worth it? I mean, I’m at the prime of my career and I drop it all to do something so crazy, potentially damaging my ability to actually find work in the future. I think about this sometimes, and I’ve come up with an observation: Before I came here, I was doing ok professionally, pretty damn well by all standards, playing the game as well as anyone has. The problem was, I was constantly preoccupied with the question “what am I doing with my life?”, which was ironic, because everything I did was for long-term and part of a very nicely laid out plan, yet that question was always eating at me. Now, I’m involved in something that is part of NO plan, is VERY short-term focused, and yet for some reason, since I boarded that plane at JFK last June, I’ve had NO thoughts of what am I doing with my life, because the answer is clear now. I’m living it.

My advice to anyone in a rut: stop planning your life, start living it, the plan’ll work itself out. And don’t be afraid to take a risk, you won’t starve, do you know anyone that has actually starved to death? Worst case scenario you lose a few pounds, and that’s not all bad, eh?

Please have a great Memorial Day everyone, be safe, and drop me a comment on the guestbook when you have a moment.

Andrew