Saturday, April 23, 2005

things you might not have known

From a dictation exercise on whales:

Whales are bigger than any animal in Lent. [I'd like to say something clever about a fish diet, but I can't put it together]. They can stay underwater for over an hour without reading.

turkeys in the mist

I went running a few days ago, on a particularly foggy morning. I ran toward the field, that used to be steppe and is being closed in on by new houses, and promptly got lost. In an open field that’s only about 60 acres. So, as my situation was beginning to dawn on me, I saw what looked like the Loch Ness Monster. The long, thin neck at an indeterminate distance, a head-like shape, and the sense that it had moved, although I hadn’t seen it directly. Shudder. I decided to continue following the sledge ruts instead of running in the opposite direction, when suddenly a second Nessie popped up directly in front of me, and a number of watermelon-sized, moving things resolved out of the mist. I had agitated them. Gobble gobble, they said. I hope whoever set his flock (or herd?) of turkeys loose on a zero visibility morning was as frightened by them as I was. They’re big! One of the males followed me with his tail all spread out, and I felt very little and very slow.

It set the mood for the rest of the run, during which I explored a couple off-roads. I saw a black bear, a snake, and some gnomes, although they morphed into stumps and sticks as I approached. I also believed that I’d discovered a couple yurts south of my village, but even these were abandoned Ladas (the car of choice, made of metal, glue, and pre World War I rubber.) So, the adrenaline value of my run was high, although it really wasn’t good from an endurance standpoint.

kicking the habit

Today after the second performance of “Oliver Twist,” I saw Zhopar Aizhan (a 60-something English teacher, we talk in English) walking out of the English room with a fistful of leaves. “What are you doing!” I said, “Are you eating Svetlana’s plants?” She giggled. “I worry about you, you know.” She giggled more. Seriously, she eats plants. Aloes, specifically. She thinks it cures a sore throat, so when she had a cold, she stripped the schools’ aloes and walked around with a pocketful of little green tentacles. During our Womens’ Day banquet, she pulled one out and began to gnaw on it. Our director looked on with goggle eyes. “We can’t leave her alone in the room with the plants anymore,” Svetlana told her, deadpan. Later that day, I came around a corner and saw my director nibbling on a little aloe chunk and making a face. “Shh!” she said, and pulled me aside where I couldn’t be seen. “I don’t know how she does it! This is awful,” she said, chewing.

Oliver Tvist

The play went well, with more energy in the first performance on Wednesday, and I hope the kids are proud of themselves. They said their lines better than ever before. The script was not written in such a way that anyone can say it naturally - “imagine I am one of those wealthy old gentlemen who wander around Clerkenwell square peering into the shop windows.” Pretend you’re a fourth-year third language learner and you have to say that in front of your school. So we’re all proud of the students and a bit tired of ol’ Dickens, after many many rehearsals.

Rehearsals were a scream, though. The kids are so funny. A couple of them are great at improvisation and Svetlana is good at adapting things to be do-able. Zhopar Aizhan painted the boards we somewhat tenuously set up as scenery. They were liable to fall, but never really did. The boy who plays Oliver, had several scenes with group hugs (they’re popular here. Everything, even things that aren’t hugs, like looking at photos, become group hugs) developed a habit of not letting go. The actors would run into each other’s arms, with Olivers’ on the outside, and hug for 2 . . . 3. . . .4 . . .5 . . . 6 seconds. We could see the others starting to struggle, but they had to go offstage attached a couple times, like a spider with several heads. During setup, the tallest boy wandered around with a refrigerator box over his head. He would come up behind people and envelop them, trying to engage in conversation. One of them was always in various stages of having his photo taken (tilting his hat to the coolest possible angle, loosening his tie, asking me for my camera, asking me to take a photo of him posing like Eminem, looking at the photo saying it’s very good and asking for another.) And an eighth grader was the Littlest Policemen in the play and the Biggest Chimp in real life. He’s amazing at Frisbee and very easily entertained. The other eighth grader would start break dancing when he got bored.

The girls, in subtler ways, were pretty funny, too. The girl who played Sikes walked around with a ‘tude. Which is not at all her normal demeanor. Something about a fake gun and a costume. One of the girls’ lines: “Watch how you handle me, my man. I’m an Englishman as much as you [true dat],” became a mantra. And there was the student who would wink at me fom onstage.

Everyone wanted to dress as a gangster, even the characters who were supposed to be squeaky clean. About 75% of the characters appeared on stage with sunglasses, whether or not it had been okayed by Svetlana. One surprise appearance was made my venerable sunglasses.

They choreographed a fistfight in a scene where one was sorely lacking, and about four short chases, only when called for, of course. Svetlana suggested that in the last scene the characters do a victory dance and chose “Keep on the Sunny Side,” which was replaced, last minute, by a popular song (American) about some guy who’s telling the girl he’s cheating with to consider the feelings of his girlfriend [“this can’t be right, but it doesn’t feel so wrong . . .”]. Sandugash tried to show Zhopar how to dance “modern,” which involves a lot of stomping, apparently. But onstage, they decided not to go Soul Train and were just silly, with Elmira (the other one) swinging her braid like a lasso, and two of the others doing a kind of square-dance/London bridge maneuver which was overwhelmingly popular with the audience. Cultural note: audiences, when pleased, begin to clap in unison.

I took a video with Svetlana’s camera, but it was a failure, since my hand was shaking and as I got tired, the picture would get lower and lower until I only had waist-down of the actors, and then I’d snap out of it and jerk it back up to proper height. And Zhopar kept whispering to me. A student took photos with my camera, which turned out a bit fuzzily. So, for the sake of posterity, the second performance on Thursday afternoon was a good thing. However, since it wasn’t announced until Thursday morning, it was not very, um, convenient. But my students are rock stars and they did quite well.

oblast volunteers

We have a lot of volunteers in this oblast. In the city proper, we have two women and a man (one is placed at a university and the two others are NGO volunteers) here now and two (NGO’s) coming. Near the city, there are three women working at secondary schools. I’m one of these. South on the Europe side of the Oral river, we have two volunteers in Chapayava, Mike and Amber. South on the Asia side of the river (via my village) is Tim D’s village, Akzhayiek. Southeast, also via my village, is Tim K’s village, Fydorovka. We will lose Mike and Angela in early June and get new volunteers in August. So the current status is four men, six women; in May, it will be four men, eight women, and in June, three men, seven women. It feels like a lot of Americans, not least because we hear so much about each other from locals. They know all about us, even if we’ve never visited the village. I hear when the other volunteers are sick through teachers, and some people I’ve met say hi to me from outlying villages through my students. They come in on Monday and say, “Cizge [insert name] salyemdacti, Susan.”

favorite things, spring thaw

My favorite things about my job are my students, bless them, the two English teachers at my school (before a frustrating three-hour meeting during which nothing was accomplished, Zhopar said in English across the table “I am ready to run away now.”), my host family, especially when something really funny happens and we all sit laughing with our chai sloshing in the cups. And days like today, the cream of spring. Warm, breezy, and the air in the city is fresh. The weather really is fine with me. Even in winter, the days are bright and the snow is clean, if inconvenient. And the mud seasons are so astoundingly muddy I’m willing to go through them, just for the sake of my mental story file. The Chapayeva volunteers have a video clip of the thaw (a week or so earlier in the south of the oblast, on the steppe), which looked like the day after the Flood. There was water ankle deep, at least, everywhere. I mean it. The village was like a kiddie pool. At least there isn’t as high a proportion of cattle there as there is in Akzhaiek, Tim’s village, which had just as much water and mud, and a lot more, um, I’ll let you imagine.

I wasn’t there during or after the thaw. Amber and I went a couple weeks before, when the ice was thinning slightly, but wasn’t quite gone. Common foot paths are like SuperMario – you have to jump a certain stone – the one that doesn’t sink when you put weight on it, and from there to the dry spot on the right (but duck, so you don’t klonk your head on the branch). Then, when we came to the broad icy patch, I took the wrong way and had to shuffle across it, double-time, as my feet left deep spider-web cracks. Being independent, I also took the wrong way across what looked like a rink (I believe it was supposed to be a road), and by the time I was in the middle of it, my feet plunged through with each step. Some locals stood and watched me for the full minute it took me to reach the other side. The cows looked at me like I was stupid. Tim and Amber laughed and walked around the edges. My Health scores must be pretty low. Tim and I took a walk around the village the next morning, in the mean sleet, the kind that doesn’t even melt on your face. Amber, being an intelligent person, backed out. We started walking across an intersection, and it creaked when we were a long way from safety. Tim took off doing the shuffle-run and made it to the other side. I thought about getting on my stomach and throwing Tim my belt or something to drag me across (isn’t that what you do in quicksand?) but we both made it. We passed the usual village sites: the junkyards with broken-down tractors, the greenhouse skeleton, the indoor bazaar skeleton, the few small stores that sell eggs, bread, candy, and meat, the mayor’s office, and the library. We came to the edge of the village, where I was relieved to see exposed dirt by the bank (a very deep, steep bank) of the river. I leaped toward it, trying to avoid the very slick and shallow ice that was my other option. It had escaped my mind that wet clay is also slippery. Again, I almost wiped out. It would have been lovely, I would have been covered, it would have been thick and obvious. Maybe next year.

nice city

Saturday was a citywide clean-up day, held over, I think, from Soviet times. It’s really a great idea, and it works well and makes a difference: everyone who’s free (and it looked like a lot of youth clubs were involved) goes outside and cleans up. They rake up the trash that didn’t make it to the proper places and recently melted out of the snow, they sweep, they clip, they plant. It looks great. Oral is one of the greenest cities PC volunteers are sent to, mostly because it’s a little bit north of the steppe proper. It has a different feel from the other cities I've been in - a bit less Soviet-ified, almost frontier town-y. The houses on the oldest streets lean against each other. It can support a lot of trees (fruit trees included) and grass. It’s not as lush as the village in the mountains where I started off, where apricots were so thick on the ground you had to walk on them, but it’s far greener than Almaty. I expect leaves within the week, although one curve of the river is still frozen in the middle.

more names

At Tim D’s school, there are seven English teachers, all Kazakh. Amber, Tim, and I had tea with them, and we went around the table introducing ourselves. “I am Aizhan. My name means ‘wise moon’” “I am Nazgul. My name means ‘tender flower’” “I am Aizhan. My name means ‘moon soul.’” “I am Kamshat. My name means ‘beaver.’” “I am Zhanna. My name means ‘eagle.’” The last English teacher said her name and what it meant, then said: “We are as the American Indians.” Tee hee.

questions (to be updated in stages)

I’ll update this as this week’s homework comes in. You’ll hear from the 7th, 9th, and 10th graders and the 11th graders will answer the ones they haven’t gotten to yet. I’ll also ask the teachers I work with.
I will correct these later with the students, but I thought they’re somewhat poignant as they are.
Keep in mind that our tense system is very different than Kazakh and somewhat different than Russian, and that neither language uses “to be” in the present tense. Therefore, in the 8th graders who’ve just had an infusion of perfect tenses, but don’t know about subjunctives, are a bit scrambled at the moment. In Kazakh, the present indefinite and future simple are the same, and there is no differentiation between perfect and continuous tenses. And there are kids who just don’t pay attention.

What has it been like to have had an American teacher (or two)?
- They are very kind people. They teach us to learn English. – 8th grade girl

Do you have many relatives? Are you close to your aunts, uncles, and cousins?
- I close very good! I love my aunts, uncles, and cousins – 8th grade boy

What do you want other people to know about Kazakhstan?

What kind of work will you do as an adult? Why?
- When I grown-up, I want to be a translator. I want to know English well. It’s important for me because I love English language, traditions, different games. I interested English because I think that it’s my life. English very important in our country, in our school. I like worked translator, because I think it’s key to success. – 8th grade girl

Would you rather have adventure or wealth?
- I would rather have adventure – 8th grade girl

What do you think is the most interesting period of history? Why?

Where do you go on holidays and vacations?
- In my holidays or vacations I shall be going to the nice place. Example: America or my lovely village.
- America. It’s very nice country. Dream: I go to the America if I can speak English good. I am eating American ice cream, or any food. I shall be going for a walk with Susan or my family. I shall be going in green country. I shall be go to the park, zoo-park, or go to the river, for swim. But, it’s a dream. For this I shall working and studying very much. Very much. – 8th grade girl

What do you love about your country?
- The most feature of our country is our warm people. They are always ready to help everybody, they are very tough. And we also have remarkable nature, endless steppe, which has seen the whole history of our Motherland. And we believe that in close future our country will be one of the best countries in the world. – 11th graders
- I love about your country big – house, play computer, a love mountain, sea, nature, a school Umit. – 8th grade boy [he is, in fact, talking about his family, I can’t explain, but I think he means he likes these things in general.]
- I love about my country because my country clear and quite. – 8th grade boy [“clear” is a translation from an idiom both literal symbolic, a common toast: ‘clear skies.’ And I think he meant ‘quiet.’]

What are your favorite foods?
- Our favorite foods are beshbarmack, kuizdak, pizza, and Susan’s tortillas. – 11th graders
- My favorite food is the cheese, beshbarmak, grenage [no ideas about this one] fruit, and a lot of the foods. – 8th grade girl
- My favorite food is a chiren and national foods. – 8th grade girl

What places in the world would you most like to visit?
- We would like to visit some historical sites and also Chicago and France. We would like to feel the spirit of ancient time, to see one more developed industrial city in the world and to feel romantic atmosphere of fairy land. – 11th graders
- I want to visit city Chicago. Because this city, my teachers city. I like my teachers. – 8th grade boy
- I want to visit city Washington. Because I like a nice cities. – 8th grade boy
- I want to visit Washington. But why, it’s secret. (This place lived or living. He is my love actor in China.) I going to Italy, to see a very expensive things. – 8th grade girl [This might ruin the secret, but I think she means she’s in love with an actor who lives in DC.]
- I want to visit on Shalkar because I did not was there. If you will be on Shalkar, you will swim, you played game. – 8th grade girl [Shalkar is a lake in this region]
- I want to visit is Los Angeles. Because, in this city be the Holywood, and I want to visit it. – 8th grade girl

What is your definition of success?
- I must was educationally. [I must be educated] More know language. Help poor mens to get a pension. Open kitchen-room for poor. – 8th grade boys [bless them, this is entirely original]

What do you want other people to know about Kazakhstan?

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

teaching

I just printed some worksheets for tenth form today. It’s kind of an event. You have to find the dame with the key (if she is in fact at school. If not, better luck tomorrow). Sometimes, the door is open and the teachers are gathered inside. There’s one girl who sits at the computer, the only one of about 10 that is connected to the poor little printer. You tell her that you need to print something, and she will sigh deeply and hold out her hand for you to put your disk into it and do her thing: sigh, open your documents, and press the print icon for however many copies you want.

The printer doesn’t give me warm fuzzies, either. If it feels like printing, it jams every three sheets about, and you have to feed it one sheet at a time. It smells like a hot iron, and it leaves a nice thick black border on every single sheet, and does something that warps each sheet and sometimes folds it at a corner or two, getting the border on the back. The ink is basically wet charcoal. Sometimes the printer feels like ignoring all commands to print and sits there and blinks like it thinks it’s R2D2. So, I always leave the computer room looking I’ve had a hard day in the mines.

Today, the 11th graders have their “profil” classes – that is, they study only one subject, the thing they expect to make their career out of. They begin to specialize at age 16, roughly, and don’t have much of a chance of changing past that point. So, five students are taking English on Wednesdays. They come in at 8:15 or so and put their heads on the desks until the bell rings at 8:30. Morning classes end at 2pm. Today, we had a good day (for me) we listened to Radiohead, and they liked it. We’ll listen either to Led Zeppelin or Ladysmith Black Mambazo next week, and I’ll teach them about Erik Erikson’s developmental theory. I have fun with them. Then, we made tacos in the school kitchen. Everyone, not just the students, was really excited about it. The women who sit at the front desk asked me for the recipe. They also asked me what “taco” was in Kazakh. The students decided to put in more garlic than the recipe called for, and they loved making tortillas. All the students from the other grades wanted some, but we just didn't make 100 tacos. We had no water – one of the odd things about living here. We have this nice, new school with sinks and toilets, but there’s no running water, so you have to wash things in buckets. So we sent a student to the well and he came back looking like he’d fought with Swamp Thing - spring mud, you know.

Monday, April 11, 2005

curakter

Several of my acquaintances and students have asked if the people on the other side of this blog are interested in Kazakh/ Kazakhstani culture, life, etc. I told them you were, and that I try to tell about it (not exhaustively, of course). Anyway, I have helpful, thoughtful students who are good at English and very proud of their country, and I thought that it would be great if you would ask questions and they answered. So, please send questions! Questions about anything: what they learn in school, what they name their dogs (Rex. So now you can't ask), what they think of me, why they don't like chocolate chip cookies, etc. Send any questions to susanwunderink@yahoo.com , I'll post them here. Thanks!

By the way, I am healthy again, although my host mother is not. Spring has come, but it's not very romantic, since what it means is that the dead things in the streets are being unfrozen and that the mildew smell in my room has come back with a vengeance. But we're all thrilled, anyway, spending as much time outside as possible, everyone in the village is doing laundry, there are bedsheets everywhere.

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

sick . . . again

I have been sleeping most of the day (two days, as I'm making this entry), spending also a significant amount of time blowing my nose and reading a rather menacing Agatha Christie novel, in which students all over the world rise up to become armies called Golden Youth and disguise bloodthirst as hippie culture. The hero is an eccentric young British gentleman with bad taste in clothes. Not one of her better works.

I’m not quite sure what I have. A host sister is in the process of trying to find out how and when my feet got wet, since these symptoms are obviously those of feet which have been wet. My face doesn’t look sick, and I taught three classes today, rather perkily, even, before I snapped out of some kind of trance and found myself leaning heavily on the desk, urgently needing a nap. I’m really disconnected. I’ll wake up from what isn’t exactly sleeping and realize that my head is tilted, mouth open and that I haven’t blinked for a long time. Maybe a couple hours. I haven’t really been breathing enough, either. But that’s another issue. I came home and sat for a while, then kind of tipped over sideways onto the bed. I usually put the bed back into its loveseat alter ego, but I thought something like this might happen when I left this morning.

The bed looks well-used by now, since when I sleep, I burrow [somebody – is “aaah! It’s burrowing! “– what is this from? Is it a Clare quote?], and often end up stuffing my pillow into the gap at the head-end, which troubles my dreams. I have been dreaming about the ninth graders, again. All day. I also somehow twist all the sheets around my feet, then kick them off. I wake up, mildly troubled. I think I will go to bed soon. I’m trying to make arrangements to facilitate breathing. I have a system for changing what I look at, which involves closing my eyes and turning my neck, then opening my eyes slowly.

Today, Wednesday, I feel much better and the lump between my jaw and my neck has subsided. However, my knees are a bit unpredictable and I find myself lurching quite a bit. I rather foggily taught my two morning classes, and now I will go and sleep again.