Year in Review a.k.a. I need a less public coping mechanism

It's been a pretty eventful year for me. This time last year I was living in a foreign country, and now that I'm back stateside, I've moved to a new city, started a new job, and completed my first semester of professional school.

Uh, gah!

I get frustrated sometimes, because I feel like so little has changed. My parents still pay for my food when we go out. My stuff is still in boxes in their basement. I still sleep some weekends in a room with my sisters and our three matching bedspreads. I am still roughly the same person in roughly the same place. I keep waiting for the atomic life event that will level my life to the ground floor, refinement through the fire. I went all the way to Kazakhstan for that, and it was a drop in the bucket.

I'm getting the feeling that, like Bono crooned, "Oh, a change of heart comes slow . . ." 

When I look back at the events of the past year, I feel the need to emphasize that my life is not as great as it looks on Facebook. Actually, I am a mess. I really need people to know that. I have never felt more weak and dysfunctional in my life. It's like I have some tic or compulsion, that I have to attach an asterisk to everything. I think this is why I don't feel like I've grown, because every step forward is qualified. Those qualifications are me trying to be accurate and honest, me trying to explain that if I am growing at all, I am growing ever so slowly and clumsily and messily. 

I smile and then sigh. First job after college, but not really. First apartment, but not really. First relationship, but not really. A slew of messy, unfamiliar things that have brought the mess in me closer to the surface. I thought I was supposed to become more sanctified, not more dysfunctional.

But I forget that life is qualified, and all of these asterisks I want to attach to all of these things do not negate the fact that these things happened, and that they were new and difficult and growth-motivating. I'm trying to give myself permission to celebrate these creeping little mile-markers. I want growth to happen all at once when I'm allowed to be contented with faithfulness. It's okay that the going is slow, like, maybe that's even how it's supposed to be. 

The swift cycle of life changes does not mean an equally speedy change of heart. I have been feeling like that's a bum deal.

But maybe it isn't. 

FAQ on Teaching in Karaganda

How was it?

The only word that works to describe it is privilege. In the sense that, it was entirely a blessing and it was entirely undeserved. Extended exposure to a different culture gave me an appreciation of the culture that shaped me; it grew in me a patriotism I didn't know I had. The hospitality and warmth we received was baffling; with openness people welcomed us into their lives. I went to this frozen land to serve others, but abundantly I was served. It's funny how these things get turned around. 

Do you speak the language?

Usually I respond, "Я не могу говорить по-русски, потому что я была плохо учился." We took Russian lessons once a week, and . . . yeah. Everyone did their part to help us practice, from strangers at the bus stop to students outside of class, but at the end of the day it was my job to speak English, so, that's what I spoke. So I'm still a beginning in Russian, but I can say a reasonable number of things. And I know some basic phrases in Kazakh. I'm planning to continue studying Russian in the fall.

What was the food like?

Kazakh food is all about the meat. Russian food has a lot of dill and mayonnaise. The Russian definition of salad is very different from the American one: green leafy vegetables are almost entirely absent and brings to mind 1960's cold potluck dishes. GMOs are a hot topic in Kazakhstan, and I think that explains the cabbages bigger than my head and carrots as thick as my arm. It was also great to live in a place where very little of the food was industrialized and for the most part was farm-to-table. I came to really love the cuisine, and now I definitely eat sausage more than I ever did before. I learned how to make lipioshka, plov, and borcht, all really tasty. I'm also an even bigger fan of some more atypical proteins like duck, rabbit, mutton, horse, and dog.

What was the culture like?

The wonderfully reassuring thing about crossing cultures is that people are people, anywhere you go. You will always have basic humanity in common with others. And because I lived in a city and worked with people who had a lot of exposure to foreigners, the cultural divide did not loom as wide as it could have. I noticed mostly little things: the habit of greeting others when entering and leaving a room, the social acceptance of snot rockets, the phenomenon of Russian lines, the scapegoating of exposure to cold temperatures for illness, Kazakh courtesy and hospitality, and grocery store etiquette. Most of all I loved the emphasis and priority placed on community and relationships, on knowing people deeply and growing together through time.

Do you miss it?

At first, no. Not at all. Sure, my heart flip-flopped when I thought of the dear souls I might never see again, and I sighed a little when I watched my students' lives on social media, but I was too contented with being home to possibly want to go back. Now that I've settled back into life in the USA, and am confronting scary things like law school and moving out and The Future, I want to be back in Karaganda so bad. I miss being able to take public transportation everywhere, or grab a cheap taxi where the buses didn't go. I miss discovering new cafes and marveling at a developing country exerting its economy. I miss eavesdropping on conversations around me and rejoicing when I understood snatched phrases. And I miss teaching, a lot, the preparing of lessons and watching my students relish their linguistic acrobatics.

How have you changed?

This is the hardest question for me to answer. I ask it shyly of my family and they don't know how to answer it either. The shift is subtle, and difficult to describe. I was shown in new depths many of my weaknesses over the year, and in cowardice I avoided confronting them. That has changed my soul somehow, but in ways that have yet to finish playing out. I gained some bad habits, sure, and picked up some new recipes, but more substantially, I think I've become more comfortable with uncomfortable social situations. This is the result of exposure therapy: when you're a foreigner your life is one long uncomfortable social situation, and so I've acclimated to it.

What did you learn?

Reflecting on the past year always leaves me wanting to impress upon anyone who will listen this exhortation: just go. I am the opposite of an extraordinary person. I am not brave. I am not wise. I was not the ideal person for this job. I am completely and entirely average. And yet . . . I had an amazing year. I had the opportunity to be a cultural ambassador, to teach eager students a useful skill, to speak the truth about Jesus to people who had never known a follower of His. Just go. These privileges did not come to me because I deserved them, but because in His grace He freely gave them to me. If I learned anything this past year is that His grace never runs out. He gives it so abundantly you can never reach the end of it. And you can't encounter that grace and walk away unchanged. 

How to make lipioshka

I finally did it! After weeks of internet searching, polling the locals, and one failed attempt, I finally successfully made lipioshka! I must've asked every single one of my students the same question, "How do you make lipioshka?" and they all gave the same abstract answer, "My mom knows!" My Russian language teacher, Katya (who is married to Kazakh and a bomb-diggety cook), finally put me out of my misery when she shared with me her method for lipioshka which took some of the guesswork out of the ingredient proportions. (Ask Bethany about that failed first attempt; salty!)

Lipioshka is a round, unleavened Central Asian bread. The kind described below is, I think, a little bit different than Uzbek lipioshka: it's not prepared in a tandr, the center is not thicker than the edges, there's no design in the middle, and it's fluffy, not dense. Maybe this is a Russified version of lipioshka? Nevertheless, it is the kind sold at the magazine next to our language center, the kind my students brought me on Kurban-ait and Easter, and is second only to baursaki in my heart. I'm so excited that I'll be able to recreate this favorite even when I'm back state-side.

You will need . . . !

500g kefir*

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

As much flour as it takes (a little more than 4 cups)

Some amount of cooking oil (I used sunflower)

Then you should . . . !

Empty your kefir into a mixing bowl. Add the salt and the baking soda. Begin mixing in the flour, and continue adding flour until a dough forms. Then let it sit for a half hour or so.

When you come back to it, split the dough into five parts. (Or more, if you'd like, but probably not less.) Roll each segment out on a floured surface into a circle, a little smaller than the diameter of your pan. It shouldn't be so thick.

In your pan, heat the oil on medium-low. When the oil is hot, add one of your discs of dough. Cook around five minutes each side. You'll notice as it cooks it'll puff up; if it doesn't do this then it's possible the dough was too thick. If you don't want to deep fry the lipioshka, you need only a little bit of oil.

*A note about the kefir: Katya, who is well-versed in assisting foreigners with finding specific food products, told me to buy the small green carton. I chose one at random and it worked like a charm, but I'm not sure about a conduit for this kind state-side, as it appeared much thicker than I kind I usually see back home in New England. On the carton it specifies 2.5%, which I think is referring to the fat content. So if possible, opt for kefir that's just a touch runnier than yogurt. 

I doubt I'll be able to master piroshki or pelmeni or manti before I leave (to be frank, stuffed breads and pasta sound like too much work), but I can content myself with the simplicity and the memories this bread conjures up. 

Karaganda Restaurants

In general, expats who decide to live in a little-known Central Asian country aren't the kind of people who compulsively google everything. They don't look for answers on western internet. Instead they head to the streets. They take bold forays into the local language and culture, and pull from the vast store of information sourced from their local friends. They are not afraid to duck inside random cafes and make the best of it. They are content with not knowing and with figuring things out as they go.

But you know, I'm not one of those people. I am a I-gotta-know-what-I'm-getting-myself-into kind of person. Whenever I'm sick you know I'm all over WebMD. If someone suggests a movie I look it up on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes before adding it to my list. I use the internet to solve a lot of my day-to-day problems; recent Google searches include "How long should chicken thighs bake", "is mahi mahi really dolphin", and "how to manually flush a toilet." (Friends, my life, you have no idea how exciting it is.)

So when I was trying to find a new place to eat this past week, I quickly exhausted the English resources available on the interwebs and instead decided to step out in faith. And trial-and-error has been a fabulous way to find the good food in this city, but for those who, like me, prefer something a little more premeditated, I've prepared a small guide of good restaurants in Karaganda based on my own experiences. As damdi bolsyn!

So for all you Googlers out there . . .

Arzu
Uighyr food and some central Asian offerings, as well. Flakey, melt-in-your-mouth samsa! The menu has pictures, which is always appreciated, but you can't go wrong with any of the lagman. Off Bukhar Zhirou, bus stop Shestnasti. (Near to the other Uighyr restaurant, which is also tasty, but Arzu has free wifi and nicer decor.)

Kafe Kirogi
Korean food. It's not on the menu, but they have dog if you ask for it. (I don't know how to do this, but if you speak the language or go with a local, you can make this happen.) I have only had the dog (which was great!), so I can't speak for the rest of the food, but the place is immaculately clean. It's not on the bus route (maybe it's on Street Ermekova?) so you'll have to go by taxi.

Princessa
Americanized Chinese food. English menu available. Don't get the crispy chicken, it's mostly bones. Everything else is great, though. Tempora cauliflower is outta sight. On Gogol Street (Yogo-Vostock side), across from the German Orthodox church and next Infiniti night club.

Kafe Suliko
A small cafe nestled in Stepnoi 3, this was a favorite. Georgian food! You simply cannot go wrong with Georgian food. Cheesy bread. Enough said. They didn't have an English menu, so we just pointed at random things and were never disappointed. Cheaper and more delicious than the Georgian place on Nurken Abdirova. Within walking distance of the Korzina bus stop.

Palermo
Italian fare, altered slightly for a Russian palate. (Case in point, there is dill on the Margharita pizza.) English menu available. The horse meat pizza is great. The price is in the middle, not so cheap but not extra expensive. The place has a classy vibe. I always went to the one on the second floor of Korzina in Yugo-Vostock, but there is another location on Alikhanova in Centre.

Pivobaroff
German food and beer. The menu is in both English and Russian. The decor of this place is incredible. It's like eating inside the basement of a castle. Prices are on the high side (we were conservative but it cost ~3000/person) but the food is excellent. The sausage dishes are only sausage, so, get a side. On the corner of Bulvar Mira and Bukhar Zhirou.

Nori
For sushi this place is affordable, clean, and pretty chic. It reminded me a lot of my second favorite sushi place back home. We got a sampler tray and it was plenty for six of us. (They also have this berry tea that is RAD.) The cafe atmosphere makes it a good place for hanging out for an extended period of time, and there's a semi-open kitchen. On Bulvar Mira, close to Stanislovski Theater.

Coffe In
I've never had food here, but their desserts are lovely and their drinks are great! This is my favorite place to go warm up in the dead of winter, especially with their pirate punch. And the decor is adorable, it has such a cozy feel inside. Bright orange on the outside. Menu in both English and Russian. Halfway down Nurken Abdirova, bus stop 1000 Melochey.

Perfecto Coffee
If you're needing a little slice of America, this place feels like a typical western coffee shop. Lots of foreigners hang out here, and the staff usually do what they can to overcome the language barrier. And coffee is a bit cheaper and more delicious than Intercoffee, I think. On Bulvar Mira near the Galleria mall, Dietctolovaya bus stop.

These recommendations are based on my own limited experiences living in Karaganda, Kazakhstan for the 2013-2014 academic year. Corrections or other recommendations welcome!

Food withdrawals

We went to the grocery store this week and what I saw had me geeking out. 

Lettuce, they had lettuce. And not just the wilted and yellowed cellophane-wrapped heads of romaine that they usually had, but also those plastic sealed boxed of baby spinach, radiccio, and arugula. What?!

We've become to accustomed to not eating lettuce that one glance at the high price was enough motivation to pass it up, but I felt a little thrill in my gut at this sign that spring was coming, and that after spring comes summer, and during summer I'd be able to eat all the lettuce I wanted.

I foresee this being a big problem. Starting to think about the summer and being home, making plans, the big thing that's in my mind is what I'm going to eat. Like honestly, I see myself stepping off the plane in Logan and walking straight to Jamba Juice. 

For example . . . garbanzo beans, sweet potatoes, Ritz crackers, Italian sausage, ravioli, tortellini, kale, brown sugar, panko, shellfish, jam (I mean, they have jam here, but, it's so, how do I explain, it's like a syrupy fruit puree), PEANUT BUTTER, peanut butter M&Ms, pita bread, bagels, fresh fish, deboned chicken thighs, cheese (they have cheese here, but it's expensive, and there's no cheddar), quinoa, squash, couscous, Trader Joe's, canned crushed tomatoes (not positive, but I think they're a thing here), canned pumpkin, blueberries, asparagus, cream cheese . . . usual food items that I have missed so much and can't wait to consume again. 

I can't wait for iced coffee and Del's lemonade and Iggy's clamcakes and chicken on the grill and s'mores and not paying $4 for a cafe americano and Pinkberry and American-Chinese takeout and being able to drink the tap water. The chain restaurants I previously disdained, like Applebee's or Olive Garden, I'm looking forward to those, too. Cooking in generally is going to be so much easier once I'm able to read the labels again. Succumbing to gluttony is one of my biggest fears about coming back to the States because I'm such a sucker for making up for lost time.

This is a double edged sword, though. Whenever I slip into a day dream about all the recipes I'm planning on trying once I'm back stateside, I also remember all the food I won't be able to eat once I'm home.

Khachapuri, manti, beshbarmak, pelmeni, Soviet cookies, meat-stuffed blini (I mean, I guess I could make my own, but, I will miss buying the premade ones in the freezer section), horse sausage, plov, baursaki, samsa, laghman, shashlik (I could also probably make this myself, but I'll miss the smoky smell of it cooking in the bazaar), lipioshka, katleti, all the pirozhki, and the extensive tea selection. Oh man, I only just realized now, sitting and reflecting on it, how much good food we've consumed. Before coming I didn't think Russian food (with all its dill, mayonnaise, and pickles) would agree with my palate, but what did I know? 

I will not miss instant coffee, Russian salads, meat jello, or okroshka.

The bread here is amazing. I feel as though each culture has excellent bread (I don't think I've ever had bread I didn't like any place I've ever gone), but it will be really depressing to grab a processed, presliced loaf of Arnold's when I've been eating fresh baked brown bread for like 20 cents. And the candy, I don't understand why a nation as industrialized and sugar-obsessed as the USA hasn't diversified their candy aisle, because the ones in Kazakhstan really put us to shame. I'm going to miss the candy. And I'm bringing a few kilos home, so start putting in your requests.

There is so much good food to be had in this world. Enjoy your meals.

KARAGANDA TO-DO LIST

Every morning when I wake up and every night when I climb into bed, I feel this strange division bubbling up in my chest. I think of driving down route 116 and eating seafood and watching movies with my sisters, and I can't wait for June to be here. And I think of walking through Central Park and eating pelmeni and walking with our friends, and I dread the coming of June and leaving this place. Living in a foreign country is such an enormous privilege and one I am determined not to squander during my remaining time here. 

These are the things I want to take advantage of before concluding this stint:

• Hit the major cities: Astana, Almaty, Shymkent
• Go to the banya
• Sing karaoke
• Make a real American cheesecake for the office
• Give purpose to the staff at the Karaganda Region Museum
• Go to a football game
• See the view from Bayterek Tower
• Eat beshbarmak
• See the museum dedicated to the Karaganda branch of Stalin's gulag, the Karlag
• Go to a hockey game
• See a dombra concert
• Drink kumis
• Have an entire conversation exclusively in Russian
• Attend mass at the Catholic church
• Spot a wild gerbil
• Ice skating /  Paintball / Rock climbing (not necessarily unique to KZ, but generally new here)
• Visit Timertau and the Nazerbayev Museum there
• Get my picture taken with every monument (there are at least 10)
• See the inside of the Orthodox church
• Hear stories from someone who lived under the former Soviet Union
• Ride a camel
• Catalogue Kazakhstan's vast variety of candy
• Learn how to make borsch

Lest you think my aspirations are too small, here are some honorable mentions of things I accidentally did without intending to make a goal of it.

1. Visit the Kyrgyz Republic.
2. Watch the Hobbit 2 in Russian, and in 3D.
3. Spill hot oil all over our kitchen.
4. Drink unfiltered water from the tap. (Our friend remarked, "You shouldn't do that.")
5. Buy train tickets all by myself. (Myself plus Google Translate.)
6. Lose my phone. And my wallet.
7. Overstay my visa by two months and get stopped trying to leave the country.
8. Watch a Russian serial. (With English subtitles, of course.)
9. Try vodka.
10. Make my student cry. 
11. Eat dog. 
12. Go to the hospital. (For chest x-rays to prove I didn't have TB.)
13. Ride a bus to an unknown location. (This has happened more times than I can count.)
14. Learn how to make crumpets.
15. Ride a Soviet-era ferris wheel.
16. Go to a wedding. (Don't worry, we were invited.)

If you ever find yourself in Karaganda (hey, you never know!) and want to soak up every little thing this area offers, these things might be a good starting point. Not that I necessarily recommend getting lost on public transportation or overstaying your visa, but these (mis)adventures are fun in their own way because they let you see the place in a new way. And nothing makes you feel like a local like falling down on the icy sidewalks does. So embrace the humiliation. It's amusing for everyone else.

It's Who You Know a.k.a. how I started watching hockey

I think before coming to Kazakhstan I'd been to three hockey games. 

One was a Providence Bruins game when we were younger, and we left in the middle.

The other two were during Word of Life's Super Bowl event, a youth rally that involves staying up all night and . . . learning more about J3sus? Not totally sure, but during the hockey portion of the night I was absorbed with watching my fellow students and pretty much didn't even realize there was anything happening on the ice. 

So when we decided to go to a hockey game here in Karaganda I was kind of unenthused. But we were going with students, and it was a cultural experience, and it was something to do on a Saturday night, so, that happened. We learned the team name (Saryarka!) and how to say goal (шайбу!) and we were good to go. And the game was fun and everything, but I didn't feel the need to ever go again. I checked that off the list. I was ready to move on to football.

Polina (second from left) translates for the team

We've now seen four games, three of which have been playoff games, and two of which have been in the best seats, right behind the players' box. We chant the players names and we say dumb things like, "Я люблю тебя, Bова!"* I'm still waking up from confetti in my bed from when they showered the crowd with it after their quarterfinals victory. 

And how did all of this come about? You Rhode Islanders will understand me: connections. It's not what you know (in this case, the hockey schedule, which we didn't know anyway) but who you know (in this case, the team's translator.) Polina has season tickets to the games and all-access pass because she translates for her aunt, who is the team's doctor. The majority of the players are from Russia or Kazakhstan, but for the English speakers on the team, Polina helps them out. Thanks to her, we got to meet Kip Brennan** and Sabahudin Kovačevič.***

Bet, Teka, and I with Kovačevič

The Karaganda team (Сарыарка, which we're told is the name of the oblast where Karaganda is located) is currently in the semifinals and is the only Kazakhstani team. One of my administrators at Daryn tells me that when the hockey stadium first opened no one attended the games and the doctors and teachers in the city were required to go with their families, I suppose to act as trendsetters. (She confided in me that she much preferred American football to hockey, particularly the Oklahoma Sooners, which I chose to ignore because, roll tide!) Last year this team was in the finals, so it makes it that much more fun to root for a team that actually has a shot at winning. 

These hockey games are a language lesson unto themselves: being sandwiched between native fans shouting at the players in their native tongue we're able to spend a few hours in language immersion, which had paid off with a handful of new words and improved listening skills. (For the Canadian players some fans occasionally shout, "Ca-NAH-da, goal!") I like to think my ability to dance in my seat has also improved from the music they play while the clock is stopped.

Second semi-final game, final score 6-3 Saryarka!

I wouldn't say I've become a hockey enthusiast in general, but having Bet explaining the ref calls to me and offering insight into the game's rules has definitely grown my appreciation for the sport. I tend to have low interest in what I don't understand, but as my understanding of hockey grows so does my attention span for it. I actually just googled what was happening currently in the NHL. Look at me caring! As an expat/foreigner/inherent outsider, what I appreciate best about becoming a Сарыарка fan is being part of something. When I ask my students whether they watched the away games on TV, it's nice to see the look of pleasant surprise at my interest. It's a small gesture, but sporting team pride is just another way to show how much I've come to care about this place. 

*Can I tell you how adorable one of the goalkeepers is? After victories he dances to Gangam Style on center ice and brings the stuffed animals people throw on the ice to the orphanage.

**Formerly an NFL player. Click the link and see an example of his hockey skill set. Polina says he seems scary on the ice (he's an enforcer) but when the team visits the orphanage he tells the kids stories about putting out cookies for Santa Claus; an interesting juxtaposition.

***Competed in the 2014 Sochi Olympics as a member of the Slovenia team. 

****Kazakhstan only has two teams in this otherwise Russian league, and Polina explained that when KZ wins they kind of get treated like we treat Canada when they win the Stanley Cup. In many ways Kazakhstan is to Russia as Canada is to the USA. Perspective.

What's it like living in -35 cold?

It’s not so much that the quality of the cold is any different. Cold is cold. It’s not a different kind of cold, there’s just more of it. It’s the cold you know and love, just with the intensity turned up. So instead of being able to tolerate the icy air on your seven minute walk to the bus stop, you hit the outside air for five seconds and you feel like you’ve been out there for an eternity. 

The feeling of snot frozen inside your nose is a sensation unlike any other. Usually in the cold my nose runs like a faucet, but once you hit this kind of cold cold your nose gets bone dry because the second you step outside any liquid in your body turns into a solid. When you inhale the coldness of the air freezes all of the precipitation in your throat. 

It’s a perpetual state of not being able to feel your extremities. When you’re out in this cold you’re not even really sure you still have a face because you can’t feel that it’s still there. You yank to open the heavy metal door into your apartment building and your fingers burn like you’ve scalded them on a stove. Your toes feel like little logs.

Weather is not so much of an issue when you’re on break from school and can spend endless hours working from home, or more importantly, inside. But when you’ve eaten every edible thing in your house the hunger compels you to make the frigid walk to the market. It’s funny how the store that seemed to delightfully close in summer is now obnoxiously far away in the winter. I fleetingly considered riding the bus around the block just so I could get out of the wind. The cold makes you irrational like that. 

For a few weeks there it was worse back home than it was here in the tundra. It was hitting negative three some people’s thermostats while we were enjoying the balmy twenties. But in a flash it changed; you could watch that mercury fall and we’ve been shivering ever since. With the polar vortex hitting the northeast hard, just know that I feel your pain. Or rather, I empathize with your icy numbness. What’s it like living in one of the coldest places in the world? It’s an adventure.

Undocumented, aka Our Brush with the Law

One of the many benefits of partnering with Educational Services International instead of teaching on an independent contract is the support and training you receive throughout the year. It was at training in July when I first heard the murmurings that the fall conference would be hosted in Turkey. Don’t let anyone tell you that being a cross-cultural worker doesn’t have its perks. 

The whole thing started off sounding just a bit too good to be true. It was a comfort saying good-bye to new friends at training because we knew we’d be seeing them again in the fall. Once in country I formulated an informal list of short-term goals, the chief of which was, “Survive until the fall conference.” Even the day before leaving I just couldn’t imagine what it would be like 1) to visit a place I had long wanted to see and 2) being in a place that wasn’t Karaganda. Despite the frequent reminders from our director that THIS WAS NOT A VACATION, I could barely contain my excitement. I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew it would be good.

We left straight from the language center, which meant I carried my luggage all over Yugovostock and Daryn and Centre, and the melting ice on the ground meant wet socks through the first two legs of our travels. The Karaganda airport was dark and empty when we arrived, giving it the eerie air of a bunker guarding the apocalypse, but we checked in, passed security, and boarded the plane to Almaty with no problems. An hour later we touched down in the Alma-ata, got a bite to eat (Parenthetically, goldfinch soup is chicken broth with potato starch in it. This is not delicious.), and found a bench on which to lay our heads to wait out our eight hour layover. 

This layover was pretty uneventful, except for the brief run-in I had with a resident of Shymkent who tried to converse with me through the language barrier and kept trying to touch my nose with a spit-covered finger. We parted ways when he started saying, “Money! Sex!” over and over. 

Two hours before our flight was scheduled to depart, we got in line for passport control. We each went to a different booth, and thus each had different experiences. I got yelled at by a devastatingly beautiful Russian woman, the young Kazakh officer in Bet’s line just pointed at the date on her registration card with a blank look, Teka sailed through customs no problem and waited for us past security, and David spoke with an older Kazakh woman who attempted to explain the situation with the little English she had. We stood in our booths for half an hour while our three officers made phone calls and conferred with each other. “I think there’s a mistake,” I kept saying. Apparently there was a problem with our registration card, but I remembered being registered when we arrived in August. We had five-year visas and letters of invitation, for goodness sake.

There was nothing they could do for us though. The date on our card showed it to be expired. We had overstayed our time in Kazakhstan by ten weeks. We were illegal immigrants. They put their rejection stamp on our registration cards, confiscated our boarding passes, and showed us out of the terminal. “Can we re-register? Is it possible to catch a later flight today?” we asked with some hope and desperation. “Go to the immigration office,” they told us. “You will not fly today.” The disappointment I felt was heavy. 

The team just moments after we heard, "You will not fly today."

We didn’t really know what to do with ourselves. We were stranded seven hours away from home in a city we’d never visited. Our director from ESI was asleep. Our administrators at the language center (who had taken care of our registration when we arrived) were also asleep. (It was five in the morning, after all.) We weren’t sure what the penalty was for overstaying one’s visa. A fine? A night in jail? Where was the immigration office? What papers did we need? Would the migration police speak English? Should we stay in Almaty and try to get legally registered? Should we go back to Karaganda and get registered there? Should we throw in the towel on this whole Turkey trip? We had spent the whole night bumming around the Almaty airport and could not think clearly enough to resolve this issue.

Things turned a corner when David was finally able to get in touch with our administrators from the language center. They strongly recommended returning to Karaganda. If the migration police had made a mistake on our papers, it could be taken care of. So instead of boarding a flight to Istanbul, we got on a plane headed back to the very place we had just flown from. Our administrators met us at the airport, gave us some food, told us to sleep and then spent the day working magic for us. 

This was the issue:

1) It turns out our five-year visas require us to leave the country every thirty days. Because this visa is brand new (and also maybe because it says so nowhere on the visa itself), neither our administrators or ESI or anyone at all really knew that this was the case. Our administrators felt awful that they hadn’t caught this mistake when they registered us the first time, and now that we’re back from Turkey we have to get these visas voided and apply for new ones so that we don’t have to leave the country every 30 days.

2) Teka was fine. Because she’s Brazilian, her visa was different from ours, and she scored the standard one-year visa that the other ex-pat workers also have. And so at the airport she was waiting for us on the other side of security for half an hour, nervous that we had been taken into custody and she would never see us again. 

3) I wasn’t even in the database. When our administrators went to the migration police to investigate, insisting that there had been a mistake, the police had scoffed at them . . . until they went to pull up my record and saw that I was nonexistent. Considering I had a registration card with their stamp on it, that was kind of embarrassing for them. 

I don’t know what sort of voodoo magic (or bribing) was done to square things away, but once our papers were secured our administrators booked us another flight back to Almaty, and rescheduled the other two legs of our journey: the Almaty-Istanbul flight and the Istanbul-Antalya flight. 

And we thought that was that. But the three flights were spaced out over three days. We’d be arriving at the conference on Friday afternoon, when it was already halfway over and after Thanksgiving dinner. Our director thought the expense was too much, and suggested we stay in Karaganda, but when we found out that our language center was covering the cost of 1) the cancelation fees, 2) the two extra flights to and from Karaganda, 3) a place to spend the night in Almaty and Istanbul, and 4) the taxi to get there, we made the call. The Turkey trip was still on. 

I cannot even describe how indebted we are to our administrators from the language center. From 5:30 in the morning when they got our call until 10:30 in the evening when they put us on a plane back to Almaty they were working on a way to get us to our conference. They shelled out over a thousand dollars getting our flights sorted and booking us hotels, and I shudder to think what they paid in registration fees and punitive fines to make our legal problems go away. They took us to and from the airport and they gave us food to eat while we waited in our flat for a verdict. They even bought us chocolate and tea while we waited for check-in to open. We spent Thanksgiving Day in bewildering transit, but thankfulness for them was my greatest sentiment that day. Katya and Olyessa and Sergey did us a solid. 

Eight flights. Four airports. Five of our six days were spent traveling. A night in Almaty. Then a day in Karaganda. Then another (more pleasant) night in Almaty, this time in an apartment in Arbat instead of the airport. A night in Istanbul. Two nights in Antalya instead of the four originally planned. And then a night in transit through Istanbul, Almaty, and finally home sweet home in Karaganda. Never a dull moment. 

Itty Bitty Bits and Bolts

When we first drove in to Karaganda in the middle of the night, I lay awake thinking about how what I had just seen of my new home was not so different from what I had left in the states. Magnum Supermarket, the variety of car brands, and the music on the radio were all reminiscent of the west. Karaganda is a modern and comfortable city, and learning the basics of life here has been only a small challenge. Now that we've been here a while, the differences are beginning to peep back out at me. Below are some comparative observations describing some small but maybe unexpected differences between how we do things in the US and how it's done here.

• Eggs come in bags. And they are not all uniformly shaped like in the US, but instead they are a variety of sizes and have farmyard junk still on them.

• The egg yolks are pale. When I make scrambled eggs the mixture is almost gray. A quick Google search tells me this is because of the chicken's diet and doesn't affect the nutritional value, so that's good, but the color takes getting used to.

• The milk is not refrigerated. Once you open it, yes, of course, you keep it in the fridge, but in the market the milk is kept next to the coolers, not in it. I guess this is okay because the milk is pasteurized?

• Spices are, for the most part, in cellophane packets, not shakers. Salt comes in a huge bag.

• Vegetable and corn oils are not very popular here. Mostly people use sunflower oil when frying things, and though I was able to find olive oil, it was kind of expensive. For the record, sunflower oil is awesome!

• They don't have lettuce here. I guess it makes sense, their soil isn't really well suited to growing it, and it's tough to import, I suppose, but "salad" here is of the mayonnaise-heavy variety.

Speaking of produce, let's talk about how freakishly large this carrot is.

• There is no real butter. Our administrator tells us there is one place in the whole city that sells 100% real butter and that it's very expensive. We only eat margarine. You can buy it either as slabs wrapped in cellophane, or branded and wrapped in foil. We get President brand, which boasts that it is 82% real butter.

• In the freezer section, they have huge bins full of frozen whatever, maybe a bin of breaded chicken patties and a bin of manti and a bin of shrimp, and you scoop however much you want into a plastic bag. You take it to a weigh station and they give you a sticker with the price. It's the same for produce and pasta.

• You have to pay for your meat at the meat counter, not at the cashier with the rest of your stuff. (This kind of grosses me out, because first the butcher weighs and bags your meat, and then he takes your money. I feel like there's cross-contamination potential.)

• In cafes, you don't order at the counter as you would in the US, but instead waitstaff comes to your table to take your order. (I don't know if this is true uniformly, because I haven't had the courage or the money to eat out often, but in each of my limited experiences so far, this has been the case. I observed this also in Europe, so maybe counter service is strictly a USA thing?)

• You aren't allowed to bring big bags into the market. They have lockers or bag checks by the door, and after you stash your bag there you can enter the market through a little gate. This appears to be very effective against preventing shoplifting. In the US I think you see this less often because our stores have more open space for easier surveillance. 

• You're not allowed to play cards in public. As it was explained to me, card games are for gambling and gambling is not allowed for children, so to prevent corrupting the youth, you can only play cards inside a designated gambling establishment. (I've seen many such places, e.g. FairPlay or Bet Club.)

• Kids are not allowed out and about after 11pm. They have a curfew.

• Kids go to school six days a week. Their only day off is Sunday. They have least have four vacations a year: three months in the summer, and then two weeks in the fall, winter, and spring. And they have to dress up for school, even public school, they wear suits (complete with ties!) and skirts and the like. 

• McDonald's isn't in Kazakhstan at all. Probably one of the few countries in the world boasting its absence. According to the internet, KZ is too big to support the supply chain logistics and freshness standards McDonald's requires. Which makes me question how there's a Burger King and a Hardee's in Astana, or how Kazakhstan's spin-off chain Mag & Duk exists. 

• At the end of a performance, people clap in unison. Instead of applause with everyone clapping with their own frequency, everyone kind of harmonizes to one beat, a little like a repeating forensic clap. We've seen two musicals at the theater here, and this has been the case both times. It's definitely a lot less tiring, but it also equips people to clap for longer, which leads to an awkward ambiguity of, "Okay, so, are we going to stop clapping now?" (But then, I harbor a healthy level of discomfort about ovations pretty much everywhere I go.)

• People infrequently type emoticons with colons, usually they just type three parenthesis marks. Like this, )))

That confused me for like two months. I thought Russian keyboards just didn't have punctuation marks.

• The government controls the heat. A vestige leftover from the Soviet era, when the weather gets cold the government flips a switch and turns on the heat district by district. There is no thermostat in any of the buildings, and often our flat is so hot that we leave our windows open. It was particularly brutal when we had a cold spell in September that made the heat come on, and then in the beginning of October it got back up into the 70's while the heat pumped on.

The courtyard behind Daryn

• People blow their noses on the ground. In a place where it's so cold all year round it stands to reason that runny noses are a common enough occurrence, and I guess it seems hygienic enough to drop that mucus on the ground, rather than carry it on a tissue in your pocket. 

• Drinking glasses here are small. I handed a "normal-sized" glass to a guest who remarked, "Whoa!" The glasses that where in our apartment when we arrived are like itty bitty doll glasses. They hold like two swallows of liquid. Even at restaurants, where they supposedly have big glasses, they're really more like medium-sized.

• It is so cheap to have a baby here, if it's not completely free. At the public hospitals it shouldn't cost you anything to have your baby, and we're told mothers are required to stay overnight after delivering. If you want to give birth at a private hospital, it can cost up to a thousand USD, which sounds like a great deal compared to the USA where it can cost between $7000 and $10000 easy.

• And speaking of things that are cheaper, higher education costs three thousand USD here, which is admittedly somewhat expensive considering Kazakh income, but many students with good grades are able to go to school on government scholarships, meaning few have to pay the ticket price. 

When I first arrived, I told a few of my students that I didn't feel as though life in Karaganda was dramatically different than back home. It's not as though we were eating tripe every day or dressing in full traditional attire. All the similarities made coping with the culture shift delightfully comparative, and I started expecting the familiar. I guess that's why now, as we settle in more, I am more attuned to these petty differences and diversions from what I am used to. It's strange to encounter the unfamiliar in a place that is beginning to feel more and more like home.

Fall, rethought

I'm addicted to autumn in New England. 

One fall morning in college, walking back from clinical psych class, my friend taught me the word "petrichor," which refers to the smell of soil after rain. It's one of my favorite things about late September, how the leaves start to fall and rot into the ground, mixing with the rain and the dying grass to make petrichor, the smell that signals the changing of seasons.

It's hard to catch that smell here, being that grass is a little scarce, and there's a heck of a lot of dust, particularly in Yogovostock which is newer and less protected from the wind tearing in from the steppe by a barrier of trees. And there isn't the wide range of deep reds and brilliant oranges on the trees, but there's a delightful smear of yellow painting the trees, and when I walk under the canopy they provide on my way to school I feel so very Anne Shirley, tripping through an autumn wonderland. And it's not like New England, but it is so very fall, a fall all its own. 

The shaded sidewalk that leads to our language center.

Short-cut apple cider simmers on the stove, a handful of бабушек sell small pumpkins and winter squash outside the magazines, yellow leaves crunch underneath my boots on the way to the bus stop, and I pour some gingerbread syrup into my coffee. And of course, dang, it's cold. Scarves and sweaters and boots are not superfluous fashion accessories but actually 100% mandatory if you want to survive your walk down the wind tunnel created by the tall apartment buildings. 

And so, stripped of the things that usually endear me to this season back home, why am I still so charmed by the shortening days, the unrelenting warmth of the radiator, the mandatory dressage of beanies and gloves, the subtle shift in produce offerings, the steady ice cream consumption, and the increased presence of those medical masks on the faces of benevolent souls who are doing their part to limit the spread of the common cold? I love that fall is still fall even outside of my beloved New England, and that the city I am growing to love knows autumn in its melancholy beauty. 

My freshman year of college, I went to Boston in late October for a law school conference. (It was actually a NBLSA conference, but that's another awkward story for another time.) It was picture-perfect, Boston in the fall, catching a glimpse of the crew races on the Charles and Harvard yard in autumn adornment, squirrels packing away acorns like mad. I never dreamed that three years later I'd be across the world experiencing beautiful autumn in a country known for its frigid winters. Oh, Karaganda, thank you for this lovely season, this last parting gift before winter blows in.

A little bit about Daryn

As much as I enjoy teaching business English for upper intermediate students at our language center, what really adds spice to my week is the time I spend at the nearby Kazakh boarding school Daryn. At 13:30, while my teammates are finished up their lesson planning for their evening classes, I depart from our flat alone and grab bus number 7 (or sometimes bus number 07, which I have been assured is different) which gets me to school in just under ten minutes. Daryn is maybe 5km from our flat and situated just off the road that leads directly to Karaganda's airport.

Because it's a boarding school, it always smells like a cafeteria when I walk through the door. This smell makes my boss from the language center wrinkle her nose, but I love that many of its students live at Daryn (coincidentally, the Kazakh word for talented or gifted) because it means that I get to talk to kids from all over the country. One of my business English students tells me, "Ah, Daryn, I know this school. This is for kids who like studying." My eight graders inform me hat they hate reading and don't really care for school, either. True to smartypants stigma, though, it seems like all of my students want to be engineers or doctors when they grow up. 

On my way to the classroom I often pass a few of my students in the hall. "Teacher!" They gesture outside and look at me with begging expressions. I tell them they can play outside until class starts, but I better see them in their seats at 2:15. Faces exultant they rush outdoors. I wait outside of classroom 19, the biology room, as the cognate on the sign next to the door indicates. At 2:10 the bell rings and students rush out. This is the end of the school day, except for the poor victims of my class. I fiddle with the fancy smart board, and try to take attendance. As I try to say their names correctly, they giggle every time. 

See? You can sound it out. BEE-OL-O-GEE-YA. Cabinet is the word for classroom, I guess.

After class I sometimes walk to the bus stop with my students and they slowly teach me Kazakh. So far I have a tenuous grasp on the words for hello, good-bye, thank you, how are you, and Monday. The kids all speak Russian of course, but they think it's hilarious to listen to me stumble through the syllables, and as nationalism grows in this country so does my desire to make an effort at their language. And here I am on equal footing with my Russian students who know about as much Kazakh as I do. 

My students themselves are a total trip. The sixth grade boys love video games, particularly Minecraft and Assassin's Creed. The girls are feisty, alternatively yelling and rolling their eyes at the boys. Two of my eighth graders speak only in jokes, insisting that they are Italian and Guatemalan, and they they run a mafia within the school. Many of my students are my neighbors. If they don't live in Yogovostok in general then they live specifically within our apartment complex Tatimbeta or on the other side of our supermarket Norma. And the connections don't end there; one of the sixth grade girls is the niece of a former SBTC student who welcomed us to the country when we first arrived. We swap stories about her uncle and his girlfriend, who is a former teacher with my organization.

Through all the pizazz I enjoy from being someplace different each day, there are nevertheless some things that throw me for a loop while teaching at Daryn.

One is the level of my students. I got almost no practice teaching beginners during practicum because it was assumed I wouldn't have beginner students. So imagine my surprise when I conducted placement interviews for the sixth graders and most couldn't tell me what day it was. I count the lesson a success if the students seem to comprehend the meaning of one vocabulary word. To amplify the curse, there are a handful of students in both sixth grade classes who are much further along in their English mastery and they sit in the corner of the classroom looking bored out of their minds. I can't blame them. 

For another thing, there's the noise. Maybe it's because I failed to be strict the first week, but the classes are almost always at a dull roar. Students chatter constantly with each other in Russian or Kazakh, and insist on speaking to me while their classmates are speaking. I have tried separating students, trading games for worksheets, calling out the noisemakers, and even the Kazakh teachers' strategy: yelling. No dice. And if the students WITHIN my class were not noisy enough, fifteen minutes before class ends we are disrupted by students from other classes. My boss from the language center visited my class one day and was appalled to see students from other classes raucously fetching their things from the back of my classroom. Shushing is pretty much ineffective.

The administration also makes me nervous. Though the director of Daryn and the head English teacher know who I am, all other staff at Daryn seem stupefied by my presence. About once a week someone yells at me in Kazakh, as if to say, "Who is the girl and why does she think she can walk freely through the halls of this school?!" Various adults poke their head into my classroom with questions, and my students shout in unison, "Oна не понимает русский!" She doesn't understand Russian! I can't help but wish I appeared as a little less of an interloper there. On some level it must be the human aspiration for belonging.

The bus stop behind Daryn where I wait for the bus to the language center. Zhan's a lucky guy!

Some days, after struggling through a lesson, I look forward to taking the bus (either 01, 45, 43, or maybe 12 . . . from a foreigner's perspective the bus system has no transcendent organization) to the language center, and teaching a class of calm adult students who are nearly fluent in English and laugh at my jokes. There is a comfort and a calmness that accompanies rejoining my teammates at our language center. But if SBTC keeps me sane then Daryn keeps me engaged, and I would never trade my classes there because I always enjoy that there's never a dull moment.

Bringing back teatime

When the colonies succeeded from Great Britain, we gained a good many things as a new country. A democratic system of government, tempered by checks and balances. Fair taxation levied with adequate representation. A lot more geographical space and an accent all our own.

Did we fully count the cost of what we would also in turn give up?

I gather that teatime did not leave the continent with the redcoats, and that this tradition persisted until it became out-moded and impractical during the height of the industrial revolution. (Just kidding, I actually know nothing about the history of teatime in the United States. I liberally assume this eradication.) And while it is still common in the USA to meet a colleague for coffee, or talk over dessert and hot beverages at one's home, teatime as we once knew it has ceased to exist.

What I propose, then, is that we bring it back.

Sitting down with a comforting hot beverage. Supplementing your drink with bread & jam, or a slice of cake, or a few cookies, or a little sandwich. Taking the time to sit and be recharged. Engage in diverting conversation. Maybe I've been too engrossed in James' The Portrait of a Lady, but what part of that does not sound like a good idea?!

I cherish the teatimes we've been enjoying in Karaganda. Of course, we're not limited strictly to tea. Hot chocolate and coffee frequently make appearances. And we're not so rigid about the time either: sometimes we take a cup at the school, sometimes in the afternoon if we've had an early lunch, or sometimes in the evening if we've had an early supper. On occasion we have teatime while we play Settlers of Catan, or we pass our teatime with conversation and reflection. Even solitary teatimes are a comfort to me; I pause what I'm doing and take solace in a hot beverage and daydreaming. It's lovely, and sanity-inducing.

I can't wait to begin befriending our neighbors and students so that we can invite them to take tea with us. I think teatime may have a place in the fabric of habit in my future, and gladly.

Too good to be true

As I stare at the Excel sheet I'm typing into, frequently glancing at the top registration card on the stack next to me, it hits me afresh. I am only struggling to input the names into this file because they are foreign to me. I am only typing this roster because I will be teaching these endearing souls how to improve their English. I am living in Kazakhstan. Is this real life?!

It seems to me this is the best job in the world. Here I am, living in a charming city full of friendly people, meeting bright-eyed students who wish to do great things, paying sixty cents a day to ride the bus, and teaching classes at night which preclude me from having to wake up early. There are so many rich additions to life here: we have teatime and toilet closets and integrated public transportation. And there is not so much to miss from western culture: we have peanut butter and fine chocolate and ketchup. We have even begun running into people we know on the sidewalk! The only piece missing is to find a coffeehouse.

The rose-colored lenses will come off in due time, I think. I don't mean to sound like some saccharinely optimistic Lisa Frank butterflies and rainbows caricature. It's just that this is all such a supreme privilege, and I want to preserve these feelings for when it is thirty degrees below zero and the ache of missing Rhode Island cannot be contained. I want to remind myself that there is much to love about Karaganda, so that I will be less in danger of forgetting it.

Conducting placement interviews has sufficiently whetted my appetite to begin teaching. In most cases, one really only needs to talk with a student for 90 seconds to get a feel for their comprehension and speaking ability, but in practice I spoke with each for as long as I could keep the conversation rolling. I never tired of hearing their aspirations to one day visit London (an aspiration I share!) or their puzzled rebuttal of the concept of a "dream job" ("You work at the job you receive!") or their summer adventures paired with back to school woes (the young boys are particularly crestfallen over this.) I like them all so very much, it seems all too fortuitous to be offered such agreeable students. 

I asked the very last student I interviewed, "What are your goals? What plans do you have for your life?" She furrowed her brow, maybe confounded by the word "goals." I clarified, "What do you want to do in the future?" She seemed to understand this. "Well, I like Karaganda." I couldn't stop myself from smiling widely and replying, "So do I."