Contact info

Hi guys, this is Susan's sister Katherine hacking into her blog (Suz, hope you don't mind! Delete if you do!). I wanted to post her address in case you can send things to her. You need to send a package/letter with English address on the left and Cyrillic on the right. (I'd recommend just printing this out rather than trying to hand-write Cyrillic!)

Susan Wunderink
Peace Corps
P.O. Box 376
480001 Almaty
Kazakhstan

Susan Wunderink
Корпус Мира
а/л 376
480001 Алматы
Казахстан

Susan will be 24 on October 23! She likes moose and candy.

Now it's Susan, editing. Both the address I gave later and this one are correct. However, anything larger and less flat than a letter should be sent to my Uralsk address; otherwise the embassy will hold it until I come to Almaty.

halloWATSyouname?

I just finished three classes – 8th grade and two 6th grade classes – and realized I’ll have to find a way to start from the very beginning without losing my place in the textbook. These kids don’t know anything that’s not by rote. By the time they graduate, most good jobs will require good English – it’s a country-wide initiative that’s understaffed and incredibly ambitious. But I do want these kids to have opportunity. The job market here in Budarin is manual labor. Their fathers and brothers are in the position that an injury will make them unemployable. One of the teacher’s husbands was working in the field yesterday (they’re harvesting wheat here right now) and tried to fix his combine. It cut all his fingers off. I don’t know if he can drive anymore.

Anyway, these kids learn everything in school by rote and therefore nothing is functional. A student who has been in English class for 4 years could not answer “What is your name?”; the question had to be translated for her. So, I’m frustrated, because the other teachers do not want to address this issue of the students not really knowing anything. The theory here is that students’ performance is the result of their teacher’s performance. It’s not so much in this case – it’s a matter of systematic problems. These are some of the best teachers in the school by Kazakh standards. Teachers are taught to lecture, even to kids in 3rd grade (who look about 4 years old here). They don’t seem to learn about how people learn in teachers’ school. The kids are not used to any homework, testing, or any sort of interaction in English in class. Okay, I’m done. But all this means that I have to start over. Also, people stand behind you and stare when you’re writing at the computer. I’d better watch out when these kids’ English improves.

give me please

It's always a shock to hear the English teachers here say "give me" when they want something. We're working on that. But, I would like stuff. KazPost is very good. They even lend you an indestructible, waterproof bag to take packages home in.

I again have ideas of things you all can send me, if inclined. The kids here only learn about England, Australia, America, and Canada. Even the teachers shoot blank looks when I mention the Carribbean, South Africa, Singapore, etc. I’d like to have some photos of as many English speaking countries as possible, but I can think mostly of things I know about that will never ever make it into one of these textbooks. In fact, when there are textbooks here, there are never photos. Only very bad drawings of people with slashes for eyes labled “Eskimo,” etc. Anyways, I made a list of things I want photos of, for those of you who have the time: An American meal (w/ place settings, food on plates, drinks other than tea, salads, maybe finger foods, food in separate sectionsof the plate); all areas of the US, such as Louisiana; all kinds of people, all professions, ethnicities, etc., oceans (most people here have never ever seen an ocean), different seasons, New Year, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, animals not in KZ: jays, goldfinches, robins, squirrels, racoons, possums, mustangs, longhorns, alligators, armadillos, porcupines, moose, etc.; a mall; a neighborhood. And if any of you are generous enough to send me books, I wish I had short books with more-or-less easy words that are not for babies. I thought of perhaps a collection of American folk tales, Many Moons, Tasha Tudor books, famous quotes.

Bad news - my computer is absolutely dead. Poor thing. Life is bitter.

monsha

We don’t have showers or baths here, and the mornings and evenings are chilly enough that I don’t ever feel like the sit-in-a-bucket-and-dump-icewater-on-youself type of bathing. Instead, we have monsha. It’s really a sauna. Most families have one, a building outside of the house with three compartments. The first is where you tend the fire. The fire is in a metal box built far into the wall. You put cow chips through an iron door that’s about the size of a computer monitor and set it on fire. It’s basically an enclosed fireplace in the center of a building. The fire is directly under a large barrel of water in the third room. The second room is where you undress. It always has a bench covered in a woven rug thing. The third room is the sauna. Believe me, it can get hot. You sit there and twiddle around, shave your legs, etc. Until you’ve sweatted out all body fluids. Sometimes this takes 15 minutes, sometimes it takes 15 seconds. Then, you dump cold water on yourself, which feels pretty good at this point, scrub scrub scrub your skin right off, and then use shampoo and soap. Sometimes, if you’re me, you think a bit self-consciously about why there is a clear (although warped and translucent) glass window where you’re supposed to bathe. Sure hope the neighbors don’t mind. Everyone who comes out of monsha is very red. But it’s wonderful. Host mama threw wild mint leaves in the hot water last week – mint steam. Mmmm. I had some thoughts about putting dill weed in there and smelling like a giant pickle from Sunday to Wednesday, but I’ve refrained so far.

steppe

The steppes are in fact growing on me. Because I did laundry yesterday, it's begun to rain. The cows don't care, the sheep do a little. Host Papa gets restive. I'm in a nearby town today with another PCV, and we drove 40km beside the road instead of on it, since every car on the road was spinning out. The roads are impressively bad. But it was a nice drive, straight into pretty empty terrain, and the storms off in the distance were worth watching. There's as much sky as a person could want to see, and it can be clear in one place, raining a few miles off, a storm or two over the river somewhere in the distance. Sweater weather. Boot weather.

marked

Things you would never think of being cultural really are.

For instance, regular stair height. Here, stairs are not the same height or angle. Often, it’s the top step that is 4 inches highter than the others. Sometimes, it’s the bottom step that's not like the others, and I come close to falling in a crumpled heap as I dismount.

Another thing is the type of paint. In Kazakhstan, everyone uses a type of paint I like to call "chalk." Yes, it comes right off the walls. When we volunteers first arrived, we had white backs all the time, from leaning against the walls without thinking about it. Now, I still have it on my bag and a shoulder or two all the time, because I'm just plain clumsy.

Finally, the concept of a doorway is subtly different. Here, the floor isn't continuous, so the doorways have several varieties of raised threshholds, from "loud bump" to "bleeding toes."

I am particularly fit for such an environment, being light and graceful.

3rd language

I told my neighbor that the sun was salty. Or did I say the sun was money? It's hard to keep track. And when my host papa asked how I'd slept, I said "probably."

Rainy Day in Uralsk

I'm in Uralsk today with other Volunteers - we're having a regional get-together today, and I'm very happy to see friends again.

There’s absolutely no city planning to speak of here. I wonder if Budarina slightly reflects how Kazakhs arranged yurts in latter days. The streets are incredibly wide and bad. The houses aren’t really on streets. All three stores are next to each other at the entrance to the city. It’s not lovely.

My host family members look completely unrelated. It’s really almost unbelievable that they’re from the same line. Kazakhs aren’t so easily identifiable up here, because there seems to be more variation in hair and eye color, and people look less East-Asian. For instance, their noses are sometimes sharp, and many have Western-looking eyelids. Blue eyes are not at all uncommon in the South of Kazakhstan, but they’re much more common here. And hair can be anything – there are as many people with light brown hair as with dark brown hair, no one’s hair is black, many women and girls dye their hair blonde and red (and I mean RED). Funny, I don’t see many people with gray hair. There are many people with purple hair, which I don't understand: right there on the box is a model with dark purple hair.