You Call That an Ending!?!?!

When I write I usually I pick an overarching theme for my post. An emotion, a current event, sometimes an anecdote. This time that’s been almost impossible. While it took me only a day or so to write about the first post about my egress from Kazkahstan, I’ve been trying to write this piece for over a month now. Before tonight every time I began to write I only got, at best, a few lines before I got frustrated and stopped. This was always followed, the next day or sometimes a few days later, by an attempted rereading of the previous draft, inevitable hatred of said draft, and another whack at a new draft.

Each time I failed to write anything that I thought was any good, I became more and more frustrated. I wanted so bad to write about how I had not felt sad on the train from Shymkent to Almaty. I wanted so bad to write that while I was lying in that cramped little train car, littered with food and luggage, that I had time to be introspective and had some epiphany about how everything would end up being okay. I wanted so bad to ascribe some profound meaning to what had happened. I didn’t want my last few days in Peace Corps to be a haze of bureaucratic procedure, airplanes, and exhaustion. I didn’t want such an ordinary ending for such an extraordinary collection of memories.

But after 15+ deleted drafts and a far greater number of swear words, I realized, that this post wouldn’t provide me any type of catharsis or do anything to change how the last few days of my time in Kazakhstan played out. So, like the end of my time in Kaz, this blog post isn’t what I wanted, but it’s what I got.

And the further away I get from my inglorious ( <— Tarantino reference!!) exodus ( <— not a Tarantino reference) from Kazakhstan, the more I realize that I’m really damn happy with my Peace Corps story (and accompanying blog posts,) bathetic ending and all.

A Rear View: Looking Back at the Work side of my time in Peace Corps Kazakhstan

I’m still trying to write about the last part of my exit from Kazakhstan but lately I’ve been having trouble finding the right words. Instead I will post some pictures from when I started  in Peace Corps Kazakhstan through the time that I left. We ended up landing in Kazakhstan at about 1 A.M and spent the first day or so in in Almaty. The way Peace Corps Kazakhstan worked was that volunteers would spend 3 months in a handful of villages around Almaty before being assigned a site around the country for our 24 month service.

Our time in the villages when we first arrived in country was called Pre-Service Training (PST.) One of the main purposes of PST is to help volunteers learn the local languages (volunteers are also given money for language tutoring after arriving at site) before we start training in the local schools. During our training volunteers either learned Kazakh or Russian. The first few weeks before we started practice teaching we spent about 6-8 hours a day learning a language. Here is a picture of one of our PST Kazakh lessons with our teacher Askar Aidarula.

P.S if you can see the green lined poster above his head, that is the Kazakh alphabet. It has 42 letters!!!

All schools in Kazakhstan start on September 1st (First Bell/Первый звонок.) During PST each teaching volunteer would have to teach lessons in tandem (or solo, depending on preference and previous experience) with a local teacher while being evaluated by other volunteers and local teacher that worked for PC Kazakhstan. Towards the end of PST each teaching volunteer would pick one of their classes and designs a week-long curriculum which culminates in a themed project i.e Travel (my theme.) Here is my 11th form/grade class that I worked with.

Here are some of the girls working on a poster for their final project.

At the end of PST, after being assigned our sites around Kazakhstan, volunteer returned to Almaty for a two day conference where we met the local counterparts that each of us would be working with during our time at our sites. On the November 7th, 2010 we were officially sworn in as Peace Corps volunteers. Along with speechs from a few volunteers and the director of PC Kazakhstan, a Kazakh official came and wished us luck in our future PC Kazakhstan endeavors.

Here we are after being sworn in as the 22nd group of Peace Corps Kazakhstan volunteers.

After this ceremony all of us boarded trains with our counterparts and headed out to the four corners of Kazakhstan. For those of us going to Shymkent we were met at the train station by the volunteers who were already serving in the city. After dropping off our bags they showed us around the city and we spent the next few days going to visit all the possible host family options and visting our new work sites. While I worked at two sites I spent the majority of my time working at the local 1st Daryn school. In his Kazakhstan 2030 plan, President Nazarbayev wants more young people to learn English along side Kazakh and Russian, as you can see by the (KZ RU EN.)

For the first few days at a school volunteers do not usually teach, we spend time getting familiar with the teachers and students.  I started teaching after about three days and here is the first class I was given. I taught this class two lessons a week in my first year and three lessons a week in my second year.

Another important part of a teaching volunteers service are our English clubs, both school and community-wide. To me, the main purpose of these clubs was to give the students a place to practice their English where they did not have to worry about grades or anything else. One of my clubs favorite activities was playing “Jeopardy” on the interactive boards with categories such as famous people (pictured below,) famous writers, Enlish grammar, etc.

In Shymkent I also gave seminars to local teachers at the Oblast/область (region) training center. This was a place where teachers from around the region would come every so often to take two week courses (basically in-service training) where they would learn about topics such as using multimedia in your lessons, teaching English language idioms, and so on. About once a week, sometimes twice a week, I would give interactive presentations to groups of about 30 teachers at a time.

There you have it, a brief retrospect of the professional side of my service in Peace Corps Kazakhstan. While it’s far from comprehensive I tried my best to highlight the main points or my time working in PC Kazakhstan and I hope this gives anyone who reads it a better insight to my life while I was serving in Kazakhstan.

India: Part 3

I know in my last post I promised to write up the second part of my exit from Kazakhstan, but after writing essays for graduate schools and studying for the GRE I’m a bit worn out and thought I’d write something a bit easier to get me back into the swing of posting. So this post will get into the last leg of my trip to India from Jodphur to Anjuna Beach in Goa. We will start from Jodhpur and go from there.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m a sucker for landscape shots;  I’m not sure why but especially ones which feature and overcast sky against a colorful landscape. I thought the encroachment of the grayish-blue clouds from the side that make the landscape on the right side a bit darker was eerily beautiful.

The next stop on our trip took us to the most famous fort in all of Rajasthan, the Mehrangarh Fort. Like most forts it sits on top of a big hill so it has a great view of Jodhpur. Most notably the old city that we will get to soon. But first a shot from our way up the hill; can you imagine being a soldier a few hundreds years ago and having to try and storm this!?!?

Here is a picture from one of the many walkways inside the fort. I wanted to use this picture to illustrate the size of the place, it was truly massive.

Earlier in the post I mentioned the old city of Jodhpur which you can see really well from the fort; well the reason I mentioned this because the old city is famous for being blue. Blue, you say? Yes, I say blue and in case you don’t believe me, here are a few shots of the blue city.

This actually turned out to be my favorite view in all of India. It was some random little outcropping from the side of the castle but I just loved it and ended up standing there for a few minutes just looking before I remembered to take a picture.

This is another shot in which you can see the blue houses and buildings much better.

After about 3 days we headed out from Jodhpur and the next stop on our journey was only for an afternoon, but it was an afternoon well spent. We stopped at the amazing Jain temple complex near Ranakpur. The complex consists of a few smaller temples and then one main temple which is absolutely incredible because  all the temples, like everything else in India seemed to be, are made of white marble.

This was one of the smaller temples and I could have sworn the guy called it the Kama Sutra temple but I’m not really sure. If you look closely at the side you can see some of the small figures that were carved into the side. Everything in the whole complex was so damned intricate it was almost beyond belief.

Here are some shots of the main temple, the first is from the platform by the Kama Sutra temple. I like how all the things on the sides of it make it seem like it is nestled into a little pocket in the mountainside.

Next is a picture of the temple from the front, as you can see it’s pretty damn big.  I didn’t really notice it before but for some reason the sky actually looks too richly colored to be real because of how it contrasts with the more subdued colors of the temple in the foreground.

Now on to the inside of the temple, but first a shot of my friend walking through the temple doors. To me this picture felt like some still shot from a movie that if you put some sad walking away music to it could be at the closing credits of some indie flick.

Now to the actual inside of the temple which like everything else was unbelievably intricate. Figures were even carved into the ceiling of all places. I had to lay on my back to take this picture, but the cool white marble that the floor was made of was so cool I just stayed there for a few minutes afterwards.

I’m not sure why but there was a tree next to a small shrine in the middle of the temple. Again everything is all marble. This is actually one of my favorite pictures from the whole trip and is currently my desktop background I like it so much!

And just to see if you’re paying attention, MONKEY BOMB!!

While there were a few quick stops in between, some things happened that made us have to change our trip around so we ended up in Goa a day before we had planned to but the extra day was something I am glad I got to have. Normally during tourist season Goa is always packed but luckily for us it was tourist off season, not many others were crazy enough to go trekking around India in August, so while other tourists where there, not enough of them were around to make things annoyingly busy. Surprisingly it was a bit overcast most of the time we were in Goa so we just spent most of our time relaxing at seaside cafes eating the freshly caught seafood and listening to music. I know, poor us right!?!?

Here is a picture of the beach itself, while it was warm enough we didn’t really go for anything other than a quick wade because the waves were wicked and it’s known to be a surprisingly dangerous place to swim. The man in the picture was actually catching the food for the cafe we were eating at. Every little while they would bring over a tray of what he had caught and they would let you pic out what you wanted, it was fresh to say the least.

While I closed out the last post with a quote, I’m going to close this post with a picture. It is that last picture I took and out of everything I saw was probably one of the most simple yet memorable scenes for me, because everywhere else I went in the country there was always such a vast amount of “things”, be they people, piles of trash, or really just any number of things; though there really is nothing in this picture but emptiness, a real contrast to the rest of the trip. It’s a simple shot the from the seaside cafe of a storm rolling in from somewhere out in the Indian Ocean.

Be Back Soon

Sorry for the long absence between posts but I’ve been studying for the GRE, which I crazily took the day after New Years, and have been writing applications to various graduate schools. I’m almost done and should be back to posting again soon! Hope everyone had a safe and happy holidays!

India: Part 2

Not the post you expected? I figure for those, if anyone actually does, who read I blog you would rather read the second part of my departure from Kazakhstan. That will be the next post but at the moment I am trying to settle in back in the US and want to give myself a few days to get away from the whole thing so I can look back on it from an less emotionally dominated viewpoint. That being said Kazakhstan Part 2 will definitely be my next post but until then here are some pictures from the second leg of my India journey including the cities Jaipur, Bikaner, and Jaisalmer. Also a big congrats to my fellow blogger Renxkyoko on her nominations for multiple blog awards!

Due to the fact that that there are a lot more cities and sights in this posts I had to be more selective with what pictures I chose and those that I did choose may have smaller captions. We’ll start with on of my favorite cities in all of India, it’s called Jaipur and it’s nicknamed the Pink city for all the building in the old town that have a pinkish hue to the exteriors of the buildings.

This first set of pictures are of the Jal Mahal Palace on the Man Sagar lake.

The Jal Mahal Palace:

The next image is a shot of the lake itself. I’m kinda a sucker for nature shots and some of the views I saw in India just stuck with me. I’m not sure if it’s the color combinations of the sky and earth together or what but there was just something about this next shot that I fell in love with. This is Man Sagar lake and the hills behind it.

The next picture was taken on the way up to the Amber Fort. Early in the morning you can ride them up to the fort on the top of the mountain. I love elephants and this was one of my goals for India but, sadly for me, we got there a little too late and I missed out on the chance because they were being taken back outside the city to a place to eat and keep cool during the sweltering August days.

After a few minutes of driving we reached the main draw in Jaipur, the Amber Fort. It’s an old fort situated on a hilltop in Amer, a small area adjoining Jaipur. The first is a picture of the fort from the bottom of the hill that the fort sits upon.

After you go through the main gate you enter a big courtyard where you buy tickets to walk through the fort and take pictures. This next shot is from the top of the stairs you go up to enter the rest of the fort, aka after the door where they take your tickets.

Once you get inside you see an incredibly beautiful garden and fountain. Sadly no one was allowed to go down and walk around the garden.

This next picture is probably my favorite I took while I was in India. It was just some marble latticework that you could see through. I loved how the light shone through and illuminated some part and made the contrast between the marble in the foreground stand out against the scenery in the background.

The next city we went to was called Bikaner. In Bikaner there is really only one main attraction, that being the Rat Temple that’s about 30 mins outside of the city. You read that right, I said Rat Temple, it’s a place where people worship rats. Interesting side note, you have to take off your shoes before you go inside, and before you ask, that means exactly what you think it means; you walk around the whole temple either barefoot or in socks with a multitude of rats running around the place. Also it’s considered “lucky” if a rat runs over your foot, needless to say everyone leaves as very lucky people.

The temple itself isn’t much of a draw because it isn’t particularly beautiful or anything, so I’m skipping pics of the outside of the temple and getting right into the good stuff. This first picture is of the outside of the main shrine; no one is allowed to take pictures inside the shrine itself so this as close as I could get.

They also feed the rats!

Also it’s considered extremely lucky if you can spot the white rat in the temple. So in short you’re all welcome for the luck that I’m about to bestow on you, that is if you can spot the white rat!

The last city I’ll show in this post is Jaisalmer. Jaisalmer is known as the “Golden City” because of the yellowish tint around the city from all the yellow sandstone around it; the whole “Golden City” thing is probably helped by the fact that Jaisalmer is in the middle of the Thar Desert.

During our first day, out of two, in Jaisalmer we wandered around the main fort in town. Seeing as most of the city’s population still lives within the massive fort this was also the main bazaar and restaurant area. We walked around and bought a few small things like scarves that make turbans; said turban/scarves will come in handy later! Here is the entrance to the fort from the bottom of the hill.

While I took a few pictures in and around the fort most of the pictures I took over these two days were during our overnight camel safari. This is the start of the safari when we left out from the small village in the desert, here is a pic of Daniel doing his best Indiana Jones impression. Notice the Turban/Scarf!

Next is a picture Daniel took of me and my Turban/Scarf!

After a little while of riding we stopped and took a break during the middle of the day in the desert. Some of you out there know my thoughts on camels; for you who don’t, I’ll be succinct, I can’t stand them. Though I must admit that this guy wasn’t all bad, I guess. Too bad I never got around to naming him.

After our break we got back on our camels and rode to a group of sand dunes on the horizons.

When we reached that sand dunes the sun was still up but due to an approaching storm the sky started to darken and I thought the sun against the darkening sky was an interesting contrast.

This last picture is of nothing particularly special but is one of which I’ve become especially fond, and while most of the time I think I’m good at finding the appropriate words to sum up my thoughts at the end of a post; I think in this case American artist Andrew Wyeth says it much, much better than I ever could.

“It’s a moment that I’m after, a fleeting moment, but not a frozen moment.“

GO BIG BLUE

On a bit of a lighter note here is a video of my 11th grade class during my last day in Shymkent.

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The Long Goodbye: Part 1 of my departure from Kazakhstan

While I’m waiting until after I’ve left Kazakhstan to post this I’m actually writing on the 28^th of November (last day in Kaz) while sitting around a coffee shop and trying to get my thoughts together after what has been one of the most hectic and tumultuous 10 days of my life. At this point I’m sure a few of you are a bit confused as to what this post is about. Well the Peace Corps Kazakhstan program has been indefinitely suspended, meaning that all volunteers are being evacuated from Kazakhstan. After 18 years of operation in Kazakhstan the program will be shut down until further notice, and while it may be re-opened in the future it does not seem likely at the moment. While I’m sure many of you are curious about why Peace Corps (PC) is leaving Kazakhstan let me tell you now that I’m not going to address the reasons why we are leaving in this post. There were too many factors and frankly mentioning only a few of them will undoubtedly paint a skewed portrait of the lives of Peace Corps Volunteers during our service in Kazakhstan and of Kazakhstan itself. I will provide some background information about what happened over the last 10 days or so but this post will be about my reactions and feelings after I got the news, no more. This first part will only be half the story because to fit all of my thoughts and feelings into one post is just not possible without turning it into a tome that will bore everyone about 5 minutes into reading. So like any good storyteller I will just start on Wednesday the 16^th of November and take it from there. This will be from the day I found out to the train station the day I left to go to Almaty, the rest will come in the next post.

While this whole time has been very emotional, I think the day I found out was easily the most emotionally schizophrenic. Wednesday is usually one of the longest days of the week for me due to the fact that I start my day at about 7:30 in the morning and am running around and working until about 8 at night; though this particular Wednesday actually seemed like it was going to be one hell of a good day. On Wednesdays, around 9 AM, I usually give English methodology seminars to teachers at the government pedagogical institute, though on this day I was told I could sleep in and come and give my seminar at noon. This made me really happy, not because I could sleep in but rather because it allowed me to enjoy one of my favorite things in life, that being University of Kentucky Wildcats basketball. After mentally preparing myself to be without UK basketball for 27 months I was ecstatic when I checked the schedule for ESPN America on my local cable package and saw that to my surprise UK would be playing the University of Kansas in basketball at 8 am local time. Needless to say, like a kid at Christmas, I woke up at the crack of dawn out of sheer excitement. I made a pot of coffee and proceeded to watch the game and after UK won, I showered and left my apartment to give my seminar. While the content of my seminar was not particularly exciting I actually enjoyed it more than pretty much all the other seminars I had given so far in Kazakhstan. After my seminar I walked a block to the secondary school (High School) where I teach and sat to have another cup of coffee and prepare for lessons. At this point, because of the game and the seminar, I was in a really good mood when I answered the call from a PC staff member, though as you can probably guess that changed very, very quickly.

Before I even got the message that Peace Corps was closing this phone call filled me with worry. The tone of the speaker’s voice and the phrase “can you sit down and listen for to me for a few minutes because I have something to tell you” immediately made me think that I was about to be told that someone back in the USA had died. So I sat there and listened, and after a few words I realized that no one important had died but that something intimately important to me had. While I am usually very good at analyzing and finding the right words to describe my emotions, when I look back at that moment I simply can’t sum it up. I wasn’t numb, sad, angry, happy, or anything like that, there was just something visceral that I really cannot describe.

We were asked not to tell anyone until the next day while other volunteers were being told and PC prepared to break it to our schools and organizations in the best way they could. While this was, in my opinion, for the best it did, somehow, manage to make an already emotionally trying day even harder to handle. Because, after I found out I still had to conduct my two favorite English clubs and somehow cancel them without giving a concrete reason why. I pretended nothing was wrong and at the end of each club made the announcement that all volunteers would be in Almaty for a conference for a little while and that all clubs were cancelled until further notice. While this allowed myself and fellow volunteer Katie Whitmore time to prepare a statement to all our club participants about our departure and the permanent cancellation of all volunteer run clubs in Shymkent; seeing their smiling faces and hearing their goodbyes was basically just turning the knife that already felt like it was lodged in my stomach.

Even though I couldn’t focus on anything and my mind would not stop racing, after clubs being able to go back to my apartment and shut myself off from the world gave me a small bit of respite. I finally fell asleep later that night after dreading walking into school the next day after Peace Corps broke the news to them. Needless to say I didn’t sleep that well at all, I managed a few hours of fitful sleep but that was about it. I rolled around and constantly woke up until I finally gave up trying to sleep and made some coffee and took a shower while trying to mentally prepare myself for what I was about to have to deal with at school. After just sitting in my apartment listening to music for a while I eventually forced myself to leave and head to school. I had turned my phone off already because I did not want to answer any of these questions over the phone; I thought it too impersonal a way to handle such a difficult subject with people to whom I had become really close. So after I took a lot of time walking from the bus stop to my school I felt like I was mentally prepared to deal with everything. I was wrong.

Why was I wrong? Well because when I walked in there were no sad faces, no tears, no evidence that anything was out of the ordinary. At this point I honestly did know what was happening, so many different questions went through my mind, do they not care, has Peace Corps not told them yet, am I dreaming? After a few seconds of bewilderment I realized that they must not know yet, or at least I was hoping that was the case, so I went outside and called my regional manager to ask if she had called and told them yet, she told me she hadn’t been able to reach them yet and that if I was okay with it that I should just go ahead and tell them myself because I was there. This was a bit bittersweet for me, on one hand I had to break the news to them, but on the other hand I was going to be able to break the news to them personally. So I stood outside for a second and took a few deep breaths to brace myself and went inside and found all the teachers I could and asked them to meet me in the teacher’s lounge for a moment because I had something really important to tell them. When I pulled them out of their classes I think it was pretty obvious to them that something was up, so I just decided that I would just get to the point as quick as possible and basically acted like I was ripping off a band-aid and told them that Peace Corp was closing. When I looked around after I told them I saw pretty much exactly what I had expected to, that being sadness, disbelief, incomprehension; in other words, I saw on their faces all the different emotions I had felt in the last 24 hours.

Now I wish I could remember the next few days as vividly as I did the first few but looking back I honestly cannot. My life became a blur of packing and saying an endless amount of goodbyes to people at clubs, acquaintances, and students at my school. I honestly do not know if it was the best idea but before I started all of these later goodbyes I decided to memorize what I was going to say about my leaving and all that because, looking back, I do not think that I could have handled putting myself out there emotionally with every goodbye, I fell that I would have been too emotionally and mentally spent to focus on all the things I needed to get done, i.e. packing and buying train tickets to get me to Almaty on the necessary date.

So after an emotionally and mentally grueling few days Tuesday night finally came and it was time for me to meet the other volunteers in the city and board the train to Almaty. I had tried all day to prepare myself because I knew this was going to be hard in every way possible; between getting all of my bags to the station on the train, to see all the people that came to see us off, and to know that this could be the last time that I would ever see any of them, after spending a year and a half getting to know them and build relationships with them, was something I dreaded.

When I got to the station it was pretty much everything I expected it to be, namely sad. The weather was cold and dreary, even though I know it is not true, it felt like Mother Nature knew how all of us there were feeling and decided to set the weather accordingly. The further I get away from the whole situation, the more I realize those fifteen minutes at the train station were probably the hardest fifteen minutes of all of my service. Breaking the news to everyone that I was leaving was hard but seeing all these people huddled together against the cold, some with teary eyes wanting a hug or picture every five seconds was just too surreal. It was like a sad scene in a movie that tugs at your heartstrings but that you think in the back of your mind seems too much like a movie to every really happen, and at times while I was standing on the train platform I honestly thought it was too surreal to be real. Though with the final kisses, photos, and hugs I snapped back to reality and knew that it was time for me to step on the train and end so many of the relationships I had spent the last year and a half creating and strengthening.

So after what seemed like the longest fifteen minutes of my life I was sitting in my train cabin with the other three volunteers from Shymkent, and in their eyes I saw the truth in the saying by British-American novelist Amelia Barr, that being:

“All changes are more or less tinged with melancholy, for what we are leaving behind is part of ourselves.”

Because for all of us sitting in that train cabin, as we pulled away from the platform, we were pulling away from all the little parts of ourselves we had left with the amazing people we had met and grown to love over the past year and a half of our lives.

India Part 1

First and foremost I would like to thank fellow blogger Renxkyoko for reminding me how neglectful I’ve been towards my blog lately. I’ve had a pretty intense summer that included travelling around Kazakhstan and India and is wrapping up with me face down in a stack of GRE prep books, but now that I’m back it’s time to start blogging again.  So now it’s time to kick back with some Buena Vista Social Club and get to it! First post up on the docket is pictures from the first leg of my Indian Adventure which included Delhi and Agra.

We will start our fantastic Indian Voyage in a spectacularly bland fashion with a pic of the hostel we ended up staying at our one and only night in Delhi,

After meeting in the airport and taking a quick rest in the room we ventured out to have our first meal in India, and let me just say it was AMAZING. Some simple Tandoor Chicken and a Kingfisher never tasted so good! FYI Dan just looks drunk but he hadn’t even had a sip yet, I’m just a master of taking pictures at the worst possible/most embarrassing times, haha.

We spent only the one night in Delhi and set out on our way to Agra to kick off our trip and we saw some cool things on the way out of town. The first being a giant statue of the monkey god Karl Bagh.

The second things were the iconic Indian taxis called “Tuk Tuks.”

Later that day we sat out for Agra, and even though it was a pretty long car trip, I think that, from this picture, you can tell we had some fun along the way! Btw all I could thing when taking this picture was that I needed to look him in the eyes and pull by best Indiana Jones face and tell him “You Betrayed Shiva, Kalim Na, Kalim Na!!”

Now, while I personally hate doing touristy things when I’m travelling, I would have kicked myself for the rest of my life if I didn’t take the chance to see the Taj Mahal, and I am so glad I did because it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

This is the entrance gate to the Taj

Here is how I first saw the Taj, it was framed in the doorway of the entrance gate.

After we stopped for a second to take in everything, our guide suggested that we take a picture so this is Daniel and I before walking up to the Taj itself.

I’ve always prided myself on my ability to find and use the right word in almost every situation, but like the moment I stepped out off the airport shuttle into down town Delhi, seeing the Taj Mahal up close was an experience that I’m not sure I can really put into words, and to be honest I’m not really sure I want to. I don’t want to add some fancy words that don’t really do justice to the feelings from those times and end up doing nothing more than sounding like a prattling ass and cheapening my memories.

So that pretty much wraps up the first two days of my Indian adventure, but stay tuned for part two which will feature Fatipur Sikri, the Water and Amber Forts in Jaipur, and the Rat Temple (yes I said RAT TEMPLE) in Bikaner. Ohh, and here’s a small parting gift for all my readers out there.

An Unwelcome Guest

“You want?” That’s a rough translation of a question I had asked to me the other day, a question that lead to this post today but for different reasons than it might seem.

But first, I think a little background to that question is necessary. I was working a English language camp with a fellow volunteer named Jesse and we’d gone to town to shoot some billiards and relax and were waiting to catch a taxi when two young drunk Kazakh men approached us and started talking. They were being belligerent but we just kept waiting for a taxi and tried to not address them, because talking to people who are drunk is almost always a waste of time. Though this convo turned out a bit different, because at one point one of the men asked me in Russian “ты хочешь(you want)?” This confused the hell out of me and I guess he could tell I didn’t understand because he asked again but this time he did something to drive his question home, he ran his hand across my throat, indicting that he was asking me if I wanted him to cut my throat.

My friend and I both really started paying a lot more attention at this point but were still actively not trying to engage them in conversation, so over the next two or three minutes we kept waiting for the taxi, while he proceeded to ask other question like “боксер(boxer)” while holding his hands up in front of his face. Eventually he started asking what I was doing in Kazakhstan because I look very not-Kazakh. I told him I was a guest working in the country and he started talking about how I was a guest that wasn’t welcome. A taxi came soon enough and we got in leaving those two in the street, in the end the whole things lasted maybe 4 or 5 minutes and I went back to the family I was staying with and didn’t really give it much if any thought that night.

Though, the next day I did begin to think about something, but it wasn’t the death threat, it was about him calling me an unwelcome guest. It probably sounds crazy that this was what I was thinking about rather than the death threat, but to be honest the threats of a drunken man in the middle of a public street don’t really seem all that threatening.

Now it’s obvious that I’m a guest here, no denying that, and there is also no denying that a lot of the people in Kazakhstan have been very friendly and have made me feel very welcome the time I’ve been in Kazakhstan. Though I believe in the end it made me think about something that I was trying to deny in my own mind about why I joined the Peace Corps.

Let me be clear, I don’t think any volunteer joins the Peace Corps for any one, two, or even three reasons. To spend two years of your life in a foreign country away from all your family and friends is a very tough decision to make, for anyone. Though I know for me, and maybe some other volunteers, there are reasons we’d rather emphasize and reasons we may not want to acknowledge. For me this reason was I didn’t really feel like I was a place where I belonged before I came to Kazakhstan. Not in the sense of feeling like and outsider, because I was with family and friends, but more to the point that that was a place where I still felt like a guest. For me everyplace that I have lived in has always felt like a place in which I was just spending time until I left for my next destination, no matter where I’ve been I’ve never felt like that was somewhere I could settle or see myself spending my life. No matter how much family, how many friends, or how much fun I had in those places I always felt, temporary.

I’ve always said that I like traveling so much because there are so many things to see and I don’t want to die and regret not having done everything I can to see all the wonderful things the world has to offer, and all of that is true. Though the older I get and the more places I go I feel like that maybe I’m also looking for that place where I don’t feel like a guest anymore, where I don’t feel like I’m just passing through, a place where I can see an old version of myself happily settling. I don’t guess I’ll know until I get to that place, if I ever do.

Kazakhstan Zombie Invasion!!!

Anyone else recognize this? It was randomly down around the corner from my house.