Summer Vacation Pt .2

July 1-16, 2008

The second part of my summer vacation took me to the small village of Kalbatau, formally known as Georgivka in the Northeastern part of Kazakhstan. Getting there nearly killed me. It took two days by train, and while I was seated with some very nice people, and I have gotten pretty used to the amount of time it takes to travel around Kazakhstan, it was a long time to spend on a train. When I got there though, I saw that it was worth it. I had left a flat endless expanse of brown sand and scraggly trees, but in Kalbatau there was green grass, healthy trees, and actual hills! Anyway, as for the purpose of my visit, I went to Kalbatau to meet back up with my fellow Kazak speakers for another camp. Unlike the camp in Alga, the camp in Kalbatau was only one week instead of two, there were fewer students because most had gone on vacations themselves, and there were no counterparts, so at the end I was only moderately tired instead of completely exhausted. Like in Alga, the camp was split between class time and sports, and we also did cross-cultural work with different countries in addition to normal English lessons. Rather than designate each group as a different country however, every class worked with a different country every day. For example, one day we talked about Jamaica and made collages, another day we talked about Japan and made origami, and on a third day we talked about Brazil and made beaded jewelry. These cross-cultural activities were great, but my favorite part of the day was when we got to go outside and play sports. My site mate, Chris, was particularly into this part of the camp as he never passes up the opportunity to teach someone how to play baseball. I mostly stuck with football and ultimate Frisbee because I kept hitting a brick wall trying to explain to the kids that they could not throw the kickball at the members of the other team, they needed to throw them to their teammates at the bases. The entire week was great, although a little stressful sometimes because we literally could not get away from each other. All six of us were camped out in Kimi’s two-room apartment and there was barely room to walk around. Kimi was a great hostess, but I know that when we all went our separate ways she was probably glad to have some personal space back.

After the camp was over we all went our separate ways. Three people went to Tajikistan, Chris headed off to Italy to meet his folks, and I headed to Ridder a small town near the Altau Mountains to do some camping. The journey to get there was not too bad because Ridder and Kalbatau are in the same Oblast, but it still took awhile because the area is so mountainous and there are no through roads. On the day we all left, I went down to Ust-Kamen to meet Tony, Robert and some other Kaz-18s who were planning to do some camping as well. Robert needed to head to Ridder early, but Tony suggested that the rest of us head to a village a couple of hours away that was going to have a volunteer in the future. When we got there, we met our host Raxat, as well as a local friend of Tony’s named Vladimir who was in charge of activities for the few days we would be there. The area around the Altau Mountains is still very much a Russian enclave, and our host Raxat was not only one of the few Kazaks in the area, but also one of the few Kazaks in the area who actually understood Kazak. He thought it was an absolute riot that I spoke Kazak and actually took us to the river near his house one afternoon just so I could meet some of his friends and speak Kazak with them. Besides its use as a party trick though, speaking Kazak was a pretty useless skill to have up there, and I was glad I was with Tony and the others. The week really showed me that while Kazak is great as a tool of diplomacy and in showing that you are interested in the culture, outside of the south it does not have that much practical purpose. Wednesday morning we got up and Vladimir decided to take us Paragliding. After a short hike we got up to the hills around Raxat’s house that Vladimir said would be a good place to go from. In the end we did not actually get a chance to Paraglide because there was not enough wind, but the view made the walk worth it anyway. Even if I had gotten the chance to go Paragliding though, what we did later that afternoon would still have been the high point of my trip. That afternoon for the first time ever I got to go horseback riding. They just handed me the reins, gave me a few instructions, and I was off. The horse was a little hard to control at first, but he was very patient and very forgiving at my initial efforts. He never tried to buck me off or bite me, if he was irritated or I was not sure where I wanted to go next, all he would do was stop and eat grass.

The next morning we got up and headed back to Ust-Kamen. Ridder was only sixty kilometers a way as the crow flies, but as I mentioned earlier there are no roads that go through so we had to go back to Ust-Kamen and catch another bus to take us to Ridder. When we got to Ridder, we met Robert who took us back to his place so we could get cleaned up and re-pack for the weekend up in the mountains. Robert reminded us that though there was a base camp where we were going, the bus was going to drop us off three miles away from it and so packing light was a must. After a nice pizza dinner at a café, we went to bed early so that we could get up and catch the first bus out to the base camp at 7:30. The woman in charge of base camp was Tony’s Counterpart, a hard-nosed, but soft-hearted middle-aged Russian woman named Natalya. She was not that happy to see us arrive because base camp was totally full with a group from Petropolvisk, and so we ended up having to stay at a campsite a short ways up the trail. I actually liked where we stayed a lot better than the actual base camp. Our campsite had a nice fire pit, plenty of shady trees, and a river full of fresh glacial water right next to it. That afternoon another group of PCVs arrived, nine Kaz-19s, which of course made Natalya even madder. We got up the next morning around seven and got ready to go, the two girl Kaz-18s were not wild with the idea of dragging all of their stuff with them so we decided to do a day hike instead of a full on camping trip. Tony had told us that there was a series of lakes up at the top made from the remains of glaciers, which at least to me sounded like a place worth seeing. After two and a half hours of hiking we passed the tree line and entered the rock field, a field covered with the shattered rocks from when the mountains first rose out of the ground. It was a stunning site, but made for some extremely difficult hiking. We had to jump from rock to rock making sure we did not trip, and even though we had passed the tree line we knew we still had at least another hour or two of hiking before we got to our destination. On and on we climbed over one small hill after another, but each time we thought we had made it, we saw that there was yet another hill. After about two hours of this, the girls decided that they had about had enough, so we sat down for lunch, and they got ready to go back down the hill. I decided though, that I wanted to make one more push. I knew it could not be that much farther and we had gone so far that it seemed pointless to go back before we got to the end. I kept climbing and about forty-five minutes after we had split up I made it to the top to find…nothing. All that was there was a shallow depression with some ice that maybe had the potential to become a large puddle if it got warm enough. It turned out that where we needed to go way to the right we had instead gone straight, and so we went up to the wrong peak. I was a little disappointed, but it had not been a total waste of time. For even though there was no lake, the fifty-foot sheer wall of volcanic rock that we had thought was the side of a large rock bowl was still pretty impressive. After taking a few pictures, I began to make my way down. I was not looking forward to the long walk down by myself, but luckily the others were going slow and I caught up to them before they had gotten back to the tree line.

Dinner that night was spaghetti, which was surprisingly good considering all we had was tomato paste, a few onions, half a kielbasa, and some cheese spread to make sauce. After dinner we called it an early night. The girls’ feet were hurting, and they wanted to head back to Ridder on the morning bus. I on the other hand, was planning on doing some solo hiking and camping of the next couple of days and heading back to Ridder on Tuesday morning and then getting the Tuesday night bus out, but unfortunately when Natalya found out about this plan the next morning as the others were preparing to leave she said, “I don’t think so.” I did not have my stuff ready to go with the guys so there was no chance of catching the early bus with them. It looked like I was going to have to hang out at the base camp until the Kaz-19s and Tony came down the mountain from their campsite and catch the afternoon bus out with them. I was really bummed because I had wanted another crack at finding the lakes and I was not looking forward to sitting there for six hours with nothing to do. Then fortune shinned upon me once again. Natalya told me that another group was heading up to the lakes and I could go with them and rendezvous with Tony and the others. She threw me into a young Russian couple’s all-terrain vehicle with two guides and another couple and we sped off up the hill. I know it was sort of cheating, but riding in the vehicle was almost as much of an adventure as walking. The thing could not only power of rocks and through streams, it could nearly drive straight up. Sometimes the car was driving on such a steep slope that I was almost afraid that I was either going to fall out or the thing was going to tip over backwards. Still, even it could only go so far and at the tree line we had to get out and start walking. Once we started walking I realized where we had made the mistake yesterday. We had needed to be on the other side of the river and a large hill, but we did not realize this because the two peaks looked almost identical. We did not find Tony and the others, but after three hours we did manage to find the lakes! The first two were amazing, beautiful oases in the middle of desolate rock. I had never tasted water so naturally cold or fresh before. The best was yet to come, however. After spending a couple of minutes resting we continued on up and over the top of the mountain and entered into a small sun-covered valley where there were even more lakes. I had made it! In all honesty, the site was literally breathtaking. Not only was there no way to tell such a place was there from the bottom of the mountain, you could not even tell it was there until right when you got to the top.

After lunch we started down the mountain, and I quickly came to realize that it was probably just as well I was no longer planning on staying a few extra days. My feet were killing me! I worried a little that we were going to miss Tony and the bus because the hike up, including using the car part way had taken four hours and it was nearly two, but gravity lent us speed and we made it all the way down the hill on foot in two hours flat. After we got back to site we had a small tea with Natalya and then she put us all in the company bus to take us back to town. Once again, I split off from the Kaz-19s because I had to go get my stuff from Robert’s place. That, and I figured they would probably have a pretty late night. They had not actually done that much hiking, but I was dead on my feet. The Kaz-18s were already packed up to go and relaxing when I got there. They had to get back to their site and were on the noon bus from Ust-Kamen to Astana. I decided to go with them and buy a ticket for the 7:30 bus to Almaty. Unfortunately, when I got to the bus station it turned out that there were no tickets for that bus and I would have to wait until tomorrow. I made arrangements to stay with another volunteer who lived in a nearby village over night and then checked my bags at the bus station before around the city for a few hours. We had a fun night making quesadillas from scratch and hanging out, but clearly we were not yet recovered from Ridder, we all passed out in front of a movie by 11:30.

The next day we went to back to the city around noon and hung out for a few hours before I had to get on the bus. My friends asked me why I was taking the bus instead of the train, and I said I was doing it because it was cheaper, and there were no seats on the trains for the next couple of days anyways. I should have waited for the train. First, the bus was packed, and I got seated in the window seat of the very last row next to four incredibly obnoxious Russian guys. Then I found out that rather than taking seventeen hours as I was told earlier, it was going to take twenty hours to get to Almaty. I tried to settle in as best as I could but the guys were four of the biggest assholes I have met in any country, and did not seem to understand that I did not understand them, did not want to take shots with them, nor was I their pillow. I spent half the time trying to keep one of them from crushing me against the window when he passed out after doing shots. If I was not already heading that way before I think that bus trip made me a Kazak nationalist. Thankfully, unlike the real thing, this hell ended eventually and I stumbled off the bus around five p.m. the next day. After getting off the bus I got a ride to the Altin-Orda bus station where I caught a marshootka to Chamalgan, and I am happy to say I am now happily relaxing at home with my first host family. They are in the midst of remodeling the house and making it bigger because they believe that my brother Acxat will get married in the fall, so I am trying to help out or at least stay out of the way. No rest for the weary right?

A Little Pomp and Circumstance

While the traditions and trappings of it may change from country to country, the graduation ceremony is indeed universal. Yesterday was my college’s graduation, and while there were several differences between this ceremony and my own graduation ceremony, other parts of it reminded me just how universal it is as a rite of passage.


The most notable difference I saw was the one that I was happiest about. No Caps or Gowns! Like in America, the students and teachers were all dressed to the nines, but unlike us they did not do something as silly as then covering themselves up with a cheap polyester robe. This decision may have been functional as well as stylistic however, seeing as how it was 92 F in the shade that day. If the students had been wearing American graduation regalia there would have been several cases of heat stroke.

I also liked that the fact that the ceremony was much shorter than the typical commencement ceremony in the U.S. This was partly due to the size of the graduating class, but even taking that into account, things moved along at a nice clip. For one thing, only the students who received the top or “red” diploma from each class group went up individually to receive their diploma, otherwise the head of the department just read out their names and gave the diplomas out by class group. The lack of a valedictory speech also helped in cutting time. Instead of one long speech, three of the best students gave short speeches thanking their teachers, parents, and fellow students, and each of the three speeches was in one of the three official languages of Kazakhstan, either Kazak, Russian, and English.

You might wonder how, even if the grading system is a sham, the administration could fail to recognize a valedictorian, but the fact is that departments and even to some extent is class groups are rather autonomous. Students pick their “major” when they first arrive at the college and are then sorted into different course groups with whom they take all of their classes, even those classes outside their department. Furthermore, after their first and second year, students take fewer and fewer classes outside their specific department. These factors, alongside the endemic cheating, makes choosing a valedictorian an exercise in futility, although I am sure that the P.E. department wishes they did as the award would then be for sale.

The ceremony was not the only thing that was different about graduation at my college. Even the diplomas are different. Unlike in America where all diplomas look pretty much the same unless you look inside, in Kazakhstan you can tell who the high achievers were at a glance. The best students received literal red diplomas while everyone else received regular blue ones. I was pleased to see that my two best students got red diplomas, and I was also happy to see that they did not hand them out like they were happy meal toys. In fact, I only saw one student from the English department get a red diploma who I did not believe deserved it. She is a nice girl, but her English skills are mediocre at best. Apparently however, she tested very well. Another contributing factor no doubt was the fact that in Kazakhstan you lose your diploma rather than earn it. For example, at our college you can have no more than thirty fours in four years to get a red diploma. The student managed this because she was out of school for several weeks after suffering a miscarriage. The assignments and tests she missed were of course not counted against her, nor was she required to make them up. At end of the year, when all the tallying was done, she only had twenty-seven fours, and thus the school deemed her worthy to receive the red diploma.

Those differences aside, I could tell that my students were just as excited as I had been when I finished school. Just as I was, they were preparing to enter into the real world, a world made even realer by the fact that several were already bearing adult responsibilities like marriage and children. It was just like at Wake, though perhaps a tad bit more chaotic because there was no special parents' seating section and no security personnel.

That night my counterpart’s group 4D threw a big party at a restaurant. Despite it being very similar to the Kazak dinner parties I had been to before, I had a surprisingly good time. At first I ate with the other teachers who attended the party, but after they left go visit the other grad parties I hung out with the two of the young husbands. They are always a fun group to hang out with because they are the only local people I have met so far that I would refer to as my peers. We are all between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-five, and even though they are married and have kids, they still have the sense of humor of a college student. Anyway, we had a great time, making toasts and chatting. We drank to the student’s success, danced a little, and then like all of the other twenty-something men in the city went outside to watch the Euro Cup match.

All in all, it was a great day, and I am sorry that it is over. None of those girls are my students anymore, and they were by far the best class I worked with. Still, I am happy because now they will be my colleagues, and hopefully they will be a part of a real effort to change and improve the education system of Kazakhstan. Also, this means that my summer vacation can officially begin!