Culture shock

These were all going to be expanded, but I got lazy. Maybe I'll revisit to explain what they mean, but I think most people who have lived abroad will understand.

College logos
Understanding everything
SO MANY THINGS
Drivers are not crazy
Shoes in the house
Clean outside
Everything is paved over
street lights
no idea how to use smart phones
not washing dishes by hand
Newspapers delivered
my family does not own a tea pot and had to borrow a kettle
no tea time
ceiling fans
our table is a mess and stays that way
soda, lots of soda
beer. tasty beer.
dilemma over where the toilet paper goes
light switches look funny but are well-placed
people are friendly. airport stewardesses, waffle house people, everyone
american barbershops
no gates around houses
round the clock news
rocking chairs
remembering what it's like, and not really wanting it. but maybe that will change
exercise equipment in our house

America!!!

So I'm home. Finally. It was a long trip made even longer by a delay in DC. I was supposed to go Almaty-Frankfurt-DC-Savannah. But instead we went Almaty - Astana (but we didn't get off the plane) - Frankfurt (6 hours) - Washington... So in Washington we got in 15 minutes late which made my hour and half scheduled flight very unlikely. Compounded by the fact that the woman in Almaty only checked my baggage through to DC instead of to Jacksonville (meaning I had to go recheck my bags and go back through security) and it was likely that I would not be making my flight.

Despite this, I was giddy when I landed. I saw the flag as I was landing and tears almost came to my eyes. Two years and five months. I swear the ground just felt sturdier walking on Ameican soil. I was home.

I cleared immigration really quickly, but I was flagged for customs because I was bringing in horse meat. At customs, they just asked me what I was bringing in. I said horse meat in cans. They check the computer. Nope, no current regulations due to equine flu. Horse meat allowed! I only have two cans though, so I don't know whom to share it with.

Now I have to recheck my bag, and my flight boards in about five minutes. The woman at that desk is honest with me. It looks like they've rebooked me and I have to get tickets for tomorrow morning. I go up to the ticketing booth considering how I'll contact Brian to see if I can crash at his place for the night, when I meet an angel at the ticket counter. She looks at my trip and says maybe, maybe she can get me home tonight if I'm ready to travel. DC - Cincinnati - Charlotte - Savannah. I'll be home at 11:30. If there's one thing I'm bad at doing, it's not doing anything. If given the chance of just sitting and waiting or doing something, I'm always doing something. Plus, I wanted to get home. She booked me tickets and I was off on my way.

Once I got to the gate, I borrowed someone's phone to call my family. I had asked a couple earlier just when we got off the Frankfurt flight, but they also didn't have a local phone. They recommended I just dial the country code or something on my phone. Right, that'd be great if I get Beeline signal here. So I called the house. Or tried to. The phone the guy handed me was an Android touch phone thing. I had no idea how to turn it on. Wouldn't just touching the screen make sense? Nooo, you had to press some switch on top. So he turned it on for me and I called home. No answer. Did they already leave? Call the cell phone. No answer. I leave a voice mail. And then continue on my journey.

Cincinnati (where I eat a sandwich, first meal in America Roast Beef vegetable sandwich (DELICIOUS. Sandwiches are amazing.)), then Charlotte (with rocking chairs. As I was racing through the airport, I had to sit down in one for just a few seconds. WHY are these not in Kazakhstan. People there would love them, I'm pretty sure.) In Charlotte, I call home and talk to my mom. I find out she didn't get my voice mail until after my first flight landed. So they were waiting there and really sad when I didn't get off the plane. She still didn't call the voice mail, but she did notice a missed call from a random number. So she called the guy whose phone I used and he told her that her son was flying around the country trying to get home tonight.

Then finally, the final flight. 32 hours later I was home. Home! My mom was holding a sign and I almost cried. Home! Home! Home! And even one of my bags made it on time (but not the one with the horse meat). The steak dinner I requested was not fulfilled (yet), so I was given to choices: Waffle House or Krystal. Since my family admitted to eating Krystal on the way back from the airport the first time (without me?! what?), we went to Waffle House. Sweet tea, waffle, and hash browns (smothered, covered, diced, and peppered).

Tomorrow I'll blog about reverse culture shock. It's so happening to me.

America!

So I'm going back to America in a day. For a six week vacation. I haven't been home in two years, five months, and maybe 2 weeks. It's been a long time. For the past two weeks (maybe longer), this is pretty much all I could think about. Well this, and a ton of projects at work that I just finished. Or mostly finished.

 

I'm excited. I'm nervous. I can't wait to be home and see family and friends. I've also picked the Packers for the Super Bowl. I hope to see everyone back home if I can. I'll probably catch up on my blog while I'm at home, but who knows?

Save the Saiga

So I'll post much awaited New Year's posts later, including ones about the French Couchsurfers who are walking around the world and the Asian Games Torch passing through Taraz. But today, I have an important message. We need to save the Saiga.



I was inspired to post this by a new story I saw that said the ban on Saiga hunting is being extended until 2020 (apparently this doesn't need 200,000 signatures). This is necessary because the Saiga is critcally endangered, but extremely cute. There are only about 90,000 of them left in the wild. They are often hunted by poachers who want to sell their horns to people who make folk medicine from them.

I support the saiga, and I hope you do too.

AMERICA

So after two years and five months, I am finally going back to
America! For six whole weeks! This is super exciting for me because I
haven't even left Kazakhstan in over a year now. I was supposed to go
home in November, but then I signed on for another year, and I decided
to take my home leave later. I'll be home for the Super Bowl, Brad and
Karen's wedding, and St. Patrick's Day. That's a pretty good slate of
events.

This is my tentative schedule:
4 - 18 Savannah
19 - 28 Atlanta/Athens
1-6 Nashville
7-19 ???/Savannah

I'd love to see family, old friends, and maybe even meet new friends
during these six weeks at home. And I'm looking to play in some
ultimate frisbee pickup/games/anything resembling a structured game
(bonus points if cleats are worn). Unfortunately, I've lost touch with
a lot of people while I've been in Kazakhstan, so I really don't know
where anyone is anymore. Let me know where you are so we can meet up.

Oh, and Happy Old New Years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_New_Year).

Holiday Celebrations

(This is the full story from Kurban Ait this year. The first part was already posted a few days ago. If you already read that part, then you can skip down to that section. Ait occurred in mid-November.)

I killed a sheep. Well, sort of. Actually, I paid to have a sheep sacrificed at the local mosque in order to give the meat away to the poor. Here's the story.

 

Kurbain Ait is a big holiday for Muslims. It celebrates the day that Abraham was going to sacrifice his son, but at the last minute, God told him to stop. Abraham had shown his faith in God, and he was rewarded for it. In his son's place, he sacrificed a sheep instead. Muslims all around the world still continue this tradition by sacrificing sheep on this day. From my understanding, any Muslim who can financially afford it should sacrifice a sheep on this day. This meat should then be used for a feast and given away to poor families. While we don't make a lot in Peace Corps, I figured that if we all pooled our money together we could afford to buy a sheep, have it butchered, and then donate the meat to the poor.

 

Two years ago, Kurban Ait was pretty traditional. At the time, I was living in the village of Dihan that had about 1000 people. I didn't actually see my host family kill a sheep, but we did go gosti a lot to other people's houses. Last year, I did nothing at all related to Ait, and it felt pretty sad. I did see some people slaughtering sheep around my apartment complex (a practice which was outlawed this year in Astana), but I didn't do anything. No gosting, no sheep. Nothing. Living in the city is a lot different than living in the village. Culture and tradition are around you, but they aren't always as apparent and easily accessible.

 

This year, I have decided to throw myself into all celebrations with gung ho enthusiasm. This is my last year (finally) in Kazakhstan; I have to live it as well as I can. So my first idea for Kurban Ait was to kill a sheep and donate the meat to the poor. The obvious question is, how? First, how do we find a sheep and have it butchered, and second, how do we find the poor to give the meat to. I asked a lot of people, and no one seemed to have a solid answer. It didn't help that the weekend before Ait (it was on a Tuesday), I was traveling and couldn't visit the bazaar to ask around for sheep. Monday the bazaar is closed (like a barbershop), so we (by then Mark was in on this idea as well) had no real places to seek advice.

 

The second question, assuming we were able to slaugher a sheep, was to whom do we give the meat. We had heard you should give the meat away, but we didn't know where to find suitable families. I've read that many Muslims in America donate some of the meat to food pantries, but there are no food pantries here. In Taraz at least, there is no one that is dedicated to working with poor families. Everyone I asked didn't really give the meat away to the poor. They just cooked a lot of it for a celebration and invited all of their friends and neighbors. Some of these people were likely to be less well-off financially, and therefore they are giving away the meat as charity. That didn't seem to be in the spirit of what I read on wikipedia (a great source, right?) that 1/3 of the meat should be for your family, 1/3 for your relatives and friends, and 1/3 for the poor. We wanted to give our meat away to people who could really benefit from it.  Our best solution was to give the meat to the mosque, thinking they would know whom to give it to.

 

Well, it was the day before Ait, and we still had no clear idea of what we should do. Then my co-worker Akmaral, had a great idea. We should go to the mosque and talk to an imam about it. If anyone knows, they should know. Mark and I met up that evening and went to the mosque near his house. It seemed busy with activity, as people were preparing for Ait the next day. One young man saw us, and asked if we needed any help. I told him that we heard tomorrow was a holiday and that we wanted to "rezat" (cut, but also means sacrifice) a sheep. He told us that we should come back the next day after 9:00. He didn't fully explain what we should be expecting or planning on doing at 9:00 the next day, but Mark and I were happy. Even if our plan was now show up at the mosque at 9:00 and see what happens, we at least had a plan.

 

PART TWO PART TWO PART TWO PART TWO

Being Americans, we decided to actually show up at 8:45 in case we were supposed to get there right at 9:00. We showed up early, but it was well worth it to see the site. The courtyard of the mosque was PACKED with men praying together. And if the courtyard was that full, we knew inside was just as full. [Side note. In America, there is a public debate about the secularization of holidays (Santa versus Jesus, the Easter Bunny versus Jesus, etc.). And even though the locals don't seem to care if many holidays have lost touch with their religious roots, it bothers me to see. Therefore, I was really excited to see so many people actually gathering for prayer on the religious holiday. ] Prayer ended at about 9:00 and people filed out of the gates for 10 minutes. There were that many people. More and more people just kept leaving the mosque.

 

Finally, the crowd of people had dissipated, and Mark and I cautiously entered the courtyard. Most importantly, I didn't want to insult anyone or show disrespect for their holiday. We aren't Muslims, but we were interested in learning more and participating to the degree possible for non-Muslims. Muslim faith around the world varies a lot on its acceptance of non-believers, and I wasn't sure where the followers in Kazakhstan fall on that spectrum. I felt a little nervous walking into the courtyard. Remember, we had no plan. Just show up and see what happened. We were standing there, probably looking lost and awkward when a man started yelling at us.

 

It took a second for us to realize what he was saying, or maybe he started off barking orders at us in Kazakh. However, we noticed he was saying, Go help. Go help. He was pointing a finger at a pile of carpets rolled up against the wall. One other young guy was gathering up the carpets and carrying them to a different part of the courtyard. Okay, so we'll go help move some carpets. Mark and I went over to the pile and picked up some rugs. It only took about five minutes to move all the carpets to their new spot, but it felt good to help out. Assisting at the local mosque on Kurban Ait, that's something I never expected to do in my lifetime.

 

Once we were done with that though, we were once again lost for what we should do next. By now the hundreds of people that had been there were thoroughly gone. In the center of the courtyard, there wans't anyone around. However, off to the left side there was a stable. And in the stable there were about two dozen sheep. And next to the stable with the two dozen sheep, there was an imam blessing sheep before they were butchered. Jackpot.

 

So Mark and I go from awkwardly standing around the courtyard to awkwardly standing around the stable area. We were so close, but I still felt nervous. Were the sheep for sale, or were they already donated to the mosque? How much did they cost? If we walked up and naively asked, would we get ripped off by the people there? We did watch a couple sheep get blessed and then sacrificed. And then… we left.

 

Too nervous. Too scared. We came close. We did a lot. Visited a mosque, saw a sheep sacrifice. That was good enough, right? Man up. Man up. Do it. We went back in. Luckily, this time someone started talking to us. What do you guys want. We then explained, we want to buy a sheep, have it killed, then give its meat away to the poor. The guy said that we could do all that there if we wanted. We could buy some sheep. We could have it butchered, but the meat giving away we'd have to do on our own. He suggested we find some beggars in the bazaar and give the meat to them.

 

So we picked our sheep. A fairly thin-sized guy that we most definitely overpaid for. Then they tied him up, and brought him out of the stable. They killed it as humanely as they could (the sheep don't struggle much). While we were waiting for it to be butchered, they told me I should go get some plastic bags for all the meat. Then they skinned it, and divided the meat into pieces. While all this was happening, we began talking with some of the other guys that were there. Overall, they were pretty receptive to what our idea was. No one seemed to take offense that we were there. It seemed pretty novel that Americans had shown up to do this. Once all the meat was divided up in five plastic bags, they asked if we wanted the coat. I did, but I had no idea if it needed to be treated so as not to smell.

 

So we left the mosque with our five bags wondering how we would give out the meat. We had decided that we'd give most of it away, but we wanted to save some to give to friends here. That didn't quite work out though, because we were bombarded by people as soon as we left the courtyard. To women there who had been begging asked for some meat, as well as two guys. One of the guys we had talked to for a while inside the mosque; the other guy we had never seen before. Before we knew it, Mark and I had given away all of the meat except for the head and the four hooves. The one mystery guy ended up putting the meat on a cart full of food, so I wasn't sure if he really needed it. But how can a person really know? And the idea is about giving and charity. If he thought he needed it, then I don't mind giving it away.

 

We threw the hooves to some dogs on the way home, and we saved the head for a while. We even decided to name our belated sheep, Kizbolson, which means wish for a girl in Kazakh. (It's a play on the actual Kazakh name of Ulbolson, which some girls are called. Ulbolson means wish you were a boy. Yes, some girls must live their entire lives with the name, we wish you were a boy. We think this was the first time the name Kizbolson was ever even thought of in Kazakhstan's history.)

 

Overall, our goal was successful. We felt very integrated, going to the mosque and having a sheep sacrificed. Later, we gostied three houses to continue in the holiday spirit. Although, I didn't host anyone, so that was one part of the holiday I missed. I have more commentary on how those gostings went, but I may write about those later.

 

The next major holiday I plan on throwing myself into with full enthusiasm as New Year's. This year I'm going to be buying some fireworks. (Where some = lots!)

Holiday celebrations

(So this post was written a couple months ago, but it got lost on the
cluttered desktop. Kurban Ait was celebrated on November 17, 2010.)

I killed a sheep. Well, sort of. Actually, I paid to have a sheep
sacrificed at the local mosque in order to give the meat away to the
poor. Here's the story.

Kurbain Ait is a big holiday for Muslims. It celebrates the day that
Abraham was going to sacrifice his son, but at the last minute, God
told him to stop. Abraham had shown his faith in God, and he was
rewarded for it. In his son's place, he sacrificed a sheep instead.
Muslims all around the world still continue this tradition by
sacrificing sheep on this day. From my understanding, any Muslim who
can financially afford it should sacrifice a sheep on this day. This
meat should then be used for a feast and given away to poor families.
While we don't make a lot in Peace Corps, I figured that if we all
pooled our money together we could afford to buy a sheep, have it
butchered, and then donate the meat to the poor.

Two years ago, Kurban Ait was pretty traditional. At the time, I was
living in the village of Dihan that had about 1000 people. I didn't
actually see my host family kill a sheep, but we did go gosti a lot to
other people's houses. Last year, I did nothing at all related to Ait,
and it felt pretty sad. I did see some people slaughtering sheep
around my apartment complex (a practice which was outlawed this year
in Astana), but I didn't do anything. No gosting, no sheep. Nothing.
Living in the city is a lot different than living in the village.
Culture and tradition are around you, but they aren't always as
apparent and easily accessible.

This year, I have decided to throw myself into all celebrations with
gung ho enthusiasm. This is my last year (finally) in Kazakhstan; I
have to live it as well as I can. So my first idea for Kurban Ait was
to kill a sheep and donate the meat to the poor. The obvious question
is, how? First, how do we find a sheep and have it butchered, and
second, how do we find the poor to give the meat to. I asked a lot of
people, and no one seemed to have a solid answer. It didn't help that
the weekend before Ait (it was on a Tuesday), I was traveling and
couldn't visit the bazaar to ask around for sheep. Monday the bazaar
is closed (like a barbershop), so we (by then Mark was in on this idea
as well) had no real places to seek advice.

The second question, assuming we were able to slaugher a sheep, was to
whom do we give the meat. We had heard you should give the meat away,
but we didn't know where to find suitable families. I've read that
many Muslims in America donate some of the meat to food pantries, but
there are no food pantries here. In Taraz at least, there is no one
that is dedicated to working with poor families. Everyone I asked
didn't really give the meat away to the poor. They just cooked a lot
of it for a celebration and invited all of their friends and
neighbors. Some of these people were likely to be less well-off
financially, and therefore they are giving away the meat as charity.
That didn't seem to be in the spirit of what I read on wikipedia (a
great source, right?) that 1/3 of the meat should be for your family,
1/3 for your relatives and friends, and 1/3 for the poor. We wanted to
give our meat away to people who could really benefit from it. Our
best solution was to give the meat to the mosque, thinking they would
know whom to give it to.

Well, it was the day before Ait, and we still had no clear idea of
what we should do. Then my co-worker Akmaral, had a great idea. We
should go to the mosque and talk to an imam about it. If anyone knows,
they should know. Mark and I met up that evening and went to the
mosque near his house. It seemed busy with activity, as people were
preparing for Ait the next day. One young man saw us, and asked if we
needed any help. I told him that we heard tomorrow was a holiday and
that we wanted to "rezat" (cut, but also means sacrifice) a sheep. He
told us that we should come back the next day after 9:00. He didn't
fully explain what we should be expecting or planning on doing at 9:00
the next day, but Mark and I were happy. Even if our plan was now show
up at the mosque at 9:00 and see what happens, we at least had a plan.

To be continued...