Pictures!

Someone who was really smart once said, "A picture is worth a thousand words." I think they may be on to something.

I see this donkey every morning from my window without fail at 7:30AM.

The waterfall, in the mountains close to Issyk. It's not very big, but it's pretty cool.

More of the mountain/hill range close to Issyk

My host brother. He's got a great sense of humor...but I'm not sure if everything he tells me is true, because he likes to joke with me.

The town of Issyk

"Busy? With what?"

I have been in Kazakhstan for exactly one month. However, due to being busy and having limited access to the Internet, I imagine this will take a little bit longer to post.

Since arriving in Kazakhstan, I haven't talked to a lot of my friends and family at home nor had time or capability to send emails until recently. This is because I have been very busy.

"Busy? With what?" asked the Green-Eyed lady and my best friend from St. Kathy's, who I was been lucky enough to talk on the phone once since arriving here.

Simply put, I've been busy with Peace Corps Training (referred to as PST). PST occupies my time from 8am-whenever we are done, Monday- Saturday. The goals of PST are to enable people to become volunteers by giving them knowledge and tools to be successful in Kazakhstan. That's right, I'm not a volunteer yet. But I hope to be in November. Until then, I've been busy with:

• Learning Russian and Kazakh
• Learning how to survive in a drastically different culture
• Working with a Kazakhstani NGO
• Teaching English
• Eating

Thus I've had no time to actually write anything of substance, because when I do have time, I am eating or sleeping.

In the meantime, I've written some emails in which I've explained some of the things I am doing. While this may seem like the "cheater's way out" of blogging, this will have to do until I have some time to create a proper update, which I hope will happen sometime in the near future. They are dated on the day I wrote them, so you will have to scroll down to read them.

Enjoy!

~Kyle

Letter: Weather Report

In a letter to everyone, and possibly you:

...I arrived safely in Kazakhstan and the last month has been a whirlwind of learning Russian and Kazakh, teaching some English, and working for a local NGO. So far, I am enjoying my time here and am learning a lot. Between now and November I am living in a small town called Issyk, which is located about 50 km from a major city called Almaty. I am living with a wonderful host family that feeds me too much (every day my host mother says that she must fatten me up for the winter). However, there may be some truth to her words: already the weather gets below freezing at night and during the day heats up to about 50. Issyk is in the southeastern corner of Kazakhstan, and there have already been reports of snow and freezing temps during the day in some of the northern areas (think Siberia)...

Letter: About my current NGO, and the Kazakh language

In a letter to my best friend of the old school:

...My practicum is in a small village called Enbek with an NGO called the International Ecological Association of the Women of the Orient. This is horrible to say in Russian or Kazakh, and one of my goals before I go is to get them to use an abbreviation. I'm lucky to work with this particular NGO, because it is one of the oldest NGO's in Kazakhstan and it has a fair amount of resources.

NGO's were not allowed under communism, but once Kazakhstan declared its independence, a lot of NGO's sprung up in the country. The Women of the Orient was one of the first in the country and initially focused on pressuring the Kazakhstan and Chinese governments to shut down and clean up many of the contaminated nuclear test sites in East Kazakhstan and west China. They also raised money to airlift radiation sick women and children to Russia where they could get treatment. Now the NGO has changed its focus to empowering village women through a variety of programs. The program that I am working on now is assisting the NGO with putting on a job fair. The success with this has been hit or miss, due to translation problems and cultural misunderstandings, but we get by. So far I've created an action plan for the fair which we will present to the local government in Issyk to get their approval. Nothing moves without the government.

About the Kazakh language: The two main ethnic groups here are Russian and Kazakh. Everyone knows Russian, but many Kazakhs also speak Kazakh, which is very interesting: It uses the Cyrillic alphabet with some other letters thrown in and borrows a lot of Russian words.

In addition, Kazakh is making a comeback in business and the government. Knowing some Kazakh will be useful and critical if I am placed in a Kazakh speaking NGO (or if I live in the south).

Anyway, it is possible to get by with just speaking Russian, because everyone knows it. But among Kazakhs, if you speak Kazakh to them, even just 10-15 sentences, they will be happy, as many Kazakhs are intensely proud of their language, especially in South Kazakhstan. For example, I said my first sentences in Kazakh last week to my host mom, who then said something about me being her second son. This is after 3 weeks of conversing in Russian.

I have never been so proud of learning new languages until now. It is awesome to be able to switch from English to Russian to Kazakh (although I am horrible at the latter 2), but with the intensive learning I am receiving, I feel that I am increasing in ability every day. Each day I can say a little bit more to my host family, and for the first time I got a compliment for my language skills by my host mom. Compliments are hard to come by here...

~Kyle