Karabulak

After the whirlwind of site announcements we had the counterpart conference. I'd go into more details, but it was pretty straightforward: Meet the person who you will initially work with and serve as the link between you and your organization/NGO. I really like my counterpart; she has a great sense of humor, when I can understand her Russian. She can speak really fast.

After that, all of the Trainees with their counterparts went to go visit for 1 week where they will be living and working for the next two years.

I arrived in Karabulak on Friday night, and was dropped off at my temporary host family for the week. I quickly met Anne, the current volunteer in Karabulak, and then ate dinner and went to bed. The rest of the week passed quickly. Here is a snapshot of the notable things that happened:

• Went to Taldykorgon, and met 3 of the Kaz-19's who stay in the Taldy area. They, in short are amazing, very nice, and know a lot about the area.

• Had a running three-day battle with 2 angry dogs. The story goes like this: whenever I would go to the outhouse, the dogs would get really angry. There was lots of snarling from the dogs and lots of rock throwing on my part. No one was injured until midweek, when I hit one of the dogs with a well placed rock. After that, they left me alone.

• Started to learn about the Community Learning Center (CLC). Because the goal of this blog is to show a little bit about working in an Kazakhstan NGO as well as Peace Corps life, I'll explain more about the CLC later (when I get a better idea of how to articulate what type of organization they are.)

• I found a potential language tutor; a very excitable lady who doesn't speak one word of English. During our lessons, our common language is not English or Russian, but German. I now am very glad that I kept up my German skills after returning from my study abroad experiences in Freiburg.

• Found a host family. PC regulations state that you must live with a host family for the first 6 months at site. I think this is a good thing, because it helps your language and get involved with the community. My future hosts are really nice, in the bubbly sort of way. I think we will get along just fine.

This is just a very vague (and fast) summary of the week. I'm still trying to wrap my head around everything that I learned and that happened to me this week. What I do know is this:

1. My organization has a lot of potential. I think that if things go well, some big things will happen in the next two years.
2. What makes Karabulak attractive to me is not the scenery (average) or the area (rural, which I was not expecting), but the people and the organization are top notch. Minus the children in school, every person that I've met in the town has been very, very, nice and welcoming, and I am thankful for that