Brown Paper Packages and KazPost

Today I have two stories for you about the postal system. The Kazakhstani postal system is a strange thing.

Story number one goes something like this: last week I went to the post office to mail a letter to my friend Tommy in Tanzania. I showed up at the post office during the pre-lunch rush, pulled out my letter already sealed in an international envelope, held it up to the window and asked the young woman behind the counter "Is it possible to send this to Tanzania?" There was a very long pause, a look of confusion, and then she asked "To where?" "To Tanzania" I replied. [A quick aside: This particular window at the post office is not only the place to send international letters, but also the place to pick up Avon packages. So throughout this entire exchange, women highly made up with brightly colored eye shadow are interrupting and asking for their packages from Avon. Even in Kazakhstan, Avon's calling.]

She thought about it for awhile and asked again, "To where?" So I replied "To Africa." She shrugged her shoulders and said "Sure." She stamped the letter a few times and threw it in a stack. It will be a miracle if this letter ever reaches Tanzania. I'm sorry Tommy, I tried really hard.

Story number two goes like this: I went to the post office to send a package to the States. I wasn't quite sure about the method of sending packages, so I figured I'd show up with what I wanted to send and hope for the best. So I show up with a small Kazakhstani handicraft and a handmade letter, hand it to my favorite young lady working the "International Post" window, and ask "How do I send a package to America?" She looks at my stack of things, raises a quizzical eyebrow and asks "You want to send this to America?" I confirm that this is in fact what I hope to do, and she goes into the back room, presumably to get a box. She returns a minute later with an entire slew of postal employees in tow, butcher paper, and twine. The postal employees crowd around to see what the foreigner is sending. They look at the items I'm sending, ask the woman helping me "She's sending this to America??", the woman confirms. The crowd of postal employees begin to whisper about how strange it is that I'm sending these items all the way to America, there's lots of giggling and many strange looks. The woman helping me wraps my small stack of things in butcher paper, ties it with twine, and seals it with a wax seal. This package, dear reader, is honestly straight out of 1925, but it's heading to the future and America. Hopefully it makes it there in one piece.

New Address

Quick note, here's my new address:

 

Katie Whitmore                      Katie Whitmore

Корпус Мира                         Peace Corps

А/я 62                                   PO Box 62

Шымкент, Казахстан              Shymkent, Kazakhstan

160000                                  160000

 

I included both the Russian version and the English version. It might be easiest just to paste it into a word document, print both off, and tape them to whatever wonderful thing you're sending.

 

Thanks for all the mail. You guys are the best!! xoxo

 

Shymkent!

Alright, get ready for a proper update about my site for the next two years. Most of the info here is copied directly from the information provided by my Peace Corps regional manager. I've included personal commentary in square brackets. Also, consider how long two years is. It's very long, I feel. Anyways, here goes...

Site: Shymkent

Type of Site: City

History: Shymkent is 2200 years and was once part of the Silk Road.

Distance from large cities: 150 km from Taraz 7

700 km from Almaty

150 km from Tashkent (Uzbekistan)

Landscape and Climate: Close to the mountains, the Koshkar Ata river runs through the city. Flowering and hot summers, winters are mild with almost no snow [first time in my life I'll experience mild winters...], spring and fall are warm and long.

Economy: Industrial and cultural city. There are 69 enterprises of heavy, light and food industries [NOTE: I have no idea what this means, but it sounded important, so I typed it anyways]. Economy is generally developed and the standard of living is good. Prices for food and other goods are cheaper than in many other Kazakhstani cities.

Population: 750,000 people

Demographics: Population is 60% Kazakh , 30% Uzbek, 10% Other (Russian, Korean, Turkish, Uighur, Azerbaidzhani, Tadzhik, German)

Most Common Languages Spoken: Kazakh [I'm definitely going to find a Kazakh tutor], Russian and Uzbek [and I'd love to pick up as much Uzbek as possible]

Entertainment/Sports/Culture: 8 parks, 5 theatres, palace of culture, a lot of movie theatres, 28 city libraries [love!!!], cafes, restaurants, discos, bowling, swimming pools, sport centers, etc.

Transportation info: Taxis, marshrutkas [taxi vans that travel along a fixed route, they're faster than buses], prices are cheaper than in Almaty

Safety and security: Safe city, people are open and friendly

There are 3 Peace Corps Volunteers already living in Shymkent, 2 are Youth Development Volunteers, and one is a Education Volunteer. Three other volunteers will be moving there with me in November, which will make for nice company. Two of them are education volunteers, and one is a Youth Development Volunteer.

Brief Info on Work Assignment:

Name of Work Site: Youth Information Center of Kazakhstan (MISK)

Job Description: Social projects for youth, information programs for youth, youth events, education programs for youth, employment opportunities and professional orientation, leadership building, volunteerism development (through trainings, roundtables, forums, seminars)

Number of staff members: 4 people

Other comments: Successfully functioning NGO, famous among Shymkent Youth. Great, motivated staff looking forward to working with a Peace Corps Volunteer.

Site Announcement!!!!!

Here it is, dear readers, the moment you've all been waiting for. Site placements were announced last Saturday, and I will be spending the next two years in a city called Shymkent in the south of the country. I'll be working at an non-profit called MISK (the English translation is "The Youth Information Center of K-stan") that's run by three women in their 20s that sound like they really get stuff done. It's not the city I wanted, but I think it's really going to work out well. There're already 2 youth development volunteers there, whom I think I could become pretty good friends with. I'll do a larger post with more specifics about the org and the city, but I wanted to give you all a sneak peek.

 

 This week on Wednesday we're going into Almaty for a 2 day Counterpart Conference, where all of us Youth Development Trainees get to meet our counterparts (the host country nationals at our orgs who will be responsible for our well-being) and our organization directors and do some seminary things that involve learning how to work together, drinking insane amounts of tea, etc.
 
I'm not gonna lie. I'm pumped about it. Super pumped! The org sounds great, and like they could really use a volunteer to do some organizational development, exactly what I want to do! It's gonna be good. The skies have cleared.

Pre-Service Training and Practicum, juicy details, etc.

It's been awhile since my last post, so this one will be a good one full of juicy details.

 

We're in our 9^th week of Pre-Service Training (PST), meaning that we have only 2 weeks (*gasp*) until we will be sworn in as official Peace Corps Volunteers. PST has been a roller coaster of days of complete clarity when I know I'm definitely in the right place and days of complete confusion. Thankfully the confusing days have been relatively few and far between. The last few weeks we've been concentrating on completely all of our Practicum hours. This takes up about half of our training time and is a way for us Trainees to get our feet wet before we end up in the real working world of the Peace Corp Volunteer. To complete our practicum Youth Development Trainees must lead 6 hours of English Club (hour-long English lessons that are more games than lessons), 6 hours of hobby clubs (I'm working with the school's Leaders Group), 5 hours of content based lessons (we still haven't figured out what these are... we've done 4 hours of training on leadership, but Peace Corps doesn't consider that Content Based), 2 hours of trainings (we're going to work with the English teachers), and a service learning project. Our service learning project has consumed most of my time and sanity for the last month. Our project is teaching students to plan and lead a Halloween Carnival for their school. This sounds relatively simple, but consider the following things: no school funding, no supplies, kids here have no critical thinking skills, there is no consistency with students' attendance, all the meetings are entirely in Russian, people here have never heard of Halloween. Cross your fingers, dear reader, that everything will go as planned and the event won't be a total flop.

 

With all of these hours to complete in addition to 5 hours of Russian language everyday, my enthusiasm for training is quickly fading. I feel like we've been here an age, and am ready to move to my permanent site and start working, but at the same time these past weeks have flown by and I can't believe training is almost over. After being surrounded by other Trainees and Peace Corps staff almost constantly for 3 months, in no time at all I'll find myself pretty alone in a strange city with few English speakers.

 

The site placement process is complicated. Peace Corps tells us they match us to sites according to our our resumes, our aspiration statements (I wrote mine in approximately 12 minutes, you can imagine how thoughtful and thorough it is...), and how we've been doing in training. Despite this, I'm convinced that all the staff get together on a Friday afternoon, pull out the beer, and throw darts at a map. Let's face it, the dart process is way more fun and they probably get just as good of results. There's just no way to determine which site will be a perfect match based on 2 pieces of paper, so why not just have some fun, throw some darts, and hope for the best.

 

In non-work-related news, today a few Trainees and I trekked to Kazakhstan's largest bazaar to purchase winter coats. Please don't hassle me for not bringing a coat with me. I couldn't possibly have fit a winter coat in my suitcase, and based on my experience in Russia, I knew I couldn't possibly find anything in the US that would be remotely suitable for post-Soviet winter fashion. You can't blame me for wanting to try to blend in, can you? So this bazaar is called Barakholka, and is literally miles of bazaars that make up one giant bazaar mecca. According to my language instructor the best quality coats are in the "European Bazaar", but they're also the most expensive, so we went to the bazaar across the street instead. After trying on 8 different monstrosities, haggle the price down 3,000 tenge (about $20), and threatening to leave without buying anything twice, I bought a coat. I'm quite please with it. It's black and poofy and has a creepy fur hood that I'm going to remove. The seller insisted that it's down, and it feels like down, but the very Chinese label says it's 100% nylon, so who knows. My host family insists that it won't be warm enough for winter if I live in the north, but I think it will do just fine. Though I know winter in the US is different from winter here, I have done winter before. I think I'll be alright.

 

So that's what's been happening here in K-stan. The next big event is this-coming Saturday. We will all be gathered in a school auditorium for site announcements. It's going to be a circus. Peace Corps apparently makes a PowerPoint slideshow, with one slide dedicated to each Trainee. Our slide will show the city/town we've been placed in, the organization/school we'll be working with, and a picture of our site. That auditorium is going to be a madhouse of emotionally unbalanced Trainees who are all either rejoicing at their site announcement or sobbing. I'm crossing my fingers for anywhere that is not the north. That being said, I've probably jinxed myself and will soon be Peace Corps northernmost Volunteer. We'll see on Saturday.

 

 

New Address Will Be Forthcoming

I'm sitting at a fake Starbucks called "Moka Loka" stealing free wireless internet. There are expats and french fries, it's glorious. I'll go back to being hardcore, flexible Peace Corps Trainee tomorrow. But until then, I'll be here drinking too much coffee.

I just returned from a 4 day excursion to the city of Taldykurgan, a city about 3 hours north of Almaty. I had a pretty excellent time, and need to mentally prepare myself to go back to language and technical trainings tomorrow. Just so you all know, my address will be changing very soon. In a few weeks we'll find out which site we'll be placed at and what organization we'll be working with for the next 2 years. Once this happens, I'll post my new address, but until then don't send anything because I'll probably be living in a different city by the time it gets here.

I'll post a detailed account of my recent travels someday soon.