Watching Time in Front of the TV

27 October 2008
Aktobe

This past weekend was Republic Day.  Our organization sponsored an arm wrestling competition for the disabled on Saturday, and then on Sunday we sponsored a celebratory lunch.  And today, Monday, there is no work due to the holiday.  But, schools still have classes and some businesses are working.  Even after a year, I have absolutely no idea where it is decided which organizations work on which days and what days constitute official holidays compared to the equally numerous pseudo-holidays.  Republic Day is a celebration of the Republic of Kazakhstan.  How this differs from Independence Day and Constitution Day is similarly confounding.  It seems, however, that there were not as many concerts in the park this weekend as for the other holidays.  I did see fireworks last night, though.

The past few days have been a nice time of relaxation compared to the last few weeks.  Things have been incredibly busy.  We’ve had some wonderful press coverage, appearing on multiple local TV channels at least three times over four days (including once about Volunteer Club in the morning show and then Hippotherapy for evening news on the same channel).  The free publicity is a nice touch and good compliment to the newspaper articles over the past few months, especially as we haven’t had an article recently, until last week for the program, “Blue Bird”, a disabled children’s festival that we also co-sponsored.

“Blue Bird” was really nice.  Many of the students that I teach at “Chaika”, the TB sanatorium were there – and it was nice to see them outside of the lessons.  I focused my next lesson, after the event, on their performances and what happened at the event.  On top of these activities, a friend came to visit from Israel.  I didn’t really realize how busy my schedule is until she told me that that her final day in Almaty, after spending around a week with me in Aktobe, she slept all day.  Apparently, not everyone agrees that the best vacations are those where you spend little time sleeping, and every minute running around.  We had fun though.

Next week, I return to Almaty for a Volunteer Advisory Committee meeting and Swearing-In of the new volunteers.  I remember so clearly my Swearing-In and can still remember the emotions that accompanied the transition from PST to arriving in Aktobe for my site visit.  It was incredibly overwhelming.  I remember getting off the plane.  The first thing I saw was flat and this small building that apparently was the airport.  Since then, I’ve become very familiar with the two room airport  and have been impressed by its efficiency, compared to Metro – only a few less flights.  Then, my colleagues were there to greet me; I only knew Maral, I had never met any of the others, I had no idea how many there were, what they would be like, what they were expecting.

We took the early flight from Almaty, another aspect of Kazakhstani travel with which I have since become very familiar.  When we were driving through the city, with Gulmiera narrating the tour in part-English/mainly-Russian, I was so confused.  She was talking about all these different “regions” of the city.  It didn’t seem large enough to have so many regions.  Three weeks later when I moved to Aktobe, I still had no idea how the city could have over twelve regions.  When I got here in November, I took all these walks just to orient myselfyou  with the area.  They helped but it still took many more months to get a really good feel for the city.  I’m still learning more about the city, how can you expect to learn everything, or even the majority, in a year, but I understand it better now, especially the map of the city.  For so long, looking at a city map, placing my work in relation to my house in relation to Jennie’s office simply didn’t make sense.  Now, I can picture the Google map view in my head (though not quite as clear as of West Bloomfield on Google Earth).

As life happens, a lot has changed in a year.  I’ve made friends, my two city site-mates have left (two new ones will be coming when I return with them from Almaty), more village site-mates will be arriving, I don’t sit in the office anymore and have nothing to do.  Especially with so many people leaving, it’s tough not to fast-forward the year and think about what I’ll be doing exactly a year from now.  I’m doing my best to avoid thinking that far ahead.  It’ll be too sad and there’s too much more to do in the meantime.  Before PC, two years seemed like it would be a long time, now it just feels like it’s already moving faster than I’d like.