A few more photos for you. The water fountains surround the man and the snow leopard figure.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Hi Everyone,
I cannot tell you enough how the simplest things here are not easy.
I tried to talk to my parents tonight through Skype. I was going to do it at a place with wireless because if you do it there you pay money, but at least you get a drink or food for the money in addition to the internet connection. You aren’t just paying for the computer use and connection, which is what you do if you are at an internet café. This, of course, backfired. At 10 am their time, and 8 pm my time, my parents and I were supposed to be on Skype. I thought if I gave myself 15 minutes I should be able to figure the connection out. Unlike the US, you can’t just select an unsecure wireless connection and be on the internet. You have to select the unsecure connection and then enter in a ton of numbers for your ISN and DSN pathways, and for the place I went you also had to enter in a user name and password.
The place I went to had instructions to do this, but I guess it was for another version of Microsoft because they didn’t make sense. They also didn’t make sense because they were in Russian. But, the commands on the computer were all in English. So I just figured I would follow those. But no, that didn’t work. You have no idea how disappointing it is to take the time to arrange a time to talk and then have it scattered because you can’t figure out how to connect to the wireless internet. It really puts a damper on your night because you were looking forward to talking to the person that you made a phone date with.
And the drink I paid for wasn’t what I was expecting. Surprise, surprise. I ordered a chocolate milkshake. In the States they include ice cream. In Costa Rica they include ice cream, at least in the city. Here, it is just chocolate milk. Again, disappointing.
So, that is how my last hour was spent.
Other than that the day was fine. I find it amazing how much the time of day affects my students. I have two sections of the advanced film study class – one in the evening, one in the afternoon. The evening class is vivacious, interested, interactive, etc. But the afternoon class is hell. They are dead, not participatory, and even I feel a little dead. I can’t really blame them. But it is so much nicer to teach the students in the evening section than the afternoon one.
After class we had a new teacher orientation and dinner, which was nice. They had salmon! Where the school got, no one knows. But it was delicious. I tried horse tongue and meat. It was ok, but not my favorite. The meat had a more normal texture than the tongue.
In the early afternoon I went to the Green Bazaar again with another teacher. She showed me her favorite vendors and introduced them to me, so that was very nice of her. The vendors were friendly and some even gave me a discount. So, overall that was a good experience. I also bought a nice “big” (normal size) yellow towel. I can now take showers and dry off properly. Before the towel, I was using an old shirt.
The biggest thing about this trip was the fact that I took public transit back to school all by myself. You are probably thinking, Amanda is such a baby. She can’t even use the bus system. But I dare you to use a bus system where there are not any maps, are not any internet resources to tell you what to take, you have no idea how to stop the driver so you can get off, everyone speaks a different language than you and the only way for you to get on the bus is by hopping on the slowly moving bus. Sorta like how Dad used to joke around with us about getting in the car while it was slowly moving. This is that in real life. And this is not the easiest thing when you are carrying lots of food.
Anyway, I now feel like I can handle the market by myself. I just need to learn the numbers. I can definitely handle the public transit system though. Anyway where you go on a bus it is about 35 cents (40 tenge). So, it is very affordable.
I found out where Joey will be teaching. The head of the school is very nice. Her name is Zhazira and she gave me the location of the women’s club in Almaty. I plan on trying to find the club location this weekend. The school is nice, but somewhat small. It is on the third floor of a mall. Good classrooms and they have computers. So that is all good. I think the place will be nice to work at.
I was paid for teaching 11 days today. I found out where the US Embassy is and plan on going to register there on Friday, if it is open. If not, I will go do it next week. We have the rest of the week off. It is a holiday for Thursday and Friday of this week – Constitution Day(s).
While I didn’t buy a cell phone, I now know a good place to buy one. It is near the market, so I can not only walk around the market at a leisurely pace, but I can also see the cathedral down there and buy a cell phone. So I have a good day trip planned there. And with my new found skill in public transit, I can test out my abilities. I just hope buying the cell phone isn’t a horrible experience.
Not much else that I did today. Plan on reading a little tonight and then seeing whatever festivities are going on tomorrow. Don’t know what that will include. For the weekend, I might try and go somewhere with James, but that isn’t planned yet and I don’t think it will be planned unless I do it. Or I can go on a tour with the school. Right now, I think that sounds like a great idea.
Anyway, I’m off to bed. Night night!
Amanda
I cannot tell you enough how the simplest things here are not easy.
I tried to talk to my parents tonight through Skype. I was going to do it at a place with wireless because if you do it there you pay money, but at least you get a drink or food for the money in addition to the internet connection. You aren’t just paying for the computer use and connection, which is what you do if you are at an internet café. This, of course, backfired. At 10 am their time, and 8 pm my time, my parents and I were supposed to be on Skype. I thought if I gave myself 15 minutes I should be able to figure the connection out. Unlike the US, you can’t just select an unsecure wireless connection and be on the internet. You have to select the unsecure connection and then enter in a ton of numbers for your ISN and DSN pathways, and for the place I went you also had to enter in a user name and password.
The place I went to had instructions to do this, but I guess it was for another version of Microsoft because they didn’t make sense. They also didn’t make sense because they were in Russian. But, the commands on the computer were all in English. So I just figured I would follow those. But no, that didn’t work. You have no idea how disappointing it is to take the time to arrange a time to talk and then have it scattered because you can’t figure out how to connect to the wireless internet. It really puts a damper on your night because you were looking forward to talking to the person that you made a phone date with.
And the drink I paid for wasn’t what I was expecting. Surprise, surprise. I ordered a chocolate milkshake. In the States they include ice cream. In Costa Rica they include ice cream, at least in the city. Here, it is just chocolate milk. Again, disappointing.
So, that is how my last hour was spent.
Other than that the day was fine. I find it amazing how much the time of day affects my students. I have two sections of the advanced film study class – one in the evening, one in the afternoon. The evening class is vivacious, interested, interactive, etc. But the afternoon class is hell. They are dead, not participatory, and even I feel a little dead. I can’t really blame them. But it is so much nicer to teach the students in the evening section than the afternoon one.
After class we had a new teacher orientation and dinner, which was nice. They had salmon! Where the school got, no one knows. But it was delicious. I tried horse tongue and meat. It was ok, but not my favorite. The meat had a more normal texture than the tongue.
In the early afternoon I went to the Green Bazaar again with another teacher. She showed me her favorite vendors and introduced them to me, so that was very nice of her. The vendors were friendly and some even gave me a discount. So, overall that was a good experience. I also bought a nice “big” (normal size) yellow towel. I can now take showers and dry off properly. Before the towel, I was using an old shirt.
The biggest thing about this trip was the fact that I took public transit back to school all by myself. You are probably thinking, Amanda is such a baby. She can’t even use the bus system. But I dare you to use a bus system where there are not any maps, are not any internet resources to tell you what to take, you have no idea how to stop the driver so you can get off, everyone speaks a different language than you and the only way for you to get on the bus is by hopping on the slowly moving bus. Sorta like how Dad used to joke around with us about getting in the car while it was slowly moving. This is that in real life. And this is not the easiest thing when you are carrying lots of food.
Anyway, I now feel like I can handle the market by myself. I just need to learn the numbers. I can definitely handle the public transit system though. Anyway where you go on a bus it is about 35 cents (40 tenge). So, it is very affordable.
I found out where Joey will be teaching. The head of the school is very nice. Her name is Zhazira and she gave me the location of the women’s club in Almaty. I plan on trying to find the club location this weekend. The school is nice, but somewhat small. It is on the third floor of a mall. Good classrooms and they have computers. So that is all good. I think the place will be nice to work at.
I was paid for teaching 11 days today. I found out where the US Embassy is and plan on going to register there on Friday, if it is open. If not, I will go do it next week. We have the rest of the week off. It is a holiday for Thursday and Friday of this week – Constitution Day(s).
While I didn’t buy a cell phone, I now know a good place to buy one. It is near the market, so I can not only walk around the market at a leisurely pace, but I can also see the cathedral down there and buy a cell phone. So I have a good day trip planned there. And with my new found skill in public transit, I can test out my abilities. I just hope buying the cell phone isn’t a horrible experience.
Not much else that I did today. Plan on reading a little tonight and then seeing whatever festivities are going on tomorrow. Don’t know what that will include. For the weekend, I might try and go somewhere with James, but that isn’t planned yet and I don’t think it will be planned unless I do it. Or I can go on a tour with the school. Right now, I think that sounds like a great idea.
Anyway, I’m off to bed. Night night!
Amanda
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Today and tomorrow are Constitution Day(s) – holidays. There wasn’t a parade or anything like that. I was told by one of my students that those only occur in the capital. So, no really big festivities going on, but there were lots of people out enjoying the parks, theme parks, circus, etc.
This morning, I woke up, did a bit of laundry and reading and then headed off to find the circus. It isn’t really a circus with animals, at least as far as I can see. It is more of a theme park – Fantasy Land – and an arena for show-style horse riding. By show style, I mean like what you see in circuses, with the women standing on the horses, doing tricks, etc. I also found the soccer stadium, another grocery store and a few other stores and shops. I don’t know if they will be helpful, given the fact that they are so far away from my apartment. After this two hour walk, I went back to the apartment for some lunch and did some reading.
James told me earlier in the morning that a student of ours had offered to take us around the city a little bit in the afternoon. We agreed that about 2 would be a good time for the student to come by. In reality, he didn’t get here until about 3. Not a big deal really, I did a bit more reading than I thought I would do. No big deal. He actually has a car, which is a rarity here and truly shows how affluent he is. So he picked us up and we headed down to the mountain to the central part of the city to a mall of types for me to buy a cell phone. It is much easier to do with this a local. So I now have a cell phone, which is good to have for safety if nothing else.
After that, he proceeded to ask us what next, as if we knew what we wanted to see in the city. James and I didn’t know anything in particular and asked for his suggestions. He didn’t have too many. So I suggested monuments. He tried to show us a few parks, buildings. I now know where the ballet building is. So, I hope to attend one of those in the near future. I just need to figure out the schedule – wish me luck on that one.
We did a few more stops at parks and such and then decided to meet up with another KIMEP student who is new to the area as well. We went to the soccer stadium that I had just visited that morning to pick her up. While waiting for her, we figured out a bit more about our phones, working them, adding minutes, etc. All useful things to know. We finally picked up the other student, she is from Russia and came to KIMEP to learn English. From there we ran through a mall quickly and then went down to see another monument. This monument is the one I actually have seen before and is quite famous, as far as monuments in Kazakhstan go. It is a hunter with a bow and arrow standing on a snow leopard. It has some gold in it. It is a very nice statue overall.
From there we headed downtown again to a concert. By this point, it was getting late and our guide, the guy with the car, I think felt a little unsafe with all of us depending on him in that type of atmosphere. So, he suggested that we call it a night. It was 8:30 pm by the time James and I got home and I was more than willing to go back to the apartment. But it was very nice to have someone help us through the day and show us around. I need to work on getting him to teach me Russian. But as you might guess, his English is much better than my Russian, so we ended up doing almost all of our talking in English.
So the afternoon was good overall. The student was wonderful - very helpful, polite and wanted to make sure we had everything we needed. The other student we picked up was also very nice.
Today and tomorrow are Constitution Day(s) – holidays. There wasn’t a parade or anything like that. I was told by one of my students that those only occur in the capital. So, no really big festivities going on, but there were lots of people out enjoying the parks, theme parks, circus, etc.
This morning, I woke up, did a bit of laundry and reading and then headed off to find the circus. It isn’t really a circus with animals, at least as far as I can see. It is more of a theme park – Fantasy Land – and an arena for show-style horse riding. By show style, I mean like what you see in circuses, with the women standing on the horses, doing tricks, etc. I also found the soccer stadium, another grocery store and a few other stores and shops. I don’t know if they will be helpful, given the fact that they are so far away from my apartment. After this two hour walk, I went back to the apartment for some lunch and did some reading.
James told me earlier in the morning that a student of ours had offered to take us around the city a little bit in the afternoon. We agreed that about 2 would be a good time for the student to come by. In reality, he didn’t get here until about 3. Not a big deal really, I did a bit more reading than I thought I would do. No big deal. He actually has a car, which is a rarity here and truly shows how affluent he is. So he picked us up and we headed down to the mountain to the central part of the city to a mall of types for me to buy a cell phone. It is much easier to do with this a local. So I now have a cell phone, which is good to have for safety if nothing else.
After that, he proceeded to ask us what next, as if we knew what we wanted to see in the city. James and I didn’t know anything in particular and asked for his suggestions. He didn’t have too many. So I suggested monuments. He tried to show us a few parks, buildings. I now know where the ballet building is. So, I hope to attend one of those in the near future. I just need to figure out the schedule – wish me luck on that one.
We did a few more stops at parks and such and then decided to meet up with another KIMEP student who is new to the area as well. We went to the soccer stadium that I had just visited that morning to pick her up. While waiting for her, we figured out a bit more about our phones, working them, adding minutes, etc. All useful things to know. We finally picked up the other student, she is from Russia and came to KIMEP to learn English. From there we ran through a mall quickly and then went down to see another monument. This monument is the one I actually have seen before and is quite famous, as far as monuments in Kazakhstan go. It is a hunter with a bow and arrow standing on a snow leopard. It has some gold in it. It is a very nice statue overall.
From there we headed downtown again to a concert. By this point, it was getting late and our guide, the guy with the car, I think felt a little unsafe with all of us depending on him in that type of atmosphere. So, he suggested that we call it a night. It was 8:30 pm by the time James and I got home and I was more than willing to go back to the apartment. But it was very nice to have someone help us through the day and show us around. I need to work on getting him to teach me Russian. But as you might guess, his English is much better than my Russian, so we ended up doing almost all of our talking in English.
So the afternoon was good overall. The student was wonderful - very helpful, polite and wanted to make sure we had everything we needed. The other student we picked up was also very nice.
As far as interesting food for today - I tried a lamb kabob. Very fatty, but the meat was good. They eat the kabob with raw onions, bread, and an optional vinegar-based sauce. After the kabob, I ate a bread dessert with poppy seeds in the middle. It was slightly sweet and a nice post-kabob piece. Other than those things, I ate the normal fruits, cereal, bread, peanut butter, etc.
With my new phone, I am going to call the landlord and ask him to fix the oven. We are paying enough that that should be fixed. Tomorrow I am going to inquire about a trip to the mountains that KIMEP is hosting on Saturday. However, KIMEP needs to be open for me to do that. I don’t know if that will be the case.
Alright, good enough for tonight. I need to put the sheets back on the bed (I washed them this morning), take a shower, and get ready for bed.
Hope all is well!
Amanda
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Welcome!
Hi Everyone,
Welcome to my blog. I plan on posting my emails here from KZ from now on. I will also post pictures as I take them.
I look forward to hearing people's comments and input!
Have a good day!
Amanda
Welcome to my blog. I plan on posting my emails here from KZ from now on. I will also post pictures as I take them.
I look forward to hearing people's comments and input!
Have a good day!
Amanda
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