These top four are from Joey's scavenger hunt. The ones below are from Big Almaty Lake.
This past week I had off from KIMEP. It was busy! Even though KIMEP had a break, I continued to tutor my family. The main reason why I told them I could still tutor this week, instead of going away, is because Joey’s birthday was this past Tuesday. So, I stayed around Almaty to hang out with him. J I also wanted to continue to tutor my family. Additionally, I didn’t have time to plan anything on my own and I wasn’t too keen on the idea of traveling alone.
Monday
I tutored my family in the morning from 8 am to 12 pm. I sure hope the women are improving. I think they are, but I see them so often that it is hard for me to tell. As with most students, their writing needs the most improvement. Unfortunately though, the only way to get better at that is to do it, and they really don’t like doing their homework.
One of the interesting things about teaching English is that you find some things very hard to explain. Some phrases just sound better one way over another; for example, the use of “the” and “a.” Sometimes the use of these articles is exchangeable. Other times, it isn’t and I am unable to tell them the reason. (However, my mom told me today that she found a way to explain this, so I will see if the explanation makes sense to me when I get that information.)
In the afternoon I bought Joey’s birthday presents - a basketball and a few other smaller items - wrote his scavenger hunt for him to find his presents, helped plan the games and layout for the Halloween party for English Club, and tutored one student. In the evening, I gave a final to two classes. I will no longer be teaching these students come November. I gave the director of that program my two weeks notice last week. This is a different program than the one I am contracted to work with at KIMEP. It was just too many late evenings at school. I was there until at least 8:30 pm Monday through Friday.
Tuesday
Today was Joey’s birthday so I made him breakfast and later in the day I made his birthday dinner – a chicken dish with black beans and tomatoes, homemade mac and cheese, another pasta dish with peas, garlic and a white wine, some roasted veggies, fruit, and a pound cake with chocolate pudding in the middle. If you can’t tell by the amount of food I made, I invited a few people over for dinner. We really don’t know that many people, but I invited Dinara (a friend of mine from KIMEP who is the logistics coordinator for the EC) and David, a person we met through the internet.
So, I cooked a good amount during the day and went to Russian lessons. At 5 pm I met Joey at his place and guided him through the scavenger hunt to find his presents. Of course, we had to play basketball a little before we left the court, which is where I told him to go get his basketball. Guests arrived around 7:30 pm and most everything was ready. So, we were able to sit down to eat pretty soon after they all had arrived.
Dinara lived in the US for a year (I think) and she said the dinner style was very American; I put the food on the table in dishes. It was an interesting comment. She also said she liked the party because it was small, intimate, included lots of talking and had a few games. So, I think she had a good time.
David had a good time as well, I hope. He drew a very good fish for Joey’s aquarium.
Wednesday
I tutored my family in the morning from 9 am to 1 pm and then went home to grade a few papers. Around 3:30 pm Salta (one of the women I tutor) picked me up and we headed to an orphanage in Almaty. Salta’s brother in-law is one of the main benefactors to the orphanage so I thought it would be good if she took advantage of that connection. I told her she had to do this volunteer work for her college applications. I have never been to an orphanage before, so I found the experience to be eye opening. If nothing else, I am more grateful for my own up bringing. I hope Salta feels similarly.
As a good gesture, Salta wanted to buy the kids some candy. So we stopped at Ramstore (the Wal-Mart of KZ), where she bought about $50 worth of candy. I was thinking small candies, but she wanted something larger – Twix bars, Kindercare eggs, and lots of other things. I hope the kids don’t have too many cavities because of all that sugar! With our candy in toe, we headed to the orphanage. It is about 5 minutes away from my house by car, and it looks like a regular apartment building with a few more play sets in front of it than usual. In total, this orphanage has about 115 children and some of the kids have physical or mental disabilities. To me, the orphanage seemed large with lots of rooms, but I don’t know how much room is required. It could have been cramped.
We were assigned to a group of about 20 4-year olds. Two nannies took care of the children; they have a tough job. We joined the group as they headed to music lessons. The kids sang and danced for us, and afterwards we gave them some candy. The music lesson lasted about 30 minutes and then we headed down to their playroom. We danced with the kids to Russian music videos on TV, tried to assemble the toy in their Kindercare Egg, and goofed around.
We also went for a walk with the kids around the orphanage. This is quite a task. It requires getting each of the kids a hat and coat, and putting it on them; this is not easy with them bouncing off each other like boiling water molecules. No one coat or hat belonged to one child. It was a free for all to get these items. Whoever was the strongest or quickest got the hat or coat they wanted. It reminded me a little too much of Darwin’s theory that only the strong survive. Once outside, they all wanted to hold Salta or I’s hand. Unfortunately, 4 hands are not enough for 20 kids, so some were a bit disappointed. While on our walk, one staff member gave them a Kazak treat – a salty, milk-based ball. I really dislike this Kazak food, but the kids ate them like they were a lollipop.
One interesting thing about the children is that they only spoke Kazak. Later, Salta told me they will learn Russian. So, my Russian lessons didn’t go too far with these kids. But I find you really don’t need to be able to understand what kids say too much at that age. Usually if you pay attention to them and play with them that is enough.
Overall thoughts - They all seemed to crave attention and nothing was specifically theirs. I think those were the two hardest things to get accustomed to. It didn’t seem the most nurturing environment even though I am sure the nannies try their best to make it that way. I just think it is difficult with so many children, limited funds, and limited personnel.
After the orphanage I headed home. I graded a few more papers and then went to Joey’s place to heat up leftovers for dinner. He arrived around 8:30 pm from school and we ate when he got home.
Thursday
I tutored my family again in the morning, had lunch at Joey’s and played basketball with him afterwards. The basketball court is in the middle of an apartment complex, so we had 4 kids come out and play with us. One was a girl, Delaura is an somewhat accurate English transliteration of her name, so I tried to make sure that she got the ball a lot. I guess I am biased. Joey’s team won all the games, I think. But we had a good time nonetheless.
After basketball, I cleaned up myself and the apartment a little bit. I headed over to Joey’s after a short while and we had leftovers, again, for an early dinner. The dinner was early because we headed to the opera in the early evening. Not the best opera, but it was nice to go to one. The acting was not the best and one of the characters’ voices didn’t carry far enough. It got lost in the music. The casting was also a bit odd. For a girl who was supposed to be 15, the actress looked very close to 40. The music was pretty though. Hopefully I will choose a better one next time, but it was a good first attempt.
After the opera, we headed off to watch the tail end of the fireworks that celebrated the birth of the Republic of Kazakhstan. We threw around the idea of going to bar after the fireworks, but decided to head back home instead.
Friday
Joey had off today so we decided to make the trek to Big Almaty Lake. It is a gorgeous lake surrounded by snow covered mountains and about 8,000 feet in elevation. The area is frigid and windy. Nonetheless, we headed up to the lake. To get there, you have to take a taxi from the outskirts of town to a water pipe 20 km up in the mountains. We paid too much for the taxi there (about $18 each), but made up for it by getting cheap taxis and a bus on the way back down. Once at the pipe, I was directed by a colleague to follow the pipe up to the lake. It was that simple – follow the pipe. The pipe however, didn’t take the easiest route. It was steep, icy, snowy, rocky, cold, and did I mention, steep? J Luckily, if we kept moving we didn’t get too cold.
We followed the pipe for about 90 minutes and finally reached the top of the mountain pass and found the lake. The lake is about 1.5 km long and is gorgeous (at least in the winter!). Both Joey and I were glad we made the trip in the winter because the snow on the mountains made the lake that more striking. The color of the lake water was a nice turquoise blue; the mountains were snow covered white with a few grey rock outcroppings appearing. The tops of the mountains were intermittently shrouded in clouds and a few paths could be seen going up further into the mountain range. We didn’t take those paths. We decided to leave those for spring or summer when it is warmer. I don’t think Joey would have followed me if I decided to go higher into the mountains. I don’t know if I would have followed him. We were both pretty beat, and cold. A few cottages for rent are up by the lake, but I wouldn’t trust staying in them. They looked a little too ramshackle for me, despite the new bright colored coats of paint.
Check out the photos on Joey’s and my blog site for some visuals.
We hung around the lake’s edge and walked the perimeter. You can’t walk around the whole lake because the mountains hit the south side of the lake too sharply. We did find a quaint river that ran into the lake, so we had lunch there. It was a relatively quick lunch because if we stayed still too long, we became frozen. But it was a good meal despite the chilly air. I don’t know exactly how cold it is up in the mountains, but here in Almaty the high was 54 F. We were doing this in the morning (we woke up at 7 am), so I suspect it was about 45 F. Up by the lake it was probably about 0 C, or 32 F.
There is my math so you believe me (Mona/Jen/Hita/Chris, feel free to check it for me if you want J):
~ 2,700 m – Big Almaty Lake (elevation)
~ 800 m – Almaty (elevation)
About 2000 m difference in elevation and for every 100 m gained in elevation the temperature drops one degree C. So, Lake Almaty is about 20 degrees C lower than Almaty. The temperature high in Almaty was 26 C that day. So let’s say it was about 18 C at that time in Almaty. That means at the lake it was about 0 C at the lake.
After packing up lunch, we walked around the lake a bit more and through the cottage village. We then headed down the mountain. That took about half the time as the trip there. There were also lots of people heading up the lake in cars and by foot. So I am glad we went early. Hardly anyone was out when we were there.
We headed back down the pipe and started walking the 20 km back to Almaty. We knew we had to catch a ride back to town, or at least to a bus stop. Neither of us was up for the 20 km walk back to Almaty. So we started walking and tried to flag a car to take us down the mountain. It wasn’t too successful, but after about 6 km and the 15th try we caught a car. They took us down to a village where we could take a bus the rest of the way to Almaty. We were grateful for the car and bus rides after walking so much.
We got off the bus around 4 pm at the same area that we caught our first taxi 8 hours earlier in the day. This area is across town from our places and near the closest thing KZ have to an American mall – Mega Center. So I thought we should stop in since we were so close. We walked about half a mile to the shopping center. It has two large floors, a small ice skating rink on the bottom, and a decent sized climbing wall on the side. Lots of name of name brand stores and food court restaurants were in the center. Most importantly, it was warm and we enjoyed people watching and item browsing.
After Mega, we were exhausted and ready to head home. We decided on something easy for dinner – Mexican. We hung out around home for the rest of the evening; I watched the most recent Harry Potter and Joey intermittently slept.
SaturdayWe slept late, or at least sorta late. I picked up my book from Mona and finished that the other day. I read about 350 pages I think. It was wonderful! In between reading, I shopped for groceries and went for a walk around a few parks in the city. It was surprisingly warm yesterday, about 50 F, so it was a pleasant walk. Joey made a Polish dish for dinner, which was delicious, and then we went off to Kok-Tube in the evening with Dinara and a friend of hers. I have described this place in previous blog entries. But I went in the day. This visit was in the evening. It was nice to see the city lights and I enjoyed trying to figure out where things were based on light patterns. Unfortunately, the mountains were not visible.
Monday
I tutored my family in the morning from 8 am to 12 pm. I sure hope the women are improving. I think they are, but I see them so often that it is hard for me to tell. As with most students, their writing needs the most improvement. Unfortunately though, the only way to get better at that is to do it, and they really don’t like doing their homework.
One of the interesting things about teaching English is that you find some things very hard to explain. Some phrases just sound better one way over another; for example, the use of “the” and “a.” Sometimes the use of these articles is exchangeable. Other times, it isn’t and I am unable to tell them the reason. (However, my mom told me today that she found a way to explain this, so I will see if the explanation makes sense to me when I get that information.)
In the afternoon I bought Joey’s birthday presents - a basketball and a few other smaller items - wrote his scavenger hunt for him to find his presents, helped plan the games and layout for the Halloween party for English Club, and tutored one student. In the evening, I gave a final to two classes. I will no longer be teaching these students come November. I gave the director of that program my two weeks notice last week. This is a different program than the one I am contracted to work with at KIMEP. It was just too many late evenings at school. I was there until at least 8:30 pm Monday through Friday.
Tuesday
Today was Joey’s birthday so I made him breakfast and later in the day I made his birthday dinner – a chicken dish with black beans and tomatoes, homemade mac and cheese, another pasta dish with peas, garlic and a white wine, some roasted veggies, fruit, and a pound cake with chocolate pudding in the middle. If you can’t tell by the amount of food I made, I invited a few people over for dinner. We really don’t know that many people, but I invited Dinara (a friend of mine from KIMEP who is the logistics coordinator for the EC) and David, a person we met through the internet.
So, I cooked a good amount during the day and went to Russian lessons. At 5 pm I met Joey at his place and guided him through the scavenger hunt to find his presents. Of course, we had to play basketball a little before we left the court, which is where I told him to go get his basketball. Guests arrived around 7:30 pm and most everything was ready. So, we were able to sit down to eat pretty soon after they all had arrived.
Dinara lived in the US for a year (I think) and she said the dinner style was very American; I put the food on the table in dishes. It was an interesting comment. She also said she liked the party because it was small, intimate, included lots of talking and had a few games. So, I think she had a good time.
David had a good time as well, I hope. He drew a very good fish for Joey’s aquarium.
Wednesday
I tutored my family in the morning from 9 am to 1 pm and then went home to grade a few papers. Around 3:30 pm Salta (one of the women I tutor) picked me up and we headed to an orphanage in Almaty. Salta’s brother in-law is one of the main benefactors to the orphanage so I thought it would be good if she took advantage of that connection. I told her she had to do this volunteer work for her college applications. I have never been to an orphanage before, so I found the experience to be eye opening. If nothing else, I am more grateful for my own up bringing. I hope Salta feels similarly.
As a good gesture, Salta wanted to buy the kids some candy. So we stopped at Ramstore (the Wal-Mart of KZ), where she bought about $50 worth of candy. I was thinking small candies, but she wanted something larger – Twix bars, Kindercare eggs, and lots of other things. I hope the kids don’t have too many cavities because of all that sugar! With our candy in toe, we headed to the orphanage. It is about 5 minutes away from my house by car, and it looks like a regular apartment building with a few more play sets in front of it than usual. In total, this orphanage has about 115 children and some of the kids have physical or mental disabilities. To me, the orphanage seemed large with lots of rooms, but I don’t know how much room is required. It could have been cramped.
We were assigned to a group of about 20 4-year olds. Two nannies took care of the children; they have a tough job. We joined the group as they headed to music lessons. The kids sang and danced for us, and afterwards we gave them some candy. The music lesson lasted about 30 minutes and then we headed down to their playroom. We danced with the kids to Russian music videos on TV, tried to assemble the toy in their Kindercare Egg, and goofed around.
We also went for a walk with the kids around the orphanage. This is quite a task. It requires getting each of the kids a hat and coat, and putting it on them; this is not easy with them bouncing off each other like boiling water molecules. No one coat or hat belonged to one child. It was a free for all to get these items. Whoever was the strongest or quickest got the hat or coat they wanted. It reminded me a little too much of Darwin’s theory that only the strong survive. Once outside, they all wanted to hold Salta or I’s hand. Unfortunately, 4 hands are not enough for 20 kids, so some were a bit disappointed. While on our walk, one staff member gave them a Kazak treat – a salty, milk-based ball. I really dislike this Kazak food, but the kids ate them like they were a lollipop.
One interesting thing about the children is that they only spoke Kazak. Later, Salta told me they will learn Russian. So, my Russian lessons didn’t go too far with these kids. But I find you really don’t need to be able to understand what kids say too much at that age. Usually if you pay attention to them and play with them that is enough.
Overall thoughts - They all seemed to crave attention and nothing was specifically theirs. I think those were the two hardest things to get accustomed to. It didn’t seem the most nurturing environment even though I am sure the nannies try their best to make it that way. I just think it is difficult with so many children, limited funds, and limited personnel.
After the orphanage I headed home. I graded a few more papers and then went to Joey’s place to heat up leftovers for dinner. He arrived around 8:30 pm from school and we ate when he got home.
Thursday
I tutored my family again in the morning, had lunch at Joey’s and played basketball with him afterwards. The basketball court is in the middle of an apartment complex, so we had 4 kids come out and play with us. One was a girl, Delaura is an somewhat accurate English transliteration of her name, so I tried to make sure that she got the ball a lot. I guess I am biased. Joey’s team won all the games, I think. But we had a good time nonetheless.
After basketball, I cleaned up myself and the apartment a little bit. I headed over to Joey’s after a short while and we had leftovers, again, for an early dinner. The dinner was early because we headed to the opera in the early evening. Not the best opera, but it was nice to go to one. The acting was not the best and one of the characters’ voices didn’t carry far enough. It got lost in the music. The casting was also a bit odd. For a girl who was supposed to be 15, the actress looked very close to 40. The music was pretty though. Hopefully I will choose a better one next time, but it was a good first attempt.
After the opera, we headed off to watch the tail end of the fireworks that celebrated the birth of the Republic of Kazakhstan. We threw around the idea of going to bar after the fireworks, but decided to head back home instead.
Friday
Joey had off today so we decided to make the trek to Big Almaty Lake. It is a gorgeous lake surrounded by snow covered mountains and about 8,000 feet in elevation. The area is frigid and windy. Nonetheless, we headed up to the lake. To get there, you have to take a taxi from the outskirts of town to a water pipe 20 km up in the mountains. We paid too much for the taxi there (about $18 each), but made up for it by getting cheap taxis and a bus on the way back down. Once at the pipe, I was directed by a colleague to follow the pipe up to the lake. It was that simple – follow the pipe. The pipe however, didn’t take the easiest route. It was steep, icy, snowy, rocky, cold, and did I mention, steep? J Luckily, if we kept moving we didn’t get too cold.
We followed the pipe for about 90 minutes and finally reached the top of the mountain pass and found the lake. The lake is about 1.5 km long and is gorgeous (at least in the winter!). Both Joey and I were glad we made the trip in the winter because the snow on the mountains made the lake that more striking. The color of the lake water was a nice turquoise blue; the mountains were snow covered white with a few grey rock outcroppings appearing. The tops of the mountains were intermittently shrouded in clouds and a few paths could be seen going up further into the mountain range. We didn’t take those paths. We decided to leave those for spring or summer when it is warmer. I don’t think Joey would have followed me if I decided to go higher into the mountains. I don’t know if I would have followed him. We were both pretty beat, and cold. A few cottages for rent are up by the lake, but I wouldn’t trust staying in them. They looked a little too ramshackle for me, despite the new bright colored coats of paint.
Check out the photos on Joey’s and my blog site for some visuals.
We hung around the lake’s edge and walked the perimeter. You can’t walk around the whole lake because the mountains hit the south side of the lake too sharply. We did find a quaint river that ran into the lake, so we had lunch there. It was a relatively quick lunch because if we stayed still too long, we became frozen. But it was a good meal despite the chilly air. I don’t know exactly how cold it is up in the mountains, but here in Almaty the high was 54 F. We were doing this in the morning (we woke up at 7 am), so I suspect it was about 45 F. Up by the lake it was probably about 0 C, or 32 F.
There is my math so you believe me (Mona/Jen/Hita/Chris, feel free to check it for me if you want J):
~ 2,700 m – Big Almaty Lake (elevation)
~ 800 m – Almaty (elevation)
About 2000 m difference in elevation and for every 100 m gained in elevation the temperature drops one degree C. So, Lake Almaty is about 20 degrees C lower than Almaty. The temperature high in Almaty was 26 C that day. So let’s say it was about 18 C at that time in Almaty. That means at the lake it was about 0 C at the lake.
After packing up lunch, we walked around the lake a bit more and through the cottage village. We then headed down the mountain. That took about half the time as the trip there. There were also lots of people heading up the lake in cars and by foot. So I am glad we went early. Hardly anyone was out when we were there.
We headed back down the pipe and started walking the 20 km back to Almaty. We knew we had to catch a ride back to town, or at least to a bus stop. Neither of us was up for the 20 km walk back to Almaty. So we started walking and tried to flag a car to take us down the mountain. It wasn’t too successful, but after about 6 km and the 15th try we caught a car. They took us down to a village where we could take a bus the rest of the way to Almaty. We were grateful for the car and bus rides after walking so much.
We got off the bus around 4 pm at the same area that we caught our first taxi 8 hours earlier in the day. This area is across town from our places and near the closest thing KZ have to an American mall – Mega Center. So I thought we should stop in since we were so close. We walked about half a mile to the shopping center. It has two large floors, a small ice skating rink on the bottom, and a decent sized climbing wall on the side. Lots of name of name brand stores and food court restaurants were in the center. Most importantly, it was warm and we enjoyed people watching and item browsing.
After Mega, we were exhausted and ready to head home. We decided on something easy for dinner – Mexican. We hung out around home for the rest of the evening; I watched the most recent Harry Potter and Joey intermittently slept.
SaturdayWe slept late, or at least sorta late. I picked up my book from Mona and finished that the other day. I read about 350 pages I think. It was wonderful! In between reading, I shopped for groceries and went for a walk around a few parks in the city. It was surprisingly warm yesterday, about 50 F, so it was a pleasant walk. Joey made a Polish dish for dinner, which was delicious, and then we went off to Kok-Tube in the evening with Dinara and a friend of hers. I have described this place in previous blog entries. But I went in the day. This visit was in the evening. It was nice to see the city lights and I enjoyed trying to figure out where things were based on light patterns. Unfortunately, the mountains were not visible.
That is pretty much it for Saturday. Not too much going on.
Sunday
I tutored in the morning. Really I researched colleges and downloaded applications for Salta. But you know whatever they want me to do. The lessons ended early because one of the small children fell off the bed and bumped her head. So they wanted to take her to the hospital. So since 11 am I have been typing up this summary. Luckily, I am almost done. J
Alright that is it for now. Tonight I am making pizza for Joey and myself. Hopefully I can also grade a few papers today since I finished my book the other day. I think a good book is one of the worst/best (depends on how you look at it) ways to distract yourself.
Sunday
I tutored in the morning. Really I researched colleges and downloaded applications for Salta. But you know whatever they want me to do. The lessons ended early because one of the small children fell off the bed and bumped her head. So they wanted to take her to the hospital. So since 11 am I have been typing up this summary. Luckily, I am almost done. J
Alright that is it for now. Tonight I am making pizza for Joey and myself. Hopefully I can also grade a few papers today since I finished my book the other day. I think a good book is one of the worst/best (depends on how you look at it) ways to distract yourself.
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