Bazaar Day

Today we got a little tour of the city, out on an excursion with the new teachers at our school.  We went to Almaty’s ‘famous’ Zeloni (Green) Bazaar, which is impressively large and has more stuff than you can possibly see in one trip.  We also went to the city’s main park, which is where the beautiful Russian Orthodox Church is located (a very old wooden church, with onion domes and golden crosses, made without any nails – only dowels, dove-tails and gravity!), along with a few war memorials and statues of influential people.  We ate shaslik, the Kazakh dish of skewered meat (usually lamb), grilled over a wooden-coal fire with plenty of steam and yummy spices.  Yum!

It was nice to get a chance to talk to some of the people we’ll be working with.  One of the directors stated that there are more than 100 staff members at the school (for 430 students) – a huge number, especially considering that my last school in Oakland ran on about 30 staff members (for 260 students).  One of the new teachers is going to be teaching 2nd grade.  This was actually the role I requested, since I’ve never taught at lower-elementary and I was told that this would be a good place to start.  I was offered first grade, which makes me both nervous and excited because that is such an important year for building foundational knowledge.  It turns out that this new teacher is actually a first-grade teacher, and she wanted to teach first grade, not second!  So, we were both nodding at each other and wondering, “wanna trade?”   We’ll see… we’re both going to think about it this weekend and then get back to the director, who thinks it would be fine to make that arrangement if it’s what we’d like to do.  On one hand, 2nd grade is what I wanted to teach and I feel less intimidated by it:  I’d be building on knowledge rather than setting the foundation.  On the other hand, I’ve been preparing myself to teach 1st grade since January, and it would mean that both the new teacher and I would get a chance to try something new and expand our experiences.  Either way, I’ll be enthusiastic and willing to dive in. 

We bought a map today and found out where our neighborhood bazaar is, so we’re going to go back tomorrow and see what’s on.  On the map, we also spotted the mosque we can hear so clearly at night.  I’d like to see what it looks like so I can picture the imam in his minarets when I hear him singing his beautiful song of praise.

First day in Almaty!

So, we’re just had our first 24 hours in our new home of Almaty, Kazakhstan!  It’s amazing to finally be here, after so much planning and more than a day in transit. 

The ladies at the United counter in Las Vegas were SOOOO helpful and sweet!  We got all 10 packages on the flight and they took care of us the whole way (we paid $200 per bag for 6 of those bags, since the first four were free).   We had our 8 bags plus our two bikes (foldable Dahon bikes that we rode around Ireland last summer).  (There's a photo of a very full truck-bed on the way to the airport.) After we checked everything in, we had this mini anxiety-moment when we thought “what if it doesn’t get there” and then “are we bringing way too much?”  All you can do in that situation is just take a deep breath and hope for the best.

We flew from Las Vegas to Chicago, Chicago to Frankfurt, and then Frankfurt to Almaty.  On the last flight, we spotted a family that we recognized from reading their blog about living in Kazakhstan.   We also met another couple of teachers for QSI at the baggage claim, since they also had ActionPackers coming down the conveyor belt!

Two of the school directors were there to meet us at the airport, along with four drivers with big vans to carry all the luggage.  It was so nice to have friendly faces to greet us at 2am in a new land!  Another employee from the school went shopping and picked up some basic kitchen supplies for us – milk, eggs, ham, yogurt, soap and a few other things to make sure we could make breakfast in the morning.  It’s nice to know that the school is well organized and has thought about the little things that help new teachers feel settled in a place where so many things are so new.   They helped us carry all of our stuff into our new place, deciding that it was indeed a nice apartment and we were well situated in the city. 

Even though we were quite tired from the trip, we took some time to unpack a few things (the quickest move-in ever!), when, at about 4am, we heard the call to prayer coming from a mosque in the distance.  We stopped what we were doing and went to the open window, listening to the song coming across the breeze and admiring our view of the city at night.  At daybreak, we crawled into bed.

We then got up only a few hours later, finishing our unpacking, doing some cleaning, and moving furniture to look more modern and less ‘ex-soviet’ :D.  (All of the couches were pushed against the wall in this huge room, and the window treatments covered the entire wall – even though the window was just average-sized – white sheer fabric with a pink valance-type fabric ‘accenting’ the top.  Add to that the blue ambient lights in the ceiling, and you’ve got a prom-photo backdrop in a room set up for a rave.)  "Before" and "After" shots are included above.   After we moved a few sofas, took down the curtains and gave everything a dusting, we were very happy with our place.  So much storage!  So many windows!  Such a great breeze!  What a modern kitchen!  And we have all new appliances and a brand-new flat-screen TV (which hooks up to our laptops with an HDMI cable, making it easy to display videos from the Internet on the television screen).

We then took a 6-hour walk around the neighborhood, seeing what food was around and what shops we had, getting a feel for prices (not too bad), the architecture (ex-Soviet, with some modern stuff popping up here and there), the driving culture (a little cray-zay!) and the fashions (mostly up-to-date and stylish for people our age).   We don’t immediately stand out as foreigners here, but, once people get a little closer to us, they might smile and say “hello!”  People walk at night, kids were playing outside at 9 pm, and grandmas were outside talking and sharing fruit.  We’re also hearing the calls to prayer more than 5 times a day, since its Ramadan (Holy Month).

Today, (Friday the 13th) we visited the school and saw the campus.  It’s beautiful: green grass, a rose garden, athletic field, new projectors and equipment, big windows, modern floors and plenty of supplies.  People were getting ready for the school year in the same ways we’re used to:  enrolling kids, having meetings, re-stocking books, patching holes in the walls, and generally getting excited about meeting new teachers and starting the school year.  I’m looking forward to it.

Kazakhstan is cool!  Even though we’re still a little melancholy when we think of how much we miss the Bay Area, we’re certainly not regretting the decision to come.

Start spreading the news...

We’re leaving for Kazakhstan in the morning and we are way too tired to be enthusiastic!  Actually, it’s past midnight, which technically means we’re leaving today… eeep!

We spent the last two days packing everything we think we’ll need in order to ‘survive’ for two years.  Have you ever really thought about how many of your possessions you could live without?  It’s really hard to decide which things are ‘vital to my day-to-day life’ and which are ‘nice to have, but could do without’.  Everything we’re going to bring has to fit into the 8 bags we have between us:  Kazakhstan is a land-locked country, which means that shipping things there is neither easy or cheap – we’ll need to fly in everything we want as accompanying baggage.

Four of those ‘bags’ are actually large Rubbermade containers, called “ActionPackers”, which are about the size of a large suitcase and have lock-able lids.   Michael read about them somewhere and decided that they sounded like the right thing to move our stuff in, but no-where in Vegas seemed to them.  (We’ve been visiting Michael’s mom there.)  While we were on our 8,000-mile Road Trip across the USA and Canada, Michael found an ACE Hardware in Denver who carried them.  We already had a full car, but I found a way to fit them in the back seat by playing Tetris with our stuff.

And now we’re back in Vegas, trying to fit everything into our bags.  We’ve got kitchen things, clothes, bathroom supplies (cold medicines, etc.), and a few classroom/teaching supplies (this was the hardest thing to decide on – which books are “best” when you use more than 20 on a regular basis?).   Plus, every bag has to weigh fewer than 50 pounds, which also limits what we pack.  Every bag over the first four (we’re allowed two free bags each) will cost us (actually the school as part of our shipping allowance) $200 each – so we’d better really want whatever it is we’re packing!  Everything else is staying in the storage unit we rented in Vegas, for us to decide on again later (when we move wherever we’re going next).  Also in the storage unit is our car.  Michael's mom is helping to take care of things while we're gone and will go and take it for a spin every month or so.  We got a 10x25-foot bin, which gave us room to put a bunch of boxes in the back.

We did a midnight run to Walmart (yes, there’s a 24-hour store here) to pick up luggage locks for the ActionPackers… only to find that the locks are very small and don’t hold the lid on!  Ha ha… So, we had to put on two locks to keep the lid on… which means we now don’t have enough locks and will need to go back to Walmart on the way to the airport tomorrow.  Sigh.
I love the adventure, but I hate moving.

Update for the past three weeks

It has been an eventful past three weeks.  Here are a few things we've been up to since the last time I updated our blog:

1. Sadly, we left the East Bay on June 30th, I driving the U-Haul and Brooke driving our car behind me.  We had breakfast at our favorite Cole Coffee in Rockridge in Oakland and then we got on the freeway and left town (for now).  I say, "for now," because I don't like to think it will be the last time I am there -- I'm sure it won't.  Will we live there again, I'm not sure.  The idea that you do something "once in a lifetime" doesn't sit well with us.  I don't really like that expression.  We had a great time in the Bay Area, but now it's time for other adventures and new chapters in our lives.  We'll definitely be back to visit our friends and will once again be sitting at Cole Coffee (if we can get a seat) drinking our favorite dark elixir.
   
2. We put our belongings into storage in Las Vegas.  Those things we decided to keep are boxed up and will be there for us when we decide what to do with them -- maybe ship them to some other location where we'll be living.  For now, though, they're not coming with us to Kazakhstan.  Our car is one of the things that will go in the storage bin (and take up the most space).  My mom will drive it now and then for us to keep it in working order, but we figured it would be cheaper to store it than to rent a car for the summer when we come back next year.
   
3. We visited Brooke's family in Salt Lake City for the 4th of July.  That was great.  Family, fireworks, barbecue, and just being able to catch up.
   
4. We went for two nights to Flagstaff to meet up with Brooke's uncle, aunt, and kids from Phoenix and Brooke's aunt, uncle, and cousins from Salt Lake.  They rented a cabin and we had a great time playing together in the woods (my introduction to motorsports!) and cooking and eating...before we had to leave to...
   
5. Attend a funeral in Southern California.  Actually, it was a double funeral for my Uncle Steve who passed away in May and my Grandma who passed away in June.  It was a nice time to reflect on how much these people meant to our family and to celebrate the memories that we had with them.
   
6. Take off across the United States and Canada on a ROAD TRIP!  Brooke and I really enjoy traveling together, obviously.  Last year, when we realized that we would probably be living overseas again, we decided that we needed to take a road trip across the US and Canada.  With so many places to go, we decided that it would be pretty cool to see some areas of the US we haven't been to yet.

• After the funeral we went back to Las Vegas for a couple of days.
• Then we set off up the I-15 through Nevada, Arizona, and Utah to the I-70 to Colorado.  This route is so beautiful.  The rocks and canyons are all different shades of orange and red.  It's definitely easy to stay alert.  In the middle of nowhere, we rescued a stranded motorist in Utah who ran out of gas and whose radiator was leaking all over the place.  We stayed the first night in Fruita, Colorado.
• The next day we continued the next day into the Rockies.  Amazing mountains!  The route passes famous ski resorts like Vail and Breckenridge and twists through narrow canyons.  We went to Rocky Mountain National Park and ended the day in Greeley, Colorado where we visited some of my former students whose parents moved their families to find work in the meatpacking business there.
• We continued on through Wyoming, Nebraska, and into South Dakota.
• The next day we saw the Crazy Horse Memorial and then went to Mount Rushmore (impressive).  We really enjoyed the rolling, mossy green hills of this area.  We continued after Mount Rushmore to Badlands National Park and then stopped in Murdo, only because we were tired.
• We continued on through South Dakota, into Minnesota, and then down into Iowa for the heck of it, and back up to Minnesota.  The corn fields were beautiful.  We entered Wisconsin and stayed for the night in Thorp.
• We both thought the farms of Wisconsin -- beautiful red barns, silos, cows, and lush green fields -- was a highlight of our trip so far.  It reminds me a lot of the polder in Flanders, which I love.  We continued on up into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  I was surprised at how dense the forest is!  We had lunch along Lake Michigan and then walked in the water in Lake Superior.  Now I'm writing from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan just across from Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada where we'll continue our trip tomorrow.

That's a lot of stuff.  We'll be one the road for a couple more weeks visiting family and friends along the way before we head back to Las Vegas and then leave to Kazakhstan.

Packing & Purging

Brooke and I have spent the day packing up our little cottage.  The living room at the moment looks like something out of the TLC TV show Hoarders.  There's stuff everywhere, but it's been productive.  We've been going through old school stuff (from Schwäbisch Gmünd, Melbourne, and SFSU) and throwing lots of stuff away.  We did what we thought might be impossible and have gotten rid of a lot of books.  (We love our books.)  We have a pile that we're going to send to Amazon in exchange for Amazon credit and a ton of others that we're going to take to Half Price Books in Berkeley and hopefully get some money for.  I've never sold books to them so I have no idea what we'll get.

Basically, our belongings are going into one of four categories:

1. Stuff worth taking with us to Kazakhstan (clothing, any books we want to use to teach with, special kitchen stuff).  If it's going to Kazakhstan, it will go as luggage with us on the airplane.
2. Stuff we're putting into storage for next year when we come back or stuff we might want to ship to a future assignment.
3. Stuff we're donating (mainly clothing and books for our schools).
4. Stuff we're selling.

Fortunately the furniture is all sold to the future tenants, all except for our beds which we're giving to our niece and nephew in Las Vegas.  We're very happy not to have to play Tetris with the sofa and table in the back of a U-Haul.  Actually, I'm sure Brooke would have a bit of fun with that.  We went to Target today and bought some plastic bins for packing books.  She was pretty proud of herself when she found just the right sized books to fit into the gaps.  The downside: the boxes are often pretty heavy.

There's still a lot more to do and it would be great not to have to pull and all-nighter the night before we move like we usually do.  Gotta reserve the U-Haul.

Another few steps closer

We're getting another step closer to moving to Казахстан (Kazakhstan).  I filled out our visa applications and sent them to the Embassy in Washington, DC today.  It's the first time I've needed a "letter of invitation" to apply for a visa -- a remnant from Soviet times.

Aside from that, I was up in the attic today pulling down our boxes so that we can start packing things up.  Brooke has already started.  We're lucky that the new renters of our cottage have bought most of our furniture so that we won't have to move it.  One of Brooke's colleagues bought our TV cabinet today so the TV is sitting on some boxes.  There is a lot of stuff in here and we're going to have to figure out what exactly we want to take with us to Kazakhstan and what will be put into storage for later.  We'll have a fully-furnished apartment provided as part of our contract in Almaty.  Our school has advised us to bring anything we want as luggage rather than shipping it due to issues with customs in Kazakhstan; the school is providing us an allowance for excess baggage.

Emotionally, it's a tough time.  My uncle passed away last month and my Grandma just last week.  Our family is having memorials for them in a couple of weeks and it has been a tough time for all of them.  We're also coming off the high of postsession, a time of year where we teach a group of students an all-day, three-week long art or PE class.  Brooke was teaching a food and culture class.  My class is bicycling and boating (kayaking, crew, and dragonboating).  I've taught that class for three years now and this year was the best: great co-teachers, students, and activities. It was good to end on a high like that, but it's really hard to say goodbye.  We love our schools in Oakland, colleagues, students, and where we live in Berkeley.  We're excited though for the opportunities that we'll have overseas and the chance to learn a new culture, language, and to teach new subjects.  I hope our friends and family will take us up on the offer to visit us at our new home in Central Asia.