joseph in kazakhstan - josephinkazakhstan

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3/29/2009 9:30:55 PM - 002062448622
only like 4 more months till I see you!!!

2/26/2009 4:41:07 PM - 002048372701
Hey brother i'm praying for you! love and miss you

12/19/2008 7:10:21 PM - 002041426033

I am so glad that you are able to share your adventure with your friends and family. We are really proud of you!

Love, Aunt Debbie

12/19/2008 1:09:54 AM - 002048372701
Wow these are some amazing pictures Jos.  Good to see you are doing well and it's nice to read about what is going on.  Love you Brother

12/6/2008 5:27:11 AM - 002044677029

You are amazing!  The pictures are great!  Thanks!  Love, Mom

p.s.  We all miss your face,

especially when we say grace.  :)

11/25/2008 4:45:46 AM - 002042815014
JOSEPHINA!! i MISS YOU!!! do you miss me? i just looked at all your pictures they are cool:) are you learning a lot there? america isnt the same w/out i pray for your heart today and that it is well, and yes, if i see cindy i will tell her to get you 10,000 B.C. for xmas, and yes, i do own it, YOU got it for me for my birthday haha. hope you know you are loved! xoxoxo NIKKI

11/14/2008 7:30:27 PM - 002040306780
P.S. you look really good...seriously you look hot.

11/14/2008 7:29:44 PM - 002040306780
Joseph!!!  I miss you so much.  Your pictures are neat and I'm glad to hear you like your job so far.  I'll write you a longer email later.  Right now I'm poopypants cause I'm cutting a lot of weight, but I miss you and love you a lot.

11/14/2008 1:46:13 PM - 002040301390
Hi!!  I love your pictures - they are so fun and beautiful! 
Can't wait to see ones from Shymkent. 
 

So it’s only about eight months before I finish my Peace Corps service. I can’t believe it, but I already need to start thinking about wrapping up my projects. I just started what will likely be my last major project.

 

I’m calling this project the Young Men’s Leadership Development Group. The goals of this group will be create a space for honest and open discussion about men’s issues (gender roles, what it means to “be a man”, violence, love and relationships, etc…), gender, and human rights, to develop practical leadership and life skills, and to develop a module on how to work with young men in Kazakhstan about gender. This initial group will meet for three months, and it consists of some of my best English students. They will work with me towards the end of the three months to create this module. That way I have plenty of insight and opinions on what is effective from young Kazakh men themselves. Hopefully, I’ll be able to distribute this module to future volunteers and teachers around the country.

 

Anyway, I’ll update how this is coming along in the next couple weeks. In the meantime, thanks to everyone who has been praying and thinking about my friend Jamie. She continues to make a little bit of progress everyday. It’s harder than I can say to stay here and continue my work so far away, but I’m encouraged by her improvements and try to send her a note (through her family and friends) every few days J. 

So, as some of you may have heard, one of my best friends, Jamie, has been in a very bad car accident. She was on her way home (about a six hour drive from Shymkent) from my apartment, when the weather started getting really bad. Not to mention, people here are not very good drivers.

So I am aware that I am a terrible blogger. Nevertheless, I will try again to be better.

So it's summer in Kazakhstan and quite a bit has changed over the last three months. For starters, I have moved out of my host family and into my own apartment. I didn't end up having to move very far because a one room (plus bathroom and kitchen) apartment opened up on the first floor of my building. It had a lot of cleaning and repairs to do, but I'm done with most of it and I've started to settle in. In particular, it's been really nice being able to cook for myself. I've been cooking a lot of my favorite foods (chili, chicken alfredo, etc...) and also been trying a lot of new recipes. I make a mean scone these days.

 

Not much has changed with my work situation, except that I've also started helping teach English a few hours a week at a local English center. It's not something I originally wanted to, but it keeps me busy and its nice to regularly see something tangible as a result of my work. My job is mainly to visit the different classes and do speaking exercises. We play vocabulary games, tongue twisters, talk about English idioms, etc... Or with the more advanced students we just talk. It's been fun and I've met a lot of people through it. It's cool to be walking through town and always run into people that know me. I've even worked out with a couple students before.

 

Another exciting update is that I took my first vacation since last August. From June 26-July 9 I went to Paris. I met my mom and sister, Sarah, there for the first nine days and hung out with my friend from Cornell, Becky, the last bit. Becky has been teaching English in France for the past year. It was a great break and reenergizer to see my family and friend, but a little hard to come back. It's weird how even though I've been gone almost a year, it was after this trip, that I felt the most homesick. Anyway, it was a great trip.

 

Alright that's it for now. In the meantime I will be staying and working in Shymkent for the rest of the summer and trying to stay cool in the constant 100+ degree weather :)

 

 

Wow. It has been ages since I posted last. I didn’t realize it has been that long, but I suppose that’s a good thing because it means time is going by fast. Anyway, here’s an update.

 

As far as work goes I have spent most of the past couple months translating documents, and helping to edit and write grants. Most of Sana Sezim’s (the organization I work with) grants are from international donors, so they need to be written in English. This month I am also going to start working a lot more with our volunteer club. Right now they only meet when we have specific projects for them to work on (the last was on International Volunteer Day in December), but we are going to meet tomorrow to discuss having monthly meetings. I would also like to help the volunteers design and implement their own small actions. For example, like putting on skits on HIV/AIDS, human trafficking, etc… at schools.

 

My English clubs are going really well. We have pretty strong, regular attendance. Yesterday, we talked about current events. I started the discussion by bringing up the G20 Summit in . This led them to start talking about ’s development and whether or not it was heading in the right direction, why, what is needed, etc… Some people got really fired up. It was awesome.

 

As far as Shymkent and in general, things are going pretty well at the moment. I just got back from about two weeks of Peace Corps seminars and traveling where I got to spend a lot of time with the other volunteers I hadn’t seen in four months. It was exhausting, but really nice. The weather in Shymkent is really nice right now, which also makes things pleasant. I am moving out into my own apartment in May, which I am really looking forward to. Also, I am meeting my Mom and sister Sarah in on vacation in June for two weeks! All in all, I think the next few months are going to fly by (and then in August it will be 120 degrees in Shymkent…).

 

Alright promise to be better about posting J. Keep tuned in because in the next few days I will post pictures and an explanation of “kokpar” a national Kazakh game (think polo except the ball is a decapitated carcass of a goat… seriously).

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a great holiday and that you all are settling into 2009. I had a small celebration for the New Year with a couple other Peace Corps volunteers in the Shymkent area. I made chili, so hung out and ate and threw back a couple beers. Then around 11 we walked out to the square, where the city’s big celebration was supposed to happen.

 

In the square was a big Christmas (or according to the Kazakhs New Year’s) tree, festival-type rides, and a stage with various performances. And naturally there were stands with food and drink being sold. My favorite stands were the ones that were selling bottles of vodka and fireworks. I mean obviously those two go together (???)… As a result, when the clock struck midnight I thought I was in a war zone. There were bottle rockets, roman candles, and other types of fireworks going off everywhere (and not necessary up). It was pretty funny, but also a little scary… Fortunately, we all made it out alive and have video to show for it. Oh, also I saw people doing sparklers inside their car. Good times.

Merry Christmas everyone! I wish I could be back at home celebrating with everyone! I will be having a little celebration of my own tonight with Britt and Vicente, but unfortunately the Soviets weren’t huge fans of Christmas, so it’s not celebrated here. So I’m currently at work… It’s not so bad though. My coworkers gave me a card and a Santa candle and my host mom gave me a little globe for my desk. She also made me a special Russian dish… sardines and boiled egg on bread. Yum.

 

Anyway, I hope everyone has a great holiday! And for my Christmas gift to you all I am finally putting up some pictures of Shymkent! The pictures are of my office and my office Thanksgiving lunch.

One thing that I love about Shymkent is that I have the opportunity to work out here. During Peace Corps Training I went running about three times and that was it. Now there’s no way that I can run in Shymkent (the smog here is unbelievable and I’m pretty sure poisonous…); however, I can swim. In the center of town there is an old, outdoor, Soviet, Olympic-sized pool. Now you might be wondering how Joseph can swim outdoors in the winter. Well, that’s because someone thinks that, regardless of the fact that sometimes I am the only person swimming, it is worth it to heat this eight-lane, fifty-meter pool with a diving well… Seriously. Anyway, despite the fact that heating this pool is about one of the most cost-inefficient things I have ever heard of, it works out for me (especially since its only like $1.50 each time). Since I have been in Shymkent I have been able to swim three times a week for about an hour. I go by distance, so the first week I swam 1500 meters (sad… I know) and have been moving up by 100 meters each week. I’m going to try to get to a place where I’m swimming about 3500 meters each time I swim.

 

Another fun fact about my swimming ordeal is that in order to get into the pool outside you go through the locker room, jump into a 10x10 little pool, and then swim underneath a wall to the outside. Also, there are hot showers there. And not like a trickle of warm water like in my apartment where I have to bend down underneath the faucet and splash water on myself. Like really hot showers with actual water pressure. That alone is enough to get me to work out regularly. I don’t even bother trying to take a shower at home anymore. Anyway, so the next time all of you back in America see me I promise to be svelte.

Well I hope everyone back at home had a great Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, Thanksgiving isn’t a big holiday in Kazakhstan… but I did have my share of festivities. For example, the Friday after (my co-workers pointed out that it was still Thursday in the ) my co-workers through a Thanksgiving lunch. We had chicken (they don’t generally have turkey here), mashed potatoes, corn, and various other more Kazakh dishes. Also, on Thursday night my host mother bought me pumpkin camca (Camca is kind of like a croissant, with various fillings. They’re also like 25 cents and delicious, so I eat them all the time) because I had told her we eat pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. It was really nice.

 

The real Thanksgiving festivities were on Saturday night. All the volunteers from my region came into Shymkent for the night. One guy, Scott, who lives three hours south of Shymkent actually found a turkey farm and brought the turkey to Shymkent by train. So we had turkey, mashed potatoes, homemade corn bread, and I made a real salad (like one with lettuce and olive oil… they don’t really do that here). It was heavenly. Britt also bought a legitimate bottle of wine. They make wine in this part of the world but it is super sweet and just tastes like bad juice. It was a Casillero del Diablo Malbec from . Delicious. Unfortunately, good wine here costs an arm and a leg and we are on a Peace Corps budget, so there was only one bottle and about 12 people, but I got some of it. At note to some of my wine pals back home, like Mom, Chelsie, Vijay, Pete, , etc… I’m looking forward to cracking open a good bottle when I get home. Anyway, later on we had a dance party to the new Britney Spears cd. Pete was kind enough to send me it through email after he got an early release of it. Then we all chatted until like three in the morning.

 

When we woke up, we made a big breakfast and hung out for awhile longer until people had to head back to their sites. It was a great time to get to know the people I live around and will be spending time with the next two years. I’m really a big fan of everyone and can’t wait to plan projects that include them and to take part in other people’s projects. I’m also looking forward to our next big get together! For now I’m getting through being away from home during the Christmas season (which people also don’t celebrate here – New Year’s is their big holiday) by listening to Christmas music at work… good times.

 

I had my first first-hand experience of the work that my organization does. Last weekend I was called into work. A woman had come because she needed help finding somewhere for her and her two young children to stay. She was in an abusive relationship and the man she had been living with was no longer giving her or her children money for food. She ended up leaving him and found herself at Sana Sezim. Unfortunately, there really aren’t women’s shelters like in the where women can go with their children if they need to. Shakhnoza, one of the women that I work with, was able to call a couple of children’s homes and one said that they could take the seven year old girl until the woman was able to find a more permanent home.

 

While all this is taking place (I think I was called in just so there was more than one person from Sana Sezim there) I decided to try and entertain this little girl. We go have tea in the kitchen and start chatting. We drew pictures and then she told me the English that she knows and taught me some Uzbek phrases. Anyway, after about an hour her mom comes in and explains to her that she needs to go to the children’s home for the weekend so that she can figure things out. She was going to come into our office on Monday morning so that she could talk to our staff and figure things out. I don’t think I can describe how heartbreaking this moment was. The mother was crying and the little girl was saying “Don’t cry mom.” Then the little girl and I gave each other pictures that we had drawn and they left.

 

I saw the mother in our office on Monday morning. I am not sure of the details about what’s going on with her and her daughter, but I am proud that I get to work with an organization that does this kind of work, to help these marginalized people.

 

So now I’m at my permanent site in Shymkent and a quick word about my living situation.  Peace Corps requires that volunteers live with a host family for nine months.  The purpose is to help us learn the language, assimilate into the culture, blah blah blah…  My first three months were really difficult.  I’m not sure if it was because I was getting used to living in someone else’s home or that my host sister screamed almost 24-7.  Anyway, things appear to be looking up here in Shymkent. 

 

I live in very small apartment a short walk from the center of Shymkent (also very conveniently located in the same building as my work…).  There are two rooms, at kitchen, and bathroom.  The apartment is really old, but cozy.  There is no heat, but we have space heaters which are sufficient.  Peace Corps requires that I have my own room, so I sleep in one room and the family I live with sleeps in the other.  

 

My host family consists of a woman in her mid-forties, named Maria, and her 20 year-old son, Volodya.  There are really great.  They are very nice and very gracious with my limited Russian.  Maria is a music teacher at a local elementary school.  She plays the piano and has played a few songs for me.  The kitchen is really small, so we all eat at different times, but she always sits and chats with me while I eat and drink tea.  Volodya is studying something to do with computers and also works somewhere with computers.  He’s real nice and sometimes we have late night tea and chat.  

 

Since there are only two rooms I tend to keep to my room.  I leave the door open while I read or watch TV on my computer, just in case someone wants to chat or have tea.  Overall things are good.  I get the downtime that I need, but my host family makes a great effort to help me with my Russian and to include me.  I’ll post some pictures of Maria and Volodya and the apartment soon!

Welcome to my new blog!  For those of you who don’t know, I have spent the past three months in Peace Corps Training in (about an hour and a half outside of Almaty).  It consisted of four hours of Russian a day and afternoons of other technical trainings (how to write grants, etc…).  During this time I also lived with a host family.  All the pictures posted so far are from training and were taken in the Almaty area.  

 

I have just arrived to my permanent placement in .  Shymkent is located in the south and is the third largest city in (about half a million people).  Here I will be volunteering with an organization called “Sana Sezim”, whose main work is to provide legal and psychological assistance to human trafficking victims and to broaden public awareness of human trafficking.  I will also be teaming up with other Peace Corps volunteers to organize English clubs.  I am living with a host family again.  I will live with them for the next six months and then I will be able to get an apartment on my own.  

 

My first week here has gone by pretty smoothly, which I think sets a good tone for the next two years.  I am not supposed to start any of my own projects for the first three months at site, so I will likely be helping out at Sana Sezim wherever I can, working to improve my Russian, getting myself involved in the English clubs, and getting to know Shymkent.  I am going to begin posting regularly on this site, so tune in every two weeks or so and I’ll try to let you know something new about what I’m up to!