Monday, March 2, 2009

I thawed I saw the snow melt...

Yes indeed, this city is beginning to fill with mud! I think it will not be as pretty as the snow, but I remain unrealistically hopeful. The lack of snow, on the other hand, should bring about the return of green things, which are also pretty.

As mentioned in my last post, I was successful in moving my audiobooks to their own lonely little corner of my WinAmp library where they are free to beg and plead in vain to return to the group. I also have an audiobook in Russian, which is neat, though I can't yet understand much of anything.

My Russian is proceeding apace. I passed 1000 cards last week, and I am shooting for 250 per week, or about 35 per day. It takes about 2 hours to fully memorize that number, but I have lots of time now since I can't find brown sugar.

Brown sugar, you ask? What an interesting and well-placed tangent, you say! Yes, I am currently in fervent pursuit of brown sugar. I think it was sold in the Raxmet supermarket, but that supermarket is closed for renovation (the locals mutter darkly that they closed to raise all the prices because of the devaluation of the tenge) until the end of March. My usual supermarket doesn't have it and I have been unsuccessful in locating anything looking like brown sugar in the bazaars (unlike the flayed and decapitated goat that I kept passing). I know I can find it in Ramstore, but Ramstore is in Almaty, and I won't be there for a while. I seem to recall that Pyramid sells specialty foods, so today or tomorrow I hope to venture in search of this store somewhere in the vicinity of the train station.

And now we come to the highlight of this post!

Last week was Maslenitza, which is a holiday of some sort that involves agriculture and blini, which are halfway between crepes and pancakes, and are quite delicious. On the Thursday, my school called me in earlier than usual so that I could be prepared to give a speech to the Kazakstanian Minister of Education, who was to visit that day.

After I arrived, I found the school eagerly preparing itself for their distinguished guest. In particular, I saw about two dozen students wearing blue scarves standing at four-meter intervals all along the halls of the school. They had been standing there for several hours, and would stand there for several hours more, until the guest left. These were the atlichniki, the excellent students at the top of their classes and I was told that it was a great honor for them to stand like little unarmed sentries and represent their school. There were also groups of students in classes which had been sent into a holding pattern since the minister was scheduled to visit them, but ended up about two hours late.

Initially I was to give my speech in the main hall, but at some point they decided, presumably since my speech was to be in English and almost noone of the hundred or so faculty and students would therefore be able to understand it, they decided to move me to the Language Center of the school to be their distinguished American volunteer. I bounced around a bit then from class to class before ending up in a Kazakh language Information Technology class. I think it was an IT class, since they had an interactive board and the highest proportion of males that I have seen in a class here, though it might just have been a Kazak classroom fortunate enough to have one of the school's boards.

With suppressed excitement the word passed quickly around the school that the minister had arrived and was beginning his whirlwind tour of the school. Not long after, he stepped into the classroom I occupied. He was accompanied by a whole cluster of aides, sycophants, school officials and a pair of cameramen who captured his every move for posterity. He went to the front of the room and was suitably impressed by the slideshow on the interactive board, delivered a short speech that mentioned interactive, an English cognate in most languages I expect, and began to leave the room.

At this point someone mentioned that an American PCV was in the back and everyone gave a little gasp. The cameramen almost tripped over themselves in order to get a good angle for the the handshake between the minister and myself, and everyone was very impressed by my Kazakh greeting. The minister then said something in English as he left.

One of my teachers, who was guiding me to and fro during this experience then led me across the hall into the English classroom I had been in earlier. I still don't know why we went in, but while we were there the minister had finished his little ditty on a dombra (Kazkh national instrument like a 2-stringed banjo) and entered this room, somewhat surprised to see me again, but over his surprise at hearing me greet him in Kazakh. He poked the student's books a little, and spoke some words before heading out to make his way to the auditorium where he delivered a longer speech.

My guide and I were by that point behind him and since his entourage took up the whole hallway, and in any case it would have been a little implite to sidle past the rolling cameras, we could no longer make it to the auditorium before him. My guide and my counterpart decided that it would be inappropriate to enter after he began speaking, so we hovered just outside the doors for a short time before deciding that it would also be inappropriate to be caught hovering outside the doors when he made his whirlwind exit, so they dispersed and sent me home, having been for the second time featured on a Kazkhstanian television camera, and having shaken the hand of a high government official.

But it gets better!

Earlier that day I had, in passing, been told by one of my teachers that she and a number of her students would be going to a street fair the next day (Friday) to represent the school on the arrival of President Nazerbaev, who was scheduled to arrive and address the populace!

Needless to say, I immediately decided that I too would take this opportunity to gaze upon the weathered and grave countenance of the man who had been leading Kazakstan since five years before it gained its independance from the Soviet Union. Other volunteers in the area shared my view that this would be the right thing to do, although we were aware that Nazerbaev had been scheduled to arrive last year also, but had not done so.

Nevertheless, we showed up at 11, ready to wave our little Kazak flags as Naserbaev approached and passed before the stage full of colorfully dressed and probably very cold traditional Kazak dancers, many of whom appeared to be of Russian derivation. I unfortunately had a class at 12, but was still able to get back in time for the announcement of the president's approach. Thronged by a nearly silent crowd with the occasional waving flag, he walked up the road flanked by a dozen policemen, and gave some sort of address or interview or review of something into a bank of cameras. Then he finally moved up onto the stage and began to speak. I didn't understand a single word, but I am told it was less than inspiring oratory.

He seemed pretty short and unemotive. He was certainly very staid, and looked much older than 55, which I think is his actual age. The crowd was also very quite and sedate, and was much smaller than I had expected, with only a few hundred, maybe a thousand people. They also put the fair together very quickly, and took it all down in less than two hours.

My next post I hope to add a few pictures, but right now my camera batteries are dead. I hope you are all well, and your lives are filled with blini-like goodness.