A Recent Update From Dawn

A more recent update from Dawn:

Feb. 2011:

Sooo, it’s been a while. I’m sitting in Kemir restaurant programming numbers into my newest phone (number 3 since I’ve been here) and trying to figure out where the heck to start with this blog. I haven’t written in a year or so and SOOO much has happened. I’m all integrated now and living a normal-ish life here in Kazakhstan. The Kaz 20s have left and the 22s are here. The 23s are going to be here before long and the cycle will start again. I’m struck by how normal everything seems now. I remember how scared I was a year ago. Last year I would walk rather than face the Marshrutka and forget trying to deal with a taxi driver. That seems like a lifetime ago. I can get pretty much wherever I need to now and can go there however I want to. I have great friends here and it makes my head spin to realize that they’ve never even met the American me. They’ve never seen me drive a car or been to a BBQ at my house. I now know how to play the Dombra and speak passable Russian. Shoot, I have to do things like buy phones and supplies and such all the time. -30 seems like a perfectly reasonable temperature now and today it’s -4 and I’ve actually commented to several people how warm it is. LOL! Sometimes, while I’m carrying my groceries the ½ kilometer or so to our apartment, I like to remember how much I hated carrying the groceries from the car into the house. That makes me smile now. I hope that I’m able to keep some of my current mentality when we get back to America. I hope that I don’t start driving to the local convenient store when it’s a 10 minute walk. I hope I don’t load up the back of our car with groceries when a bag or two would get us through the week. I hope I don’t feel like I need to keep the house at 60 degrees in the Summer and 80 in the Winter. I’m amazed at how little they waste here. I remember the very first thing I noticed in Kazakhstan was their lack of trashcans. Usually they’ll have one small (we would say bathroom size) trashcan per household and they usually don’t have to empty it every day.

So, I’ve been staying busy. That’s one really nice thing about being here. I have a decent amount of free time but I also stay busy. Somehow it’s about the perfect balance most of the time. I’m still reading an average of about 1 book a week or so. Right now, I’m reading Shantaram which is throwin’ off my average. It’s a monster of a book, but it’s really excellent. I just finished “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan,” which was also really good. I think I’m up to around 85 or so books since my arrival in Kazakhstan. Some of the highlights from this year: I did camp GLOW this last Summer which was incredible. It may be the highpoint of my time here so far. I gave two benefit concerts in October, one of which was televised here. I’ve done two TV interviews and several interviews for the local papers. We got 9 new volunteers in the Oblast raising our number to 13. They’re all amazing and we’re really lucky to have such a diverse group of volunteers. I’ve been practicing Yoga and working with a group on Sundays called Access which is run by the embassy. It’s a program to teach English to underprivileged kids. I did a camp with them this Summer, it’s a great group. The kids are so motivated to learn and they blow me away with how positive they are about everything. I did several English camps this Summer and attended a Russian language camp. I also went to Rome for a week. That was definitely cool. I took a slew of Greek and Roman history classes when I was in college so to actually see a lot of the places that I’d studied was surreal. The last night I was there, I stayed at a great hostel on the beach so I cut the sight-seeing short and just relaxed with a Mojito on the beach while I ate a plate full of fresh seafood. Heaven on Earth.

We went home for Christmas. Aaron to Texas and I to Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. I got to see a number of people that I’ve missed like crazy and unfortunately missed several people too. It was a crazy couple of weeks and I had a BLAST! It was soooo great to be home, especially for Christmas. Last Christmas was one of the hardest times for me. I had to work on Christmas day and they don’t really celebrate Christmas here and the people that do celebrate it actually celebrate it on the 7th of January. I didn’t realize at the time how difficult it would be to not have anyone acknowledge Christmas when it’s such a big deal in America. We had a nice celebration at a volunteer’s apt in a nearby village, but it definitely wasn’t anywhere close to being the same as being home.

I’ve started cooking quite a bit. I’ve been experimenting with the Peace Corps Kazakhstan cookbook which is AWESOME!!!!! I’ve fixed pumpkin bread several times and a mutton stew that is to die for. It’s kind of fun to do everything from scratch and try to figure out how to use stuff from around the kitchen. I had to pretty much relearn how to cook because there are so many products that you can’t get here and so many appliances and such that we don’t have. The oven doesn’t have any way to monitor or change the temperature and there’s no such thing as a mixer or a microwave. It’s an adventure but somehow I enjoy the challenge of cooking here a lot more than I ever enjoyed it in the states. I think my next experiment may be bagels…

I have couple of clubs that I’ve been running. An English club and a Cooking/Movie club. The English club is through the school and the Cooking/Movie club is at our apartment. There are several girls from my school that come to both and are really interested in both. They’ve been a great encouragement here where 3 times as many activities fail than make it. I’m also teaching about Black History this month. I’m hoping to have a big production at the end of the month where students will do a play over Rosa Parks, Read several essays over black heroes and sing “I’ll Rise” and “Heal the World.” If we can pull it off, I think it’ll be really great.

We’re already making a ton of plans for these next 6 months. They’re going to FLY. My rockin’ awesome dad is coming to visit in May, We have COS conference in June and after we leave Aaron and I are going to go to Turkey and Amsterdam for a couple of weeks and then I’m going to take a backpacking trip with my dad through Europe for several weeks. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. We’ve got a number of holidays, camps, new arrivals and on and on thrown in there at different points. I’ve heard from other volunteers that the first 6 months feels like a year and the last 6 months feels like a week. So far that’s looking like it’s going to be a pretty accurate description.
Well, that’s about it. I’ll sign off for now. Cheers from the other side of the world!



P.S. (Feb 2011):

I’ve found that death is a difficult thing to deal with when you’re so far away from home and family. I found out today that my Uncle Burl just died this week. It was unexpected and although he was older, 70, I fully expected for him to be in America when I got back. I’ve had to deal with several deaths of family members since I’ve been here as I’m sure most volunteers have. A few months ago, my Uncle Sandy died and several months before that, Aaron’s dad died. This is the first time that it was unexpected and I suppose because of that it hit me a lot harder. Thank God I have Aaron here. I can’t imagine what it’s like for volunteers who don’t have anyone they can really turn to when tragedy strikes. I never realized before how much it means to have others around you that are going through the same thing as you are when you are grieving. It’s tough knowing that I won’t be able to go to the funeral and by the time I get back most of the family will be through the hardest part of the grieving period. I knew that there would be a lot of things I would miss when I signed up for Peace Corps and it was a sacrifice that I was willing to make and I’m still glad that I made that decision, but that is little comfort when the tough times come. Or the really happy times, for that matter. I’ve missed babies being born and I’ll miss at least one more before I get back. Friends and family of mine have had tough times and I haven’t been able to be there to comfort them. That’s hard too. It’s interesting to me because in so many ways, very little changes in 2 years. Lots of people are still at the same jobs, schools, hobbies, etc as they were when I left. When I talk to a lot of people they’re doing the same things as the last time I talked to them. One of the first things that really slammed into me when I got here and called home for the first time was that nothing was new back home where my world had been flipped upside down. I guess what I’m trying to express is how strange it is to realize how much has changed in the Year and a half I’ve been here when daily life back home seems so constant. I guess that I can sometimes see the big picture of how life ebbs and flows but usually the process is so slow that you don’t even notice it. I’ve wondered several times what that picture will look like when I get back home and have a closer perspective again. I read an article once that told the reader to make two “to do” lists: One for the following day and one for the next ten years. It said that usually people, if they really try, will finish about 20-50% of the “to do’s” for the next day but if they’re focused will finish their 10 year “to do” list in 4-5 years. The reasoning that the article gave was that people overestimate what they can do in short periods of time but underestimate what they can do with long periods. I don’t know if this is true for everyone, but I know that for me the assessment is absolutely correct. I look over the last Year and a half and look forward to the next 6 months and can’t help but wonder what they have in store. I know the time will fly, but I also know that during times like these, I’m ready to be home with my family again.

“The reason that death sticks so closely to life isn’t biological necessity, it’s envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it.” ~Yann Martel, Life of Pi