Nauryz

Today is Nauryz, the Kazakh new year and one of the biggest holidays for the Kazakh people. This morning I went to the square, where they had a big parade and the Mongolian president made an appearance. I thought it was cool that the president came out to Olgii for Nauryz until I learned that there are elections coming up in May and more than likely his reason for showing up was purely political. Anyways, the parade and festivities were pretty cool and fun to watch. I've never seen so many people in one area in Olgii at the same time. Olgii has roughly 30,000 people and there were thousands today in the parade and watching the parade. There were some gers set up in the square and I guess they were selling tea and food and maybe some other things, I didn't check any of them out. The parade consisted of a number of different groups of people, everything from the students and staff of each school to petrol station workers dressed in matching uniforms to the eagle hunters riding horses and making their eagles flap their wings. It was pretty cool and I took some good pictures.

After the parade is over, the big thing to do on Nauryz is to go visit friends and family all over town to eat a special holiday soup, drink tea, and socialize. I went home for a little bit to get some water and sit down for a sec before heading out to visit some people. My supervisor, the director of the children's center, called me and I got the impression he wanted me to come to his house. I walked to the other side of town and on the way ran into four of my students(Talgat, Bauka, Bata, and Altinbek...four of my students who I teach and play football with on Tuesdays and Thursdays), who let me know they wanted me to come to one of their homes, or so I thought. They walked with me to my supervisor's home and I discovered that nobody was there...so I went with my students to one of their houses a few blocks away. While I had originally thought I was just going with all four students to Altinbek's house to eat and drink tea, I ended up first going to Bata's house, then to Altinbek's house, then to Talgat's house and finally to Bauka's house, eating lots of meat and snacks, drinking a lots of tea and soup at each house. I met many of my student's family members and got to kinda see how they live, which was interesting. On my journey all over Olgii to these four houses I'm pretty sure I saw more of Olgii in two hours than I have in 8 months. I also learned some new roads, alleys, paths, and shortcuts which could prove to be helpful in the future.

After leaving my students I headed to the square to meet my friends Linda and Rike(the German girls) and my friend Agii(English teacher I'm working on projects with). Agii invited us to his home for soup and tea, he picked us up in his jeep and we spent a couple hours talking with him, his mother and two of his friends. It was a pretty fun afternoon. After leaving Agii's the girls went to meet with another friend and I went to meet one of my other students, Gulim, a girl who I am helping work towards studying in the U.S. I went to her home and had more tea and soup, talked with her for a while and then headed home, tired and full of soup and tea. Overall it was a really fun and interesting day. Like I said I took a lot of good pictures and I should have some of them up later tonight. I will probably make a new album on facebook and put up a link to the album asap. Hope all is well back home.

Updates on project work to come sometime soon.

Kazakh Language/ Қазақ тілін

The Kazakh language...spoken by the majority of the citizens of Olgii. A large portion of the population speaks Mongolian, many speak Russian, some speak Turkish, and a surprising number of fluent or close to fluent English speakers. The majority of the English speakers are either English teachers, summer tour guides, or both. I have done a pretty good job of locating and befriending a number of Kazakhs who speak English which is good and bad. It's great because I am able to make friends, make some connections, and it's my best bet when trying to get projects started. It's bad because it never really gives me an opportunity to practice my language skills. When I am teaching, I mostly teach English so I only use basic Kazakh phrases if I need to explain certain things and I will occasionally refer to my dictionary which only has a few hundred words and sometimes doesn't have the correct word. I have a tutor who I used to meet with two days a week, she's the second tutor I've had since I arrived in Olgii. Now she has a busier schedule so I'm only going once a week. I learn a lot of vocabulary and basic, simple phrases and I'm attempting to learn the grammar..which maybe the most difficult thing I've ever tried to understand.

My Kazakh tutor, who speaks fluent English (her 4th language after Kazakh, Mongolian, and Russian) has even said that Kazakh grammar is more difficult than English grammar. I have always heard about how English is a rough language for some people to learn because there are so many things that don't make sense and so many words that mean many different things. This is definitely the case with Kazakh. Every time I think I have a grammar concept down, I will put together a sentence only to be told by my tutor that I had a word ending incorrect, haha. It's pretty frustrating and sometimes I just wonder if I'm one of those people who can't learn languages. That being said I am not giving up just yet. :)


I understand Kazakh much better than I do Mongolian and I have a good grasp on basic everyday phrases and words but outside of that, my language is pretty limited. I know how to bargain at the market, I have no problems buying things and I get around pretty easily for the most part. I'm sticking with the tutoring and trying to study more often because I know that a better grasp on the language will make the second year of my time here much easier. One thing that is a little discouraging, and I'm sure some volunteers in the rest of Mongolia can understand this, is that Kazakh (or Mongolian) isn't a language that is really spoken outside of this area. Sure Kazakh is spoken in western Mongolia, Kazakhstan, small parts of Russia and China, but it's definitely not an international or 'in demand' language like Arabic, Farsi, Russian, Mandarin, or English(luckily I've got decent grasp on this one). Because of this I've considered sticking with Kazakh for the rest of this year and then possibly getting a Russian tutor and starting to learn Russian my second year. I know there are a couple other volunteers that chose to get tutoring in Russian instead of Mongolian. The languages are similar and I already understand the cyrillic alphabet. I don't know for sure that I will do this but it's an option I'm thinking about.


Anyways, I got done with my Kazakh lesson a couple hours ago and just thought I'd make a blog post about it.

Hair Blog

I haven't had a haircut since the first week of July 2008...my hair is getting pretty ridiculous, a few more months of growth and it will be the longest hair I've had. Any suggestions? I'm thinking maybe dreadlocks, haha.

Spring tease...insane winds

Well last week it was nice enough for me to go walking in the mornings and it wasn't too cold to be outside for a few hours at a time so I figured spring was pretty much here. Fast forward to this week, temps have dropped..the wind is blowing like crazy and I guess the rest of Mongolia is getting storms that are preventing any cross country travel. You think after living in Colorado for so long I'd have learned my lesson about expecting nice spring weather too early, haha.

The wind has been crazy tonight, it's so loud outside my window and my electricity has gone off twice in the past hour. Apparently March and April are the windiest months in Olgii. Hopefully it doesn't last all of April. Pray that I don't get blown away

Above, a few pics from around Olgii: First two pics are outside of my apartment, third pic is my apartment building and entrance, last pic is the Olgii theater.

An example of Kazakh music

This is a pretty popular Kazakh song, found the video on youtube a while back. This is something you can hear at any big celebration or party or even playing in a car/taxi driving down the road. I really enjoy this song and I love the dancing. Most of the people in Olgii can do this type of dancing.
Enjoy :)

Trying a new layout...experimenting a little

Hey so I as you can probably tell my page changed a little bit. I am trying something a little different, seeing what kinds of templates are available on blogger.

Anyways, not much new to report right now. I had a couple meetings last week. I met with a guy named Nurbol who is 23, a college graduate, and interested in practicing his English speaking in prep for the TOEFL exam. He has plans to go to college in Europe so I am going to be helping him work on his conversational English. Also, he's a pretty motivated young man and when my friend Linda told him that I needed some help with some translating, he expressed interest. While my Kazakh language skills are improving, I am far from fluent, so he is going to help me talk to some more locals about working on some of my projects. It should be very helpful so we'll see how it goes.

Also I met with another local English teacher who just started teaching late last year. I helped out with one of her 6th grade classes last week, it was a lot of fun. I am hoping to talk to her, another teacher at her school who I met, and a teacher from Laura's(my sitemate) school about starting life skills clubs and classes in their schools. If I can gather enough support for this project hopefully I will be doing the grant request paperwork started and get the ball rolling before the summer. Another meeting was with a local private English teacher named Agii, he's a really great guy, very nice and very motivated. He teaches English during the school year to students who are interested in lessons outside of what they normally get in school and he also works with travelers and tourists in the summers. Him and I are going to be meeting with the department of education this week to try and organize an English language competition/conference. I will find out the details of this project soon and post them up when I know more.

I am still working out a small problem with my laptop so I haven't been able to upload any new pictures lately. As soon as I get that bug worked out I will upload the pictures I have on my camera and also take some new ones. That's all for now!