Day 17: End of week two
PHEW... It's been quite a while since the last time I made a blog post. where do I start?
The second week of school was pretty miserable. I woke up on Monday feeling a bit sick and as of yet I'm still trying to recuperate. School is going really rough and it doesn't help that I can barely focus with a stuffy nose and tired body! Nevertheless, skipping school is just not an option for this program. This restriction especially applies to me, thanks to the fact that I am currently the worst at Russian in my class. If I want to push myself and make some spectacular progess, I can't let something like the common cold keep me from work.
For the most part, this is how my days for this week went:
6:00AM - Wake up, use the restroom, brush my teeth
6:15AM - Do Homework
7:25AM - Take a cold shower (no hot water, remember?)
7:45AM - Eat breakfast with Accel and (if he is working in the morning) Adilbek
8:00AM - Leave for school
8:45AM - Arrive at school
3:00PM - Eat lunch at Digerman (cafe/restaurant ~5 minutes from the school)
4:30PM - Arrive home, nap, homework
7:30-8:00PM - Dinner with Accel and Adilbek (if he isn't still working)
9:00OPM - Homework
1:00AM - Sleep
Repeat.
Here is a list of things that I did during the week that doesn't involve this mindless cycle of studying! :
- On Sunday, I went to a Kazakh sauna with Accel and Adilbek. Everything was in Kazakh and there were only a few signs that had a Russian translation, so even finding the toilet was quite the adventure!
As with any other sauna, including the one that I went to with my Korean host family, everyone was naked. In this sauna, however, we were given a towel to wear and Adilbek also bought us these little hats for the sauna, so that our ears don't get burnt.
First, you must wash yourself. Then, you can choose from a number of things to do. There is a small pool of cold water, about as deep as I am tall, where you can swim and 'have a splash' or whatever. These kids in swimming trunks kept on diving into the water, so I had trouble keeping my eyes from getting water blasted every few seconds.
About a fourth of the area was dedicated to washing yourself off, meaning that the establishment provided these small tubs that you can fill with water and the back wall had these sort of benches where you could shampoo your hair and scrub your body. Me and Adilbek both forgot to bring bar soap, so we just used our shampoo as a substitute.
Right next to this washing part was a small section with two tables. These were surgeon tables where some people were donating organs for a greater cause. Just kidding. You can pay a small fee (~ $3-6) to have a kazakh man with a large beer belly scrub your body clean, and it looked to be quite rough. Me and Adilbek didn't get this service this time, but Adilbek said that it's pretty good. Sure.
Then there are two smaller sub-rooms in this large space, one is the salt room and the other is the Russian-style sauna.
In the salt room, the floor is cover in, obviously, salt. The smell of salt isn't opressive, but certainly existant and it is supposed to help with clearing your sinuses and healing your lungs or something of that sort. All you really do is just sit in the room and either exist or join in on a conversation with some of the other people in the room. Here's the catch: the conversation is 99% going to be in Russian, so you are not going to know what is being said if you happen to be a tiny asian boy trying learning Russian. Nice!
Right next to the <room of salt> (my house, right?) is the Russian style sauna, where you can literally die from the heat. It was: really hot, and: really humid. If you don't want to burn your arse, you have to sit your slimy, sweaty body on your towel. This room is for those who like to suffer, and there are these cool leaf paddle things with which you can find large Kazakh men beating others. For a small, skinny guy like me, this place is dangerous for the heart and I could fall upon standing up and trying to exit. However, you don't actually feel the full extent of how incredibly hot it is until you actually do stand up and try to get out!
The first and second time me and Adilbek went to this hell room was not bad, and we followed up my pulling these ropes attached to ice-cold water that was vigorating and refresing, however the third time was not as plesant. This third time, we were bearing the heat and I was starting to feel lik it was my time to exit out of the room. Then, this large man throws water into the furnace and it the room of hell becomes 50 shades hotter than before! Me and Adilbek book it out of the room and I feel very so-so. We do the ice bucket challenge thing and then take a shower. During this shower, I feel a bit dizzy and know that it is a combination of what I drank as well as that room, where it seemed like the sun itself was contained in the furnace.
The bottom floor consists of a few rooms: the lobby, the men's locker room where people change cloths, the sauna area where you can wash yourself and suffer, and a small cafeteria where you can have some snacks and have a drink. Prior to the third time of going to the hell room, me and Adilbek ordered some nice, fresh ... camel's milk. To be fair, out of all the fermented milk variants, camel's milk is the most tolerable, it's even maybe tasty once you get used to it! I think that drinking this milk might have been one of the key factors that last Russian sauna room experience not quite so pleasant, other than the large man throwing lava in to the furnace.
After this, me and Adilbek decided to call it quits and we dried ourselfs up and got dressed. Accel was waiting in the lobby for us, watching the football (soccer) game on the television. We had some chicken shashlik (shishkabob) and tea for dinner. We talked about healthcare and education in America versus in Kazakhstan, where an ambulance call can cost you over $1k in America, so some people (me almost being included) would prefer to tough out a rough medical situation rather than seeking the proper medical care to avoid a devastating medical bill. As I was about to take a sip out of my teacup, a fly decides that it wants to die in my teacup, so I can't drink from it. I love it!
- On Tuesday, Assel's mom's younger sister (my aunt) visited along with Assel's older sister. I came home from school to be welcomed by a delicious buffer of plov (fried rice), katka, and some other dishes. My was it delicious! I obliged to have some white wine (my first time tying wine) and when I finished my first glass, they poured me a second glass before I could even decline it. No, I did not get drunk, nor did I get tipsy. No, I am not an alcoholic.
- On Wednesday, groups 3 and 4 went to a museum for an excursion. Groups 1, 2, 5, and 6, on the other hand, went to a park that was very far away from my house to meet some of the language partners. 15 American students and 10 langauge parters. That as the goal, but instead we only got 4 language partners and about 6/7 American students. We introduced ourselves to each other and played charades (called crocodile in russian for some odd reason... I wonder what the drug is called in this case). Returning home on the trollybus (streetcar) took 2 hours, and I just about fell asleep next to this elder Kazakh man, who, due to the fact that the buses just HAVE to be stuffed to the brim 24/7, kept on rubbing his elbows on me. It wasn't the most comfortable situation, but hey, at least I was able to sit insead of having to play a balancing minigame on the way back home! Today was a big achievement for me because I officially got to be on the informal "you" terms with my family! What a great feeling of family bonding, huh?
- On Thursday, we had our first test for the reading class. It was an essay regarding a quote by Natalia Medvedeva: "Emigration is needed, to know yourself and to become more observant of your home". The paper that we were given to write our essays were blank pieces of printer paper, with no lines, because I had accidently selected hard mode and couldn't get back to the menu to change the difficulty settings. I spent quite a while copying down my essay plan from my notebook to the essay paper (this was a required step) and actually writing the essay. Not only did I have to worry about making a logical, meaningful essay with grammatical errors, but I also had to make sure that I was writing in a straight line with optimal handwriting and enough space between each line for the teacher to write her commentary. Work as much as I did, I was not successful in completing my esay by the end of the two hour class period. I was at the end of my final bod paragraph before my conclusion, and I dediced that I was ok with not finishing up the conclusion, because I was already the last one in the class to still be writing the essay. Now isn't that just the knees of the bees?
When I came back home from school, my aunt was home and we ate food and had a small discussion. It's so weird: whenever I am speaking to someone one on one, I can understand just about everything they say, but when I'm listening to two or more people speaking together, I seem to have forgotten Russian. After eating, I rested a bit by listening to music and laying down on my bed. Soon enough, it was time for my aunt to leave and we all (Adilbek, Assel, auntie) drove together to drop her off at home, located on the other end of the city. On the way back, we stopped by the house that Adilbek and his relatives were currently working on building and Adilbek took a warm shower in the temporary shower set up in the back. The source of the water for the shower came from a large barrel sitting on the top of the shower room that was heated natually by the sun. It was already 10:00PM though. Adilbek said it was the water was klasso and warm, so I'll assume that it wasn't chilly.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When they said that this program was going to be an intensive Russian language program, they weren't playing around. Our orientation focused a lot on the safety parts of the program, which mostly included how to keep yourself safe when having fun and you're oot and aboot the city. However, I felt like we were not adequetly prepared to protect ourself from drowning under the work load. I'm making a lot of progress and learning a lot, but because the move from group 5 to group 6 was a HUGE step, and I'm surrounded by faboulous speakers of Russian - most of whom have been learning or speaking Russian for at least 4 years. Of course, I will not give up easily, even when I feel horrible about my level of Russian speaking. By being the worst speaker in my class, I'm granted the unique opportunity to make huge progess and become a triple G (he's some famous wrestler that, apparently, all Americans should know) at speaking Russian.
Now that I know what the work load of classes are like, I think that this format of blog post is the mmost preferabble way of sharing my adventures in Kazakhstan while also not stealing time from my studies. We have classes on Monday from Thursday and Fridays are reserved for excursions or hikes, so I have time to sit down on Fridays or Saturdays to write a weekly report of what happened. In addition, this will ensure that I'm not daily breaking my immersion streak by spending 30 min - 1 hour writing in English!
I'm writing this blog post in a cafe that is almost perfect, save for the fact that there IS NOT INTERNET! HOW CAN YOU CALL YOURSELF A CAFE IF YOU DON'T HAVE INTERNET? EXPLAIN. My parents were also very shocked, because they thought that the cafe, without a doublt, would have internet. It's in a large mall and it more of an upscale cafe, anyway, so it SHOULD have internet, right? WRONG.
The second week of school was pretty miserable. I woke up on Monday feeling a bit sick and as of yet I'm still trying to recuperate. School is going really rough and it doesn't help that I can barely focus with a stuffy nose and tired body! Nevertheless, skipping school is just not an option for this program. This restriction especially applies to me, thanks to the fact that I am currently the worst at Russian in my class. If I want to push myself and make some spectacular progess, I can't let something like the common cold keep me from work.
For the most part, this is how my days for this week went:
6:00AM - Wake up, use the restroom, brush my teeth
6:15AM - Do Homework
7:25AM - Take a cold shower (no hot water, remember?)
7:45AM - Eat breakfast with Accel and (if he is working in the morning) Adilbek
8:00AM - Leave for school
8:45AM - Arrive at school
3:00PM - Eat lunch at Digerman (cafe/restaurant ~5 minutes from the school)
4:30PM - Arrive home, nap, homework
7:30-8:00PM - Dinner with Accel and Adilbek (if he isn't still working)
9:00OPM - Homework
1:00AM - Sleep
Repeat.
Here is a list of things that I did during the week that doesn't involve this mindless cycle of studying! :
- On Sunday, I went to a Kazakh sauna with Accel and Adilbek. Everything was in Kazakh and there were only a few signs that had a Russian translation, so even finding the toilet was quite the adventure!
As with any other sauna, including the one that I went to with my Korean host family, everyone was naked. In this sauna, however, we were given a towel to wear and Adilbek also bought us these little hats for the sauna, so that our ears don't get burnt.
First, you must wash yourself. Then, you can choose from a number of things to do. There is a small pool of cold water, about as deep as I am tall, where you can swim and 'have a splash' or whatever. These kids in swimming trunks kept on diving into the water, so I had trouble keeping my eyes from getting water blasted every few seconds.
About a fourth of the area was dedicated to washing yourself off, meaning that the establishment provided these small tubs that you can fill with water and the back wall had these sort of benches where you could shampoo your hair and scrub your body. Me and Adilbek both forgot to bring bar soap, so we just used our shampoo as a substitute.
Right next to this washing part was a small section with two tables. These were surgeon tables where some people were donating organs for a greater cause. Just kidding. You can pay a small fee (~ $3-6) to have a kazakh man with a large beer belly scrub your body clean, and it looked to be quite rough. Me and Adilbek didn't get this service this time, but Adilbek said that it's pretty good. Sure.
Then there are two smaller sub-rooms in this large space, one is the salt room and the other is the Russian-style sauna.
In the salt room, the floor is cover in, obviously, salt. The smell of salt isn't opressive, but certainly existant and it is supposed to help with clearing your sinuses and healing your lungs or something of that sort. All you really do is just sit in the room and either exist or join in on a conversation with some of the other people in the room. Here's the catch: the conversation is 99% going to be in Russian, so you are not going to know what is being said if you happen to be a tiny asian boy trying learning Russian. Nice!
Right next to the <room of salt> (my house, right?) is the Russian style sauna, where you can literally die from the heat. It was: really hot, and: really humid. If you don't want to burn your arse, you have to sit your slimy, sweaty body on your towel. This room is for those who like to suffer, and there are these cool leaf paddle things with which you can find large Kazakh men beating others. For a small, skinny guy like me, this place is dangerous for the heart and I could fall upon standing up and trying to exit. However, you don't actually feel the full extent of how incredibly hot it is until you actually do stand up and try to get out!
The first and second time me and Adilbek went to this hell room was not bad, and we followed up my pulling these ropes attached to ice-cold water that was vigorating and refresing, however the third time was not as plesant. This third time, we were bearing the heat and I was starting to feel lik it was my time to exit out of the room. Then, this large man throws water into the furnace and it the room of hell becomes 50 shades hotter than before! Me and Adilbek book it out of the room and I feel very so-so. We do the ice bucket challenge thing and then take a shower. During this shower, I feel a bit dizzy and know that it is a combination of what I drank as well as that room, where it seemed like the sun itself was contained in the furnace.
The bottom floor consists of a few rooms: the lobby, the men's locker room where people change cloths, the sauna area where you can wash yourself and suffer, and a small cafeteria where you can have some snacks and have a drink. Prior to the third time of going to the hell room, me and Adilbek ordered some nice, fresh ... camel's milk. To be fair, out of all the fermented milk variants, camel's milk is the most tolerable, it's even maybe tasty once you get used to it! I think that drinking this milk might have been one of the key factors that last Russian sauna room experience not quite so pleasant, other than the large man throwing lava in to the furnace.
After this, me and Adilbek decided to call it quits and we dried ourselfs up and got dressed. Accel was waiting in the lobby for us, watching the football (soccer) game on the television. We had some chicken shashlik (shishkabob) and tea for dinner. We talked about healthcare and education in America versus in Kazakhstan, where an ambulance call can cost you over $1k in America, so some people (me almost being included) would prefer to tough out a rough medical situation rather than seeking the proper medical care to avoid a devastating medical bill. As I was about to take a sip out of my teacup, a fly decides that it wants to die in my teacup, so I can't drink from it. I love it!
- On Tuesday, Assel's mom's younger sister (my aunt) visited along with Assel's older sister. I came home from school to be welcomed by a delicious buffer of plov (fried rice), katka, and some other dishes. My was it delicious! I obliged to have some white wine (my first time tying wine) and when I finished my first glass, they poured me a second glass before I could even decline it. No, I did not get drunk, nor did I get tipsy. No, I am not an alcoholic.
- On Wednesday, groups 3 and 4 went to a museum for an excursion. Groups 1, 2, 5, and 6, on the other hand, went to a park that was very far away from my house to meet some of the language partners. 15 American students and 10 langauge parters. That as the goal, but instead we only got 4 language partners and about 6/7 American students. We introduced ourselves to each other and played charades (called crocodile in russian for some odd reason... I wonder what the drug is called in this case). Returning home on the trollybus (streetcar) took 2 hours, and I just about fell asleep next to this elder Kazakh man, who, due to the fact that the buses just HAVE to be stuffed to the brim 24/7, kept on rubbing his elbows on me. It wasn't the most comfortable situation, but hey, at least I was able to sit insead of having to play a balancing minigame on the way back home! Today was a big achievement for me because I officially got to be on the informal "you" terms with my family! What a great feeling of family bonding, huh?
- On Thursday, we had our first test for the reading class. It was an essay regarding a quote by Natalia Medvedeva: "Emigration is needed, to know yourself and to become more observant of your home". The paper that we were given to write our essays were blank pieces of printer paper, with no lines, because I had accidently selected hard mode and couldn't get back to the menu to change the difficulty settings. I spent quite a while copying down my essay plan from my notebook to the essay paper (this was a required step) and actually writing the essay. Not only did I have to worry about making a logical, meaningful essay with grammatical errors, but I also had to make sure that I was writing in a straight line with optimal handwriting and enough space between each line for the teacher to write her commentary. Work as much as I did, I was not successful in completing my esay by the end of the two hour class period. I was at the end of my final bod paragraph before my conclusion, and I dediced that I was ok with not finishing up the conclusion, because I was already the last one in the class to still be writing the essay. Now isn't that just the knees of the bees?
When I came back home from school, my aunt was home and we ate food and had a small discussion. It's so weird: whenever I am speaking to someone one on one, I can understand just about everything they say, but when I'm listening to two or more people speaking together, I seem to have forgotten Russian. After eating, I rested a bit by listening to music and laying down on my bed. Soon enough, it was time for my aunt to leave and we all (Adilbek, Assel, auntie) drove together to drop her off at home, located on the other end of the city. On the way back, we stopped by the house that Adilbek and his relatives were currently working on building and Adilbek took a warm shower in the temporary shower set up in the back. The source of the water for the shower came from a large barrel sitting on the top of the shower room that was heated natually by the sun. It was already 10:00PM though. Adilbek said it was the water was klasso and warm, so I'll assume that it wasn't chilly.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When they said that this program was going to be an intensive Russian language program, they weren't playing around. Our orientation focused a lot on the safety parts of the program, which mostly included how to keep yourself safe when having fun and you're oot and aboot the city. However, I felt like we were not adequetly prepared to protect ourself from drowning under the work load. I'm making a lot of progress and learning a lot, but because the move from group 5 to group 6 was a HUGE step, and I'm surrounded by faboulous speakers of Russian - most of whom have been learning or speaking Russian for at least 4 years. Of course, I will not give up easily, even when I feel horrible about my level of Russian speaking. By being the worst speaker in my class, I'm granted the unique opportunity to make huge progess and become a triple G (he's some famous wrestler that, apparently, all Americans should know) at speaking Russian.
Now that I know what the work load of classes are like, I think that this format of blog post is the mmost preferabble way of sharing my adventures in Kazakhstan while also not stealing time from my studies. We have classes on Monday from Thursday and Fridays are reserved for excursions or hikes, so I have time to sit down on Fridays or Saturdays to write a weekly report of what happened. In addition, this will ensure that I'm not daily breaking my immersion streak by spending 30 min - 1 hour writing in English!
Day 17
I'm writing this blog post in a cafe that is almost perfect, save for the fact that there IS NOT INTERNET! HOW CAN YOU CALL YOURSELF A CAFE IF YOU DON'T HAVE INTERNET? EXPLAIN. My parents were also very shocked, because they thought that the cafe, without a doublt, would have internet. It's in a large mall and it more of an upscale cafe, anyway, so it SHOULD have internet, right? WRONG.
Thanks God I hear from you again, I get worried when I can't see any posts of you on daily basis! You know it's the only way that I am content that you're doing OK over there.
ReplyDeleteFive hours sleep not adequate with your enormous physical and mental activities - try to sleep more if you could.
Glad that you're able to try different things in Russian style but ... got to be careful of going to sauna more often esp. in the salt room, it dries up your skin and it triggers your eczema and other health issues. It's better to spend more time in the classroom rather staying in the hospital, you know what I mean?
Please take good care of yourself.
Love,
Mom xoxo