Week 6 - Dead Week
Goood morning everyone, well... at least to anyone who is on this side of the world! I hope you are all coping well with the heat or rain - whichever type of weather summer decided to throw at your region )) As week 6 is reaching its end, I'd like to talk about what this dead week consisted of for me.
Let's get right into it! ))
Saturday:
- Justin, Monika, and Janna have all left to check out the Caspian sea, so for this week I focused on catching some Z's and getting some work done for my classes. I woke up very late, it was already past noon and by the time I was getting out of bed, Adilbek and Assel were gathering their things for a trip to market for groceries. After having breakfast and washing up, I walked over to the bazar to the East of my house and walked around to get a good idea of the layout of the bazar as well as see what was being sold. I had been here before with Adilbek to get some fruit and fish, but I knew that there was much more than what I had been exposed to. I went around the part of the bazar with which I was already familiar and then stepped into the other sections: clothing, house appliances, electronics, etc. It was like a labyrinth where you could get anything that you wanted at a price you can bargain!
After getting my fill of the bazar, I headed out to the mall north from my house to look for an HDMI cable and to do some homework. I found a decent cable that would allow me to connect my laptop to the television in the dining room to watch movies. I then went over to that one Itallian restaurant with the good lattes, but no internet, and worked on some homework for my reading and writing class. By this time, I had already gotten comfortable with living and exploring my host city, so I sat down and ordered a latte like a normal person, compared to my first week, where I was stumbling upon my words and struggling to order a drink at the cafe with the servers telling me to just sit down and look at the menu, that they would come to me and I didn't have to come to them. I've come a long way!
After finishing up my work for the day, I walked backed home with a hop in my step, as if I was back in Portland walking through the familiar streets I had been through dozens of times. Home, I put the HDMI cable to use and put on a movie that I had been planning to watch for the past couple years, but had kept on forgetting about its existence: Coraline. I found a Russian version of the movie and watched it in the kitchen while waiting for my host family to return from the store.
When my host family returned, I heard some voices other than just Adilbek and Assel. Apparently, my aunts came over to visit along with my cousin. My cousin took Fatima - my teacher for the class on the history of Central Asia - over to the airport for her trip to Ireland. Assel, bless her heart, tried to prepare that extremely spicy korean noodle that you see people eat on youtube as a challenge, but she didn't understand the instructions and didn't throw out the water before adding the sauce, so it turned out watered down and not very spicy. Nevertheless, I finished the meal while listening to my aunts, parents, and cousin discuss family news and current events. It was kind of like watching a sit com, but I was actually participating in it!
Eventually, everyone left the house and I was left alone to continue watching movies and relax. I had a test on Monday for my grammar class, but my time for studying and preparing for this test was set to be on Sunday - I deserved the time to rest for today!
Sunday:
Today I woke up late again. Hey - it's the weekend, I should revel in the fact that I don't have classes! After all, it's Sunday, which means that I was going to be studying all day for my grammar test on Monday anyway. Today I rode the bus over to the Starbucks located on Abaya - the big street where everyone hangs out and people put up kiosks to sell various items or even sing and play guitar. I sat near the back of the store and began to review the activities in my textbook, however the air conditioner was not reaching my side of the store and it was an exceptionally hot day. I slowly got more and more frustrated with the uncomfortably warm temperature and found it hard to keep myself focused on my work. To make matter worse, the power would cut off at random intervals of time for minutes before turning back on. I know that power cutting off is completely normal, but it usually comes back within 30 seconds - not minutes!
After I had enough of my condition, I went back home and continued to study some more.
Monday:
- Unfortunately, Monika, Justin, and Janna all had some stomach problems from something that they ate on their trip and decided to stay home today to recuperate. For the rest of us, school went on as usual. The grammar test was not too bad, but not great. I'm not sure that our current method of just going straight through the textbook is really conducive to making sure that what we learn sticks. There are a lot of very confusing and small things about Russian grammar that just doesn't make sense. However, I'm not sure that just being told to memorize and then moving onto the next exercise is the best way to master these concepts. I understand that prepositions are difficult in any language - trying to explain when to use 'in' and 'at' is not so trivial in English, and I would agree that memorizing and developing a feel for using prepositions may be the best way of learning when and which preposition to use, but in order to develop this intuition, repetition and practice is absolutely integral! We never review the content and scarcely use the newly learned concepts by creating sentences and speaking in class. I feel like the test was a reflection of this - if you memorized every single problem in the book, you would get a perfect score even if you didn't understand the concept behind each answer. Oh well. At least now I know how to prepare for the final exam a week from now.
After classes, I got some lunch with Bryce and Ryan before returning home to rest. Today the weather was quite unfavorable and I yearned for the air conditioner at my house.
Tuesday:
- Today I received my test back from my teacher and the results were just as I had expected. I had 84 out of 100 questions right. A substantial portion of the questions I got wrong were saying that you just had to memorize - knowing grammar rules wouldn't be any help. Delightful!
- Me and Megan met together after school at a cafe located in the same block as Sova in order to work on the presentation for the history of Central Asia class that was due tomorrow. Our topic was on Kazakhstan as a democracy under the influences of America, China, and Russia with a large question being who was the winner of the big game that existed between these countries. However, this cafe was not as good as Sova and the price was steeper with less food being given for a higher price than Sova. Unfortunately, the internet at this cafe was just not willing to work with my laptop, so we discussed the project and divided the work up between us.
- Returning home, I rested for a bit until Adilbek called me to the kitchen to eat some watermelon that he purchased on his way home. While we were eating watermelon, we discussed some of the topic that was covered in my reading and writing class, specifically cloning and moral implication of it. We had a nice me and Adilbek had a nice discussion on this topic and started to talk about nuclear energy and weaponry in Kazakhstan.
After talking for a while, we called it a night and I rested for a bit and then finished up the rest of my homework. I found a Russian youtuber and streamer that plays Left 4 dead who plays at a high level, and I greatly preferred watching this youtuber play games rather than doing my work. Nevertheless, I eventually pushed myself to finish my part of the presentation and polish it up before emailing it to Fatima.
Wednesday:
- After classes today, I tried to go to my favorite cafe, Sova, but it was closed due to what looked like repairs, so I had to find a different place to study. Fortunately, there are a lot of cafes in this area, so I went over to one of the cafes that I tried a few weeks back - CoffeeDelia. This cafe is decent, but the price is about 2x higher than it should be for the food and they give small portions for their drinks without the quality being proportionally better. I ordered a cheese pizza and latte for lunch and sat near the open windows to get a good view of the city while enjoying my food and studying.
The cheese on my pizza for some reason tasted like it was made out of a different kind milk, like sheep or goat milk, and I found it difficult at times to down the slices. The latte was alright, but certainly not worth the price. Also, because I sat next to the open windows, people right outside of the window were smoking cigarettes and the cigarette smoke kept blowing into my face, which I found to be unpleasant. I watched some videos on youtube about programming and math for a couple of hours before heading back home.
Thursday:
- Today I went with Laura, Ryan, Will, and Bryce over to the green bazar to look for souvenirs. My goal for this look-through is finding getting a feel for the prices of things. I went through a couple of stores and asked for the prices of certain objects and found a what the base cost for each item generally is. If you ask for a discount, the store owners will sometimes drop the price down by 10%, but usually this is when they had already raised the price, so dropping it down would return the price to its normal value. Here are some prices for items I was interested in:
- After looking around the market for a bit, Laura, Will, and I went to a cafe in the center of the meat section and had some tea and manti. Over the food we talked about our thoughts on the bazar and what it was like being Russian in Kazakhstan and Kazakh in Russia. Laura told us about coal prices and about immigration from countries such as Tadjikistan and Uzbekistan. Bazars are popular places for immigrants to gather and work, and there is a noticeably larger amount of workers who do not look nor sound native to Kazakhstan.
- When we were finished with out tea, me and Laura headed down towards the south. I was on my way to try out a cafe - Nedelka, that is apparently the hip place to be. Laura, on the other hand, was headed over to a meeting with her Kazakh friend at a restaurant. She has a lot of stories about her time in Kazakhstan and I am intrigued with what she will learn in the year and a half that she is in Kazakhstan. Walking down the street, Laura pointed out an interesting statue that was in an Aztec style of a naked, buff baby surrounded by birds. Apparently, in this area was a kindergarten, but nowadays there are just restaurants and various kinds of business.
Walking to the cafe felt like it took an eternity, and it didn't help that construction was going on, which meant that the sidewalks were destroyed and I was had to cross through a number of construction areas. Nevertheless, the cafe itself stood in the middle of this destruction, juxtaposed by its surroundings. This cafe was quality and the prices were not bad, but it is located on the other end of the city from all of the other places I frequent. Something that I noticed when using the wash room at this cafe was that there are little stickers on everything with QR codes and translations of what each item was in three different languages: Kazakh, Russian, and English. On the table I was working on, a sticker saying 'Tasty' was placed. Today I worked on helping Assel translate some documents, but when I messaged her about them, it turns out that she had already herself translated everything. I guess she has two versions of translated text!
When I came home from the cafe, me and my host family went right back south towards the university to get dinner at a cafe. This cafe was very affordable and decorated with green and pale fairy lights, which added to the wonderful atmosphere. I ordered some казы (kazi), шашлык (shashlik), and нарын (narin), which is a dish that is very similar to бешбармак (beshbarmak), but everything is shredded and it comes with soup. It was, of course, delicious, but Adilbek asserted that there were places that prepare the dish superior to the cafe.
Friday:
- Today I decided to go over to the Starbucks in Mega Park to study. It's convenient, the servers know me and are friendly, and I can get work done so long as the internet works (70% chance it works). I would have like to go to Sova, but I'm not sure about whether or not they are still closed, or if I had come in at an unusual occurrence, where the cafe happen to close early. I started writing my blog and inviting some friends out to go karaoke on Saturday. Monika invited me to watch a movie with her, Janna, and Justin after they finished crossfit, and I accepted the offer.
A few hours later, I was on the 63 streetcar and flying down the street over to dostyk plaza to meet up with the group. This bus has absolutely no chill - the bus driver is smashing that car horn every few minutes and seems to only understand how to slam either the gas pedal or the break pedal. Trying not to fall over felt like a workout for sure! After some time, I got to my stop and walked to the mall and joined the group at the food court on the third floor.
Even though it has almost been a week since their trip, Monika, Janna, and Justin are still feeling the effect from the food poisoning in Aktau. They had to cut their cross-fit training short due to nausea and the food that they were eating at the food court wasn't sitting well with their stomachs. After watching the movie Skyscraper, we went to a bookstore inside of the mall and looked around, and then went down to a cafe before going our separate ways.
To prepare for Saturday, I walked all the way over to the karaoke location to make a reservation and look around for a nice restaurant to dine in leading up to karaoke. I walked and walked for over 40 minutes until I finally found my way to the place called 'royal' (it translates to grand piano). However, it turns out that you have to make reservations on the day of, so I decided that doing a phone reservation would be sufficient. I walked over to the bus stop and waited there for the next five years. When the small 71 bus made its way to the stop, I went over and boarded it. This small white bus had a small number as seats, as well as a small number of passengers, but as soon as I sat down in one of the seats, nearly falling over because the seat itself wasn't attached to the chair, I noticed that there was an elderly woman, for whom I should give up the seat.
For dinner we had fried potatoes and chicken. While we ate, we watched a movie about Kazakh history and the warring tribes. It was all in Kazakh, so I didn't understand a single word other than "yes!".
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, that's all for this week. Next week is our finals week, which means that we have final exams every day along with our regularly scheduled classes. Although I have learned quite a bit and enjoyed studying abroad, I am glad that this week has finally come. I have to spend my time this weekend wisely - it is probably going to be the last free days in the city for us RLASP students, being that the following week will be spend on an excursion in the country's capitol, Astana, and we only have two days in Almaty after this trip before flying back to the states. The end is nigh!
Let's get right into it! ))
Saturday:
- Justin, Monika, and Janna have all left to check out the Caspian sea, so for this week I focused on catching some Z's and getting some work done for my classes. I woke up very late, it was already past noon and by the time I was getting out of bed, Adilbek and Assel were gathering their things for a trip to market for groceries. After having breakfast and washing up, I walked over to the bazar to the East of my house and walked around to get a good idea of the layout of the bazar as well as see what was being sold. I had been here before with Adilbek to get some fruit and fish, but I knew that there was much more than what I had been exposed to. I went around the part of the bazar with which I was already familiar and then stepped into the other sections: clothing, house appliances, electronics, etc. It was like a labyrinth where you could get anything that you wanted at a price you can bargain!
After getting my fill of the bazar, I headed out to the mall north from my house to look for an HDMI cable and to do some homework. I found a decent cable that would allow me to connect my laptop to the television in the dining room to watch movies. I then went over to that one Itallian restaurant with the good lattes, but no internet, and worked on some homework for my reading and writing class. By this time, I had already gotten comfortable with living and exploring my host city, so I sat down and ordered a latte like a normal person, compared to my first week, where I was stumbling upon my words and struggling to order a drink at the cafe with the servers telling me to just sit down and look at the menu, that they would come to me and I didn't have to come to them. I've come a long way!
After finishing up my work for the day, I walked backed home with a hop in my step, as if I was back in Portland walking through the familiar streets I had been through dozens of times. Home, I put the HDMI cable to use and put on a movie that I had been planning to watch for the past couple years, but had kept on forgetting about its existence: Coraline. I found a Russian version of the movie and watched it in the kitchen while waiting for my host family to return from the store.
When my host family returned, I heard some voices other than just Adilbek and Assel. Apparently, my aunts came over to visit along with my cousin. My cousin took Fatima - my teacher for the class on the history of Central Asia - over to the airport for her trip to Ireland. Assel, bless her heart, tried to prepare that extremely spicy korean noodle that you see people eat on youtube as a challenge, but she didn't understand the instructions and didn't throw out the water before adding the sauce, so it turned out watered down and not very spicy. Nevertheless, I finished the meal while listening to my aunts, parents, and cousin discuss family news and current events. It was kind of like watching a sit com, but I was actually participating in it!
Eventually, everyone left the house and I was left alone to continue watching movies and relax. I had a test on Monday for my grammar class, but my time for studying and preparing for this test was set to be on Sunday - I deserved the time to rest for today!
Sunday:
Today I woke up late again. Hey - it's the weekend, I should revel in the fact that I don't have classes! After all, it's Sunday, which means that I was going to be studying all day for my grammar test on Monday anyway. Today I rode the bus over to the Starbucks located on Abaya - the big street where everyone hangs out and people put up kiosks to sell various items or even sing and play guitar. I sat near the back of the store and began to review the activities in my textbook, however the air conditioner was not reaching my side of the store and it was an exceptionally hot day. I slowly got more and more frustrated with the uncomfortably warm temperature and found it hard to keep myself focused on my work. To make matter worse, the power would cut off at random intervals of time for minutes before turning back on. I know that power cutting off is completely normal, but it usually comes back within 30 seconds - not minutes!
After I had enough of my condition, I went back home and continued to study some more.
Monday:
- Unfortunately, Monika, Justin, and Janna all had some stomach problems from something that they ate on their trip and decided to stay home today to recuperate. For the rest of us, school went on as usual. The grammar test was not too bad, but not great. I'm not sure that our current method of just going straight through the textbook is really conducive to making sure that what we learn sticks. There are a lot of very confusing and small things about Russian grammar that just doesn't make sense. However, I'm not sure that just being told to memorize and then moving onto the next exercise is the best way to master these concepts. I understand that prepositions are difficult in any language - trying to explain when to use 'in' and 'at' is not so trivial in English, and I would agree that memorizing and developing a feel for using prepositions may be the best way of learning when and which preposition to use, but in order to develop this intuition, repetition and practice is absolutely integral! We never review the content and scarcely use the newly learned concepts by creating sentences and speaking in class. I feel like the test was a reflection of this - if you memorized every single problem in the book, you would get a perfect score even if you didn't understand the concept behind each answer. Oh well. At least now I know how to prepare for the final exam a week from now.
After classes, I got some lunch with Bryce and Ryan before returning home to rest. Today the weather was quite unfavorable and I yearned for the air conditioner at my house.
Tuesday:
- Today I received my test back from my teacher and the results were just as I had expected. I had 84 out of 100 questions right. A substantial portion of the questions I got wrong were saying that you just had to memorize - knowing grammar rules wouldn't be any help. Delightful!
- Me and Megan met together after school at a cafe located in the same block as Sova in order to work on the presentation for the history of Central Asia class that was due tomorrow. Our topic was on Kazakhstan as a democracy under the influences of America, China, and Russia with a large question being who was the winner of the big game that existed between these countries. However, this cafe was not as good as Sova and the price was steeper with less food being given for a higher price than Sova. Unfortunately, the internet at this cafe was just not willing to work with my laptop, so we discussed the project and divided the work up between us.
- Returning home, I rested for a bit until Adilbek called me to the kitchen to eat some watermelon that he purchased on his way home. While we were eating watermelon, we discussed some of the topic that was covered in my reading and writing class, specifically cloning and moral implication of it. We had a nice me and Adilbek had a nice discussion on this topic and started to talk about nuclear energy and weaponry in Kazakhstan.
After talking for a while, we called it a night and I rested for a bit and then finished up the rest of my homework. I found a Russian youtuber and streamer that plays Left 4 dead who plays at a high level, and I greatly preferred watching this youtuber play games rather than doing my work. Nevertheless, I eventually pushed myself to finish my part of the presentation and polish it up before emailing it to Fatima.
Wednesday:
- After classes today, I tried to go to my favorite cafe, Sova, but it was closed due to what looked like repairs, so I had to find a different place to study. Fortunately, there are a lot of cafes in this area, so I went over to one of the cafes that I tried a few weeks back - CoffeeDelia. This cafe is decent, but the price is about 2x higher than it should be for the food and they give small portions for their drinks without the quality being proportionally better. I ordered a cheese pizza and latte for lunch and sat near the open windows to get a good view of the city while enjoying my food and studying.
The cheese on my pizza for some reason tasted like it was made out of a different kind milk, like sheep or goat milk, and I found it difficult at times to down the slices. The latte was alright, but certainly not worth the price. Also, because I sat next to the open windows, people right outside of the window were smoking cigarettes and the cigarette smoke kept blowing into my face, which I found to be unpleasant. I watched some videos on youtube about programming and math for a couple of hours before heading back home.
Thursday:
- Today I went with Laura, Ryan, Will, and Bryce over to the green bazar to look for souvenirs. My goal for this look-through is finding getting a feel for the prices of things. I went through a couple of stores and asked for the prices of certain objects and found a what the base cost for each item generally is. If you ask for a discount, the store owners will sometimes drop the price down by 10%, but usually this is when they had already raised the price, so dropping it down would return the price to its normal value. Here are some prices for items I was interested in:
- 3k T - T-shirt with Kazakhstan on it
- 2k T - Baseball cap
- 3k, 7k T - Traditional felted slippers (modern style, traditional style)
- 200T - Small magnets
- 12k, 18k T - Sports jacket with Kazakhstan on it (light blue, dark blue different material)
- 700T - Small felted stuffed horse/camel toy
- 2.5k T - Traditional kazakh felted caps
- 2k T - Plates with Kazakhstan decoration/pictures in center
- After looking around the market for a bit, Laura, Will, and I went to a cafe in the center of the meat section and had some tea and manti. Over the food we talked about our thoughts on the bazar and what it was like being Russian in Kazakhstan and Kazakh in Russia. Laura told us about coal prices and about immigration from countries such as Tadjikistan and Uzbekistan. Bazars are popular places for immigrants to gather and work, and there is a noticeably larger amount of workers who do not look nor sound native to Kazakhstan.
- When we were finished with out tea, me and Laura headed down towards the south. I was on my way to try out a cafe - Nedelka, that is apparently the hip place to be. Laura, on the other hand, was headed over to a meeting with her Kazakh friend at a restaurant. She has a lot of stories about her time in Kazakhstan and I am intrigued with what she will learn in the year and a half that she is in Kazakhstan. Walking down the street, Laura pointed out an interesting statue that was in an Aztec style of a naked, buff baby surrounded by birds. Apparently, in this area was a kindergarten, but nowadays there are just restaurants and various kinds of business.
Walking to the cafe felt like it took an eternity, and it didn't help that construction was going on, which meant that the sidewalks were destroyed and I was had to cross through a number of construction areas. Nevertheless, the cafe itself stood in the middle of this destruction, juxtaposed by its surroundings. This cafe was quality and the prices were not bad, but it is located on the other end of the city from all of the other places I frequent. Something that I noticed when using the wash room at this cafe was that there are little stickers on everything with QR codes and translations of what each item was in three different languages: Kazakh, Russian, and English. On the table I was working on, a sticker saying 'Tasty' was placed. Today I worked on helping Assel translate some documents, but when I messaged her about them, it turns out that she had already herself translated everything. I guess she has two versions of translated text!
When I came home from the cafe, me and my host family went right back south towards the university to get dinner at a cafe. This cafe was very affordable and decorated with green and pale fairy lights, which added to the wonderful atmosphere. I ordered some казы (kazi), шашлык (shashlik), and нарын (narin), which is a dish that is very similar to бешбармак (beshbarmak), but everything is shredded and it comes with soup. It was, of course, delicious, but Adilbek asserted that there were places that prepare the dish superior to the cafe.
Friday:
- Today I decided to go over to the Starbucks in Mega Park to study. It's convenient, the servers know me and are friendly, and I can get work done so long as the internet works (70% chance it works). I would have like to go to Sova, but I'm not sure about whether or not they are still closed, or if I had come in at an unusual occurrence, where the cafe happen to close early. I started writing my blog and inviting some friends out to go karaoke on Saturday. Monika invited me to watch a movie with her, Janna, and Justin after they finished crossfit, and I accepted the offer.
A few hours later, I was on the 63 streetcar and flying down the street over to dostyk plaza to meet up with the group. This bus has absolutely no chill - the bus driver is smashing that car horn every few minutes and seems to only understand how to slam either the gas pedal or the break pedal. Trying not to fall over felt like a workout for sure! After some time, I got to my stop and walked to the mall and joined the group at the food court on the third floor.
Even though it has almost been a week since their trip, Monika, Janna, and Justin are still feeling the effect from the food poisoning in Aktau. They had to cut their cross-fit training short due to nausea and the food that they were eating at the food court wasn't sitting well with their stomachs. After watching the movie Skyscraper, we went to a bookstore inside of the mall and looked around, and then went down to a cafe before going our separate ways.
To prepare for Saturday, I walked all the way over to the karaoke location to make a reservation and look around for a nice restaurant to dine in leading up to karaoke. I walked and walked for over 40 minutes until I finally found my way to the place called 'royal' (it translates to grand piano). However, it turns out that you have to make reservations on the day of, so I decided that doing a phone reservation would be sufficient. I walked over to the bus stop and waited there for the next five years. When the small 71 bus made its way to the stop, I went over and boarded it. This small white bus had a small number as seats, as well as a small number of passengers, but as soon as I sat down in one of the seats, nearly falling over because the seat itself wasn't attached to the chair, I noticed that there was an elderly woman, for whom I should give up the seat.
For dinner we had fried potatoes and chicken. While we ate, we watched a movie about Kazakh history and the warring tribes. It was all in Kazakh, so I didn't understand a single word other than "yes!".
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, that's all for this week. Next week is our finals week, which means that we have final exams every day along with our regularly scheduled classes. Although I have learned quite a bit and enjoyed studying abroad, I am glad that this week has finally come. I have to spend my time this weekend wisely - it is probably going to be the last free days in the city for us RLASP students, being that the following week will be spend on an excursion in the country's capitol, Astana, and we only have two days in Almaty after this trip before flying back to the states. The end is nigh!
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