Finals Week
The weeks pass by quickly, while the days stretch on and on. As this final week of classes approaches, I prepare myself for the final push. I am undeniably overjoyed by the thought of my intensive studies coming to an end, yet at the same time I feel a yearning for the cool nights in Almaty - the looming end to my journey in Kazakhstan. While I slug on through my final exams, the weather shows no mercy and I have to use all of my strength and willpower to finish strong. After all is done, I am off to a week long vacation in Astana, the country's new, 20 year old capitol, and Borovoye - a popular tourist attraction where one can bask in the sun and enjoy nature.
That's all over now, and I'm sitting here in my favorite cafe, Sova, having just arrived at the university after returning to Almaty from the vacation to the north. Let me tell you how my finals went!
Saturday:
- Today was a chill day of studies. I went over to study for my final exams at CoffeeDelia. Unfortunately, Sova was closed due to construction work outside of the restaurant. So, I had to spend my time at the closest, second best place. Here, I tried out a cookie drink, which happened to taste just like Horchata, and went straight onto my work. My goal was to research the topic of my final presentation for Wednesday. I sifted through a plethora of government articles about the project "Digital Kazakhstan," where numerous reforms and programs were being planned and implemented in various cities around Kazakhstan to increase the country's competitiveness in the future, technologically dependent world. I listened to videos about current innovative technology and the idea of futuristic 'smart cities' where technology and clever city planning is used to not only improve and refurbish urban infrastructure, but also to reduce the carbon footprint of cities. I wanted to get to the point where my text for the presentation was already written and then I could just reuse the designs of previous power-point presentations to fit my presentation. Afterwards, I planned to get dinner with some friends and sing the night away at a local karaoke place! One must balance hard work with resting - it's the yin and yang of the academic world.
- After a while of research and creating a plan for my text, I felt my stomach groaning in pain. I hungered. Although I traded lunch for that cookie smoothie drink, it was almost dinner time, and I had to hold out for two more hours before going wild on food. It was then that I got a text from Justin explaining that him, Monika, and Janna felt queasy from the week before at Aktay in addition to the fact that they, above all, still attended their cross-fit workout session! He informed me that they would need some more time to rest, so dinner was off for them, but that they were still game for karaoke. ALl of the other people that I invited either didn't respond of cancelled, so that meant that I would have to get dinner for myself. I ordered the cheapest sandwich that was on the menu, which was this wrap with some cheese and sauce. I'm not doing the sandwich justice, because it was surprisingly tasty and satiated my appetite for the rest of the night. While having dinner, I continued to watch videos about technology and learned about some uses of artificial intelligence in modern day devices. For instance, there is a machine being made to fold and sort laundry by using machine learning to identify clothing, and intel is coming out with some improvements on self-driving cars as well as domestic drones. It's immensely interesting how far technology has come in the past few years, let alone decade, and I can't help but feel some apprehension on what waits next...
- At around 6:00PM (or 18:00), I headed over to the karaoke place to reserve a room. Because I was not allowed to reserve a day before, I decided to come to the area about an hour earlier to do all registrations in person, right after the location opened up. However, to my dismay, it turns out that all rooms were already booked by the time that I got to the place! I had to quickly find a different location for karaoke that was both not too far, but also free in a short time notice. Luckily, I found the perfect place - just 10 minutes away on foot from the first location. I called to verify my registration and notified the group. After about 30 minutes, I was sitting in the room, waiting for Justin, Monika, and Janna to come in. I got a call from my friends saying that they were confused and ended up at a wedding instead of the karaoke place, but I assured them that they were actually at the correct place and that the karaoke room was hidden on the first floor, right underneath the wedding. Soon enough, were were singing out guts out, audible to all inside of the building.
- We had a blast singing a variety of songs, from Russian to English to even Spanish songs! Every time the waiter came in to bring more fries or tea, we laughed from the knowledge that they could hear us practically screaming into the microphone, having the time of our lives. When we were ready to leave and asked for the check, the waiter insisted that we stayed and bought more food and drinks, pointing out that we had only spent 4k Tenge. We were confused by the persistence and surprise of the waiter. After all, the menu was quite pricey and we didn't want to spend out life savings on food! The deposit for the room was 20k Tenge split up between all four of us. Isn't it crazy to spend another 10-20k on food and drink that were 3-5k Tenge?! What we didn't know, however, was that this deposit acted as working money for the room, and that the 20k Tenge would be applied to anything that we ordered during our time in the room. Unfortunately, we didn't want to spend any longer than the 4 hours singing, and it was already getting quite late, so we decided to go home and use this knowledge of the deposit for future karaoke times.
- We ordered our taxis home and I set a midway stop for Justin to save on money and taxis. After dropping off Justin, I talked to the taxi driver about various things in Kazakhstan. Driving through my neighborhood, my taxi driver warned be about walking along at night. When I heard this, my ears puckered up. My neighborhood, the one littered with playgrounds and children, was dangerous? Under what assumptions led this taxi driver to consider the area dangerous, and why? After digging, I got from my taxi driver that the neighborhood was known for gang violence, drug dealing, and prostitution. However, I've walked alone night in the area many times and I don't get that impression at all! Heck, there is a preschool not 15 minutes away from my apartment! I'll have to do some more research to see why my neighborhood is marked as 'dangerous.' My guess - it's a place where all the 'poor people' live, which obviously means that it must be dangerous.
Sunday:
- On Sunday I decided to stay at home to save up on some money after the day that I had yesterday. My goal was to focus prepare myself sufficiently enough to pass my grammar final with flying colors. I allowed myself to sleep until my body felt that it was ready to start the day and then I cleansed myself, ate some breakfast, and headed out to the nearby convenience store to get some snacks for the day. I settled on ice cream (stakanchik) and trying out some iced tea. As soon as I got all of my things prepared, I did exactly as I planned to do: study, study, and study some more.
Eventually I wanted to take a break, so I worked on writing the text for my presentation. The sooner that I had the text prepared, the sooner I could get some eyes on it to check my grammar and word usage, and then I could work on making the slides for my presentation and practicing for the real deal. That's pretty much all that this day was for me - a day of study.
Monday:
- Welp. Today is the official start of finals week. Let's cross our fingers and hope for the best! For today, I had my grammar test. This consisted of a 100 question multiple choice section in addition to some fill in the blank questions. To top everything off, the test ended with us writing an essay, using a variety of all the prepositions we had worked on throughout the summer term. Completing this test, I felt not too bad. On Sunday I thoroughly reviewed the content of the course and focused on some problem areas. Nevertheless, there were a couple of questions that caught me off guard and I felt unconfident in answering, but for a majority of the test it wasn't a problem.
- Having completed my first final of the week, my focus was shifted to the other assignments on my to-do list. Tomorrow I had my final for reading/writing, which was just an essay about women and traditional gender roles. As the preparation for this final essay would not require a large amount of time and is best done during the morning, such that ideas can stay fresh in the mind, I set my sights on completing my powerpoint presentation for Wednesday. I walked over to the Starbucks at Mega Park and got a classic cold brew latte as well as tried the cheese cake. The baristas at this Starbucks are familiar with me and my weird name, and one of them points out how strange it is to her that I order only a drink with no syrups/flavoring or and snacks. So, I decided to surprise whoever the barista would be today by breaking from my norm and trying one of the cheesecakes. Unfortunately, I wasn't too lucky in my choice, as the cheesecake appeared to be not the freshest. It wa a struggle to finish my food to completion, but I was determined to get my money's worth from the overpriced, thin slice of solidifying cheesecake.
- I managed to finish my text and presentation up until the final two paragraphs when Assel calls me and notifies me that she and Adilbek are on their way back from doing tests at the hospital and would pick me up from the Mega Park. I gather my stuff, head off to the restroom, and then walk over to the bus stop to wait for my host parents to pick me up. On the way back, we stopped to buy a large watermelon, which I held in my lap with pride.
Home, I finished my text and presentation and went over it with my host parents so that it sounded more natural and grammatically correct. As soon as we finished combing through my text, I went off to my room to practice my presentation until I had it memorized. When it was time for me to sleep, I had half of my presentation solidified. Instead of staying up late to get the rest of the text in my head, I decided to go to sleep, so as to not suffer from sleep deprivation as I write my final essay.
Tuesday:
- Welp, today I had to write my final essay. I wrote down my thoughts on the given promt about women and created a simple plan for my essay. Then, I went through my book and wrote down words that I might want to use in my essay, as well as grammatical structures that seemed to connect my ideas well. On my way to school, I went over the synonym exercise to freshen my lexicon and help me not overuse one word throughout my essay. I felt very strongly about this essay and it was the longest of all the essays I had written. After going over it a couple of times, I handed it in and took a deep breath - two out of four finals finished!
- In grammar class, we got the results back from our finals and it wasn't too bad. I got more wrong on the multiple choice section than I expected - getting a score of 84%. However, most of these questions were just dumb, simple mistakes, or fixed expressions that you just have to memorize. That's a lot better than getting things wrong that I thought were right! This process took up the entire class period and concluded our grammar courses for the summer. Wohoo!!!
- After classes, I went right home to work on perfecting my presentation for Wednesday. I memorized the rest of my text and kept of repeating it to myself, timing how long it took me to complete my presentation. I went from 17 minutes to 15 minutes, and it continued to get easier and quicker with each subsequent repetition. By the time I had mastered my text and was reciting everything smoothly, changing some sentences on the spot when I felt was right, I had shortened this time down to 7 minutes. I was ready.
Wednesday:
- Today was the day of the big presentation! Along the way to school, I kept of rehearsing my presentation and getting myself ready. First to present would be the students from group 5, and then my group would go. If possible, I planned to present first to get it out of the way. I listened to the presentations of group 5 and it was quite interesting - from history to music to the proposed changes to the Kazakh alphaet. Each presentation had some kind of connection with our host country and it was interesting to hear what other people had gathered information about.
- After all of the presentations, our teachers gave us all gifts and we took a group picture together. Our gifts consisted of a nice felted traditional Kazakh hat and a notebook. This was perfect for me because I was planning on getting one of those exact hats! 3/4 finals completed. Time for the audio/listening final! All of group 6 gathered in a lecture room and went right to completing our final final. It was tough because we had to write down what we heard in the form of filling the blank, but there was not nearly enough time to write everything down, as the speaker didn't stop to allow us to write down all of the words! What a nightmare. Afterwards, we listened to a biography about a famous Russian author and screenwriter and had to write down an essay about what we heard. Of course, each final had to end with an essay because why not? Anyway, I eventually finished the assignment and physically felt the shackles crumble off of my arms. I had completed the academic term abroad and I was free! What a relief!
- After classes, me, Laura, Will, and Ryan gathered to grab some lunch at the iconic cheap, yet quality restaurant chaihana. After chatting for a bit and sitting through an electrical system reset (likely from construction), I walked over back to Mega park and watched youtube videos and completed the end of program survey. At home, I did my laundry quickly and packed up for the week long trip to the city's capitol, beginning on Thursday.
Thursday:
- I wake up on Thursday morning feeling overwhelmed with the sudden sense of freedom. No more homework, no more classes, no more worrying about classes - I'm done! I woke up early enough to get to school because I wanted to watch Laura's final presentation in Kazakh. On the way to school, I look out of the window and take in the city. Instead of trying to catch up on sleep in the car or memorize vocabulary words for my grammar class, I can actually enjoy the scenery of my neighborhood. As we approach the university, I hear Ahmet (the driver) curse. Apparently, a one way street changed it direction to go the opposite way overnight. Of course, there was absolutely no warning about this change and Ahmet tells me that this is a common occurrence. Traffic flow, construction, and road signs can change out of nowhere, as if the city was made just so that you would make a mistake and get fined. If someone were to take a month long vacation in a different city and then returned to Almaty, the city's roads could change in such a radical way that a local driver could feel like they returned to a foreign city.
- I get to the university and look around for Laura. I check the first floor: nothing. I check the second floor and ask Harry if he knows where Laura is presenting: nada. Welp. I guess I'll just go to a cafe and wait for the time that we would gather back at the university for the trip to Astana. As I leave the university and walk towards CoffeeDelia, I bump into none other than Laura and we walk back to the university together. Since Laura is the only one in her group, she agreed with her teachers to come to school an hour later than normal to get more sleep and preparation time for her presentation. She planned to get to school 30 minutes earlier to set everything up and that was the reason why I didn't find her right at 9:00am.
- We get to the university and I start working on some code practicing while Laura prepares and her teachers get to the room. They are surprised by my appearance and Laura explains in Kazakh that I am one of the American students who is studying Russian and that I decided to come and spectate Laura's presentation. They speak to me in Kazakh and I respond "Yes" in Kazakh to whatever they said to me. My grammar teacher, Ulzhan Esenovna, walks in and is also surprised by my appearance. Eventually, it is time for Laura to present and she gets right on it. I understand nothing because I do not speak Kazakh, but it is interesting to hear Kazakh coming from a non-native speaker. After the presentation, Ulzhan invites me to ask questions in Russian, so I do. The answer comes in Kazakh and I pretend to understand - but they already know that I have no clue.
- Then came the second presentation from Laura. She shows me her phone and helps me get to a webpage. She wants me to join in on this presentation and sing in Kazakh! Laura begins to sing and is accompanied by the rest of the teachers and I struggle to find where the lyrics start. By the time the chorus comes in for the first time, I find the text and try to sing along. Of course, I've never heard the song before and I don't quite know how to pronounce all the Kazakh words, but I try to mimic Laura and the teachers, singing out when we return to the chorus.
After singing, Laura hands some presents to her teachers and she gets some presents in return. We sit together and enjoy some Kazakh food and chocolates. I learn some new Kazakh words during this time and that only makes me that much more excited to take Kazakh language classes when I return for the flagship capstone. When we leave the room, we leave to get some food at P-love, and we are joined by Bryce. There is a large crowd of Kazakhs in military uniform sitting by this small street restaurant, but we are able to secure ourselves a table as a man finishes his food and leaves. Bryce and Laura comment on the fact that this establishment is usually sold out of plov by the time our classes are over, and reason that this is likely due to the soldiers ordering out every dish until only doner is left! We eat and chat a bit before saying our goodbyes: Laura is not going to come with us to Astana because she is renewing her Kazakh visa for the academic year, so this is likely the last time we would meet during the program.
I accompany Bryce as he looks for a place to buy some train tickets from China to Kazkahstan. His father is flying to China, so Bryce was looking to get some train tickets for them to explore Kazkhastan together before his father flies out. We find a travel agency place near the university and Bryce asks about the tickets. Unfortunately, this location couldn't sell the tickets Bryce was looking for, but the agent informs us that we can get the tickets we are looking for at Almaty-1, which is all the way up north, about 15 minutes away from where my host family's house is. We than the agent and head out to the street.
As Bryce is about to order a taxi to Almaty-1 to get his tickets, the agents comes out and starts to talk to us. Of course, he is excited that we are Americans and begins to ask us the usual questions: Where are you from? What's your nationality? Why are you in Almaty? As usual, the agent talks about how he wants to go to America and complains about how difficult it is to get an American visa. Then the conversation takes a sharp turn into something inappropriate: he complains about how difficult it is to develop romantic relationships with Kazakh women without spending a lot of money and freely tells us about the various escapades his Kazakh friend has abroad in Miami, Florida. Apparently, American women are very easy to win over and this travel agent is willing to tell us all about it. He tries to invite us to a bar later on to drink some beer and smoke some non-legal substances (he assures us that it's not a problem), and I add that we, unfortunately, are leaving to Astana and can't join him. We book it out of that uncomfortable situation and Bryces leaves to get tickets at the Almaty-1.
After we pack up and leave, I head over back to CoffeeDelia and watch some youtube videos about technology while waiting for the rendezvous time. At around 2:40pm, I head back over to the university and wait for Harry to gather us up to leave for Astana. When it's time to leave, we all pack up into white vans and leave for the airport. This van was small and the air conditioner was not doing a really good job fighting against the heat, so I melt as we ride in the stifling Almaty heat.
This airport was dark, as the lights were not turned of, yet there were not enough windows for natural light to sufficiently brighten the place up. We get in line to get our boarding passes and check in luggage, and I see a man with what looks like a cake talking to a flight assistant. Upon closer inspection, I notice that the cake is really bumpy. Actually - this cake was made out of diapers! What?! After everyone gets their baggage checked in, we head on through security. A security guard mans the plastic buckets and tells us what to put into the buckets: laptops, phones, etc. However, it isn't a requirement to take off our shoes. As I make it through security, I notice that I forgot to drink all of my water. However, it still manages to pass through security. Alright.
Soon enough, we pile into the plane and are on our way to Astana. The long security video is played THREE times: once in Kazakh, and then Russian, and finally English. For some reason, it is filmed in a way where people do yoga poses such that their shadows make shapes of various objects like plane seats or carry-on luggage. By the second video, I'm already annoyed and find out that you can turn the brightness of the screen to 0 to cheat your way out of not having to watch the same video three times in a row. As we fly over Kazakhstan, I see some crazy looking clouds and then the sky opens up to Astana. It's interesting to see the city from up above, where the crops make distinct shapes.
- After a while, we arrive at the airport and head out as a group out to a bus, which would take us to our hostel in the city. We settle down in our rooms and head out to the city to get some dinner. Walking around in the country's capital is strange. The city is not surrounded by mountains and it is noticeably cooler and windier in comparison to Almaty. There are not many people walking around, which makes the large, spotless city seem devoid of life. I take notice of the fact that there are many trash cans located at every few feet, yet no signs of recycling bins.
- We make our way to a mall and sit down in a Georgian restaurant. I order some pear flavored lemonade and the cheapest khachapuri, baffled by the price difference. Everything in Astana is about 150 - 200% pricier than in Almaty! I am the first on my table to get my food and it looks like a really cheap quesadilla. I share my food with the table and after a long wait time, everyone gets their food. On the table there is an advertisement for the restaurant, boasting short wait times to the extent that you don't have to stand in line. I joke that this advertisement isn't far from the truth - we didn't have to stand in line. Instead, we just had to sit in line for an eternity! After dinner, we try to find our way out of the mall. It is closing, and the escalators are for some reason closed off, so we look around for stairs to exit. We find the exit stairs hidden in the back of the mall and go down one flight of stairs. We try to explore the second floor of the mall to see if we can find a convenience store to buy some water bottles for the following day, but a janitor yells at us that the mall is closed and we are forbidden from staying longer. This is really strange to me, considering that some of the restaurants are open for a few more hours, but whatever.
We exit the mall and separate ways. I head over to find a convenience store with Bryce, and the rest of the group goes over either back to the hostel or to a bar. Me and Bryce walk around for a bit and then I ask a local for some help. All of the signs are in Kazakh, including most of the store names, so it was a bit hard to navigate, but the local pointed us the correct way to the nearest convenience store. Me and Bryce secure some supplies and head our way back to the hostel. On the way back we pass a couple of Kazakh cops in groups of 3 that are probably looking around for drunk people to arrest. They are dressed in dark blue and look more like American cops, and as we pass them, they fortunately don't bother us.
Me and Bryce pass back around a large building in the center of the city that is topped with a golden sphere and I remember information about attempts of Astana turning into a smart city. Me and Bryce look around for signs of technology: wifi trees and charging benches, and find some signs of these technologies being implemented in the city. I open up one of the trash cans to see if it is easily accessible to janitors or other people, and have trouble closing it. me and Bryce quickly wander off and return to the hostel. On the way back, we get a bit lost due to very similar looking buildings. We get to a building that has a large 5 written on it, but I remember that our building had 7 written on it instead. However, we try going to this building and it feels wrong. I look at the flowers in the playground and notice that a flower in a certain spot is alive, where as in our playground that certain flower was dead. Bryce finds the way back to our actual hostel, which was right across from the burger king, and we get back safely. I give Floyd a water bottle for tomorrow and head off to bed.
Day one of the our week-long vacation is completed!
That's all over now, and I'm sitting here in my favorite cafe, Sova, having just arrived at the university after returning to Almaty from the vacation to the north. Let me tell you how my finals went!
Saturday:
- Today was a chill day of studies. I went over to study for my final exams at CoffeeDelia. Unfortunately, Sova was closed due to construction work outside of the restaurant. So, I had to spend my time at the closest, second best place. Here, I tried out a cookie drink, which happened to taste just like Horchata, and went straight onto my work. My goal was to research the topic of my final presentation for Wednesday. I sifted through a plethora of government articles about the project "Digital Kazakhstan," where numerous reforms and programs were being planned and implemented in various cities around Kazakhstan to increase the country's competitiveness in the future, technologically dependent world. I listened to videos about current innovative technology and the idea of futuristic 'smart cities' where technology and clever city planning is used to not only improve and refurbish urban infrastructure, but also to reduce the carbon footprint of cities. I wanted to get to the point where my text for the presentation was already written and then I could just reuse the designs of previous power-point presentations to fit my presentation. Afterwards, I planned to get dinner with some friends and sing the night away at a local karaoke place! One must balance hard work with resting - it's the yin and yang of the academic world.
- After a while of research and creating a plan for my text, I felt my stomach groaning in pain. I hungered. Although I traded lunch for that cookie smoothie drink, it was almost dinner time, and I had to hold out for two more hours before going wild on food. It was then that I got a text from Justin explaining that him, Monika, and Janna felt queasy from the week before at Aktay in addition to the fact that they, above all, still attended their cross-fit workout session! He informed me that they would need some more time to rest, so dinner was off for them, but that they were still game for karaoke. ALl of the other people that I invited either didn't respond of cancelled, so that meant that I would have to get dinner for myself. I ordered the cheapest sandwich that was on the menu, which was this wrap with some cheese and sauce. I'm not doing the sandwich justice, because it was surprisingly tasty and satiated my appetite for the rest of the night. While having dinner, I continued to watch videos about technology and learned about some uses of artificial intelligence in modern day devices. For instance, there is a machine being made to fold and sort laundry by using machine learning to identify clothing, and intel is coming out with some improvements on self-driving cars as well as domestic drones. It's immensely interesting how far technology has come in the past few years, let alone decade, and I can't help but feel some apprehension on what waits next...
- At around 6:00PM (or 18:00), I headed over to the karaoke place to reserve a room. Because I was not allowed to reserve a day before, I decided to come to the area about an hour earlier to do all registrations in person, right after the location opened up. However, to my dismay, it turns out that all rooms were already booked by the time that I got to the place! I had to quickly find a different location for karaoke that was both not too far, but also free in a short time notice. Luckily, I found the perfect place - just 10 minutes away on foot from the first location. I called to verify my registration and notified the group. After about 30 minutes, I was sitting in the room, waiting for Justin, Monika, and Janna to come in. I got a call from my friends saying that they were confused and ended up at a wedding instead of the karaoke place, but I assured them that they were actually at the correct place and that the karaoke room was hidden on the first floor, right underneath the wedding. Soon enough, were were singing out guts out, audible to all inside of the building.
- We had a blast singing a variety of songs, from Russian to English to even Spanish songs! Every time the waiter came in to bring more fries or tea, we laughed from the knowledge that they could hear us practically screaming into the microphone, having the time of our lives. When we were ready to leave and asked for the check, the waiter insisted that we stayed and bought more food and drinks, pointing out that we had only spent 4k Tenge. We were confused by the persistence and surprise of the waiter. After all, the menu was quite pricey and we didn't want to spend out life savings on food! The deposit for the room was 20k Tenge split up between all four of us. Isn't it crazy to spend another 10-20k on food and drink that were 3-5k Tenge?! What we didn't know, however, was that this deposit acted as working money for the room, and that the 20k Tenge would be applied to anything that we ordered during our time in the room. Unfortunately, we didn't want to spend any longer than the 4 hours singing, and it was already getting quite late, so we decided to go home and use this knowledge of the deposit for future karaoke times.
- We ordered our taxis home and I set a midway stop for Justin to save on money and taxis. After dropping off Justin, I talked to the taxi driver about various things in Kazakhstan. Driving through my neighborhood, my taxi driver warned be about walking along at night. When I heard this, my ears puckered up. My neighborhood, the one littered with playgrounds and children, was dangerous? Under what assumptions led this taxi driver to consider the area dangerous, and why? After digging, I got from my taxi driver that the neighborhood was known for gang violence, drug dealing, and prostitution. However, I've walked alone night in the area many times and I don't get that impression at all! Heck, there is a preschool not 15 minutes away from my apartment! I'll have to do some more research to see why my neighborhood is marked as 'dangerous.' My guess - it's a place where all the 'poor people' live, which obviously means that it must be dangerous.
Sunday:
- On Sunday I decided to stay at home to save up on some money after the day that I had yesterday. My goal was to focus prepare myself sufficiently enough to pass my grammar final with flying colors. I allowed myself to sleep until my body felt that it was ready to start the day and then I cleansed myself, ate some breakfast, and headed out to the nearby convenience store to get some snacks for the day. I settled on ice cream (stakanchik) and trying out some iced tea. As soon as I got all of my things prepared, I did exactly as I planned to do: study, study, and study some more.
Eventually I wanted to take a break, so I worked on writing the text for my presentation. The sooner that I had the text prepared, the sooner I could get some eyes on it to check my grammar and word usage, and then I could work on making the slides for my presentation and practicing for the real deal. That's pretty much all that this day was for me - a day of study.
Monday:
- Welp. Today is the official start of finals week. Let's cross our fingers and hope for the best! For today, I had my grammar test. This consisted of a 100 question multiple choice section in addition to some fill in the blank questions. To top everything off, the test ended with us writing an essay, using a variety of all the prepositions we had worked on throughout the summer term. Completing this test, I felt not too bad. On Sunday I thoroughly reviewed the content of the course and focused on some problem areas. Nevertheless, there were a couple of questions that caught me off guard and I felt unconfident in answering, but for a majority of the test it wasn't a problem.
- Having completed my first final of the week, my focus was shifted to the other assignments on my to-do list. Tomorrow I had my final for reading/writing, which was just an essay about women and traditional gender roles. As the preparation for this final essay would not require a large amount of time and is best done during the morning, such that ideas can stay fresh in the mind, I set my sights on completing my powerpoint presentation for Wednesday. I walked over to the Starbucks at Mega Park and got a classic cold brew latte as well as tried the cheese cake. The baristas at this Starbucks are familiar with me and my weird name, and one of them points out how strange it is to her that I order only a drink with no syrups/flavoring or and snacks. So, I decided to surprise whoever the barista would be today by breaking from my norm and trying one of the cheesecakes. Unfortunately, I wasn't too lucky in my choice, as the cheesecake appeared to be not the freshest. It wa a struggle to finish my food to completion, but I was determined to get my money's worth from the overpriced, thin slice of solidifying cheesecake.
- I managed to finish my text and presentation up until the final two paragraphs when Assel calls me and notifies me that she and Adilbek are on their way back from doing tests at the hospital and would pick me up from the Mega Park. I gather my stuff, head off to the restroom, and then walk over to the bus stop to wait for my host parents to pick me up. On the way back, we stopped to buy a large watermelon, which I held in my lap with pride.
Home, I finished my text and presentation and went over it with my host parents so that it sounded more natural and grammatically correct. As soon as we finished combing through my text, I went off to my room to practice my presentation until I had it memorized. When it was time for me to sleep, I had half of my presentation solidified. Instead of staying up late to get the rest of the text in my head, I decided to go to sleep, so as to not suffer from sleep deprivation as I write my final essay.
Tuesday:
- Welp, today I had to write my final essay. I wrote down my thoughts on the given promt about women and created a simple plan for my essay. Then, I went through my book and wrote down words that I might want to use in my essay, as well as grammatical structures that seemed to connect my ideas well. On my way to school, I went over the synonym exercise to freshen my lexicon and help me not overuse one word throughout my essay. I felt very strongly about this essay and it was the longest of all the essays I had written. After going over it a couple of times, I handed it in and took a deep breath - two out of four finals finished!
- In grammar class, we got the results back from our finals and it wasn't too bad. I got more wrong on the multiple choice section than I expected - getting a score of 84%. However, most of these questions were just dumb, simple mistakes, or fixed expressions that you just have to memorize. That's a lot better than getting things wrong that I thought were right! This process took up the entire class period and concluded our grammar courses for the summer. Wohoo!!!
- After classes, I went right home to work on perfecting my presentation for Wednesday. I memorized the rest of my text and kept of repeating it to myself, timing how long it took me to complete my presentation. I went from 17 minutes to 15 minutes, and it continued to get easier and quicker with each subsequent repetition. By the time I had mastered my text and was reciting everything smoothly, changing some sentences on the spot when I felt was right, I had shortened this time down to 7 minutes. I was ready.
Wednesday:
- Today was the day of the big presentation! Along the way to school, I kept of rehearsing my presentation and getting myself ready. First to present would be the students from group 5, and then my group would go. If possible, I planned to present first to get it out of the way. I listened to the presentations of group 5 and it was quite interesting - from history to music to the proposed changes to the Kazakh alphaet. Each presentation had some kind of connection with our host country and it was interesting to hear what other people had gathered information about.
- After all of the presentations, our teachers gave us all gifts and we took a group picture together. Our gifts consisted of a nice felted traditional Kazakh hat and a notebook. This was perfect for me because I was planning on getting one of those exact hats! 3/4 finals completed. Time for the audio/listening final! All of group 6 gathered in a lecture room and went right to completing our final final. It was tough because we had to write down what we heard in the form of filling the blank, but there was not nearly enough time to write everything down, as the speaker didn't stop to allow us to write down all of the words! What a nightmare. Afterwards, we listened to a biography about a famous Russian author and screenwriter and had to write down an essay about what we heard. Of course, each final had to end with an essay because why not? Anyway, I eventually finished the assignment and physically felt the shackles crumble off of my arms. I had completed the academic term abroad and I was free! What a relief!
- After classes, me, Laura, Will, and Ryan gathered to grab some lunch at the iconic cheap, yet quality restaurant chaihana. After chatting for a bit and sitting through an electrical system reset (likely from construction), I walked over back to Mega park and watched youtube videos and completed the end of program survey. At home, I did my laundry quickly and packed up for the week long trip to the city's capitol, beginning on Thursday.
Thursday:
- I wake up on Thursday morning feeling overwhelmed with the sudden sense of freedom. No more homework, no more classes, no more worrying about classes - I'm done! I woke up early enough to get to school because I wanted to watch Laura's final presentation in Kazakh. On the way to school, I look out of the window and take in the city. Instead of trying to catch up on sleep in the car or memorize vocabulary words for my grammar class, I can actually enjoy the scenery of my neighborhood. As we approach the university, I hear Ahmet (the driver) curse. Apparently, a one way street changed it direction to go the opposite way overnight. Of course, there was absolutely no warning about this change and Ahmet tells me that this is a common occurrence. Traffic flow, construction, and road signs can change out of nowhere, as if the city was made just so that you would make a mistake and get fined. If someone were to take a month long vacation in a different city and then returned to Almaty, the city's roads could change in such a radical way that a local driver could feel like they returned to a foreign city.
- I get to the university and look around for Laura. I check the first floor: nothing. I check the second floor and ask Harry if he knows where Laura is presenting: nada. Welp. I guess I'll just go to a cafe and wait for the time that we would gather back at the university for the trip to Astana. As I leave the university and walk towards CoffeeDelia, I bump into none other than Laura and we walk back to the university together. Since Laura is the only one in her group, she agreed with her teachers to come to school an hour later than normal to get more sleep and preparation time for her presentation. She planned to get to school 30 minutes earlier to set everything up and that was the reason why I didn't find her right at 9:00am.
- We get to the university and I start working on some code practicing while Laura prepares and her teachers get to the room. They are surprised by my appearance and Laura explains in Kazakh that I am one of the American students who is studying Russian and that I decided to come and spectate Laura's presentation. They speak to me in Kazakh and I respond "Yes" in Kazakh to whatever they said to me. My grammar teacher, Ulzhan Esenovna, walks in and is also surprised by my appearance. Eventually, it is time for Laura to present and she gets right on it. I understand nothing because I do not speak Kazakh, but it is interesting to hear Kazakh coming from a non-native speaker. After the presentation, Ulzhan invites me to ask questions in Russian, so I do. The answer comes in Kazakh and I pretend to understand - but they already know that I have no clue.
- Then came the second presentation from Laura. She shows me her phone and helps me get to a webpage. She wants me to join in on this presentation and sing in Kazakh! Laura begins to sing and is accompanied by the rest of the teachers and I struggle to find where the lyrics start. By the time the chorus comes in for the first time, I find the text and try to sing along. Of course, I've never heard the song before and I don't quite know how to pronounce all the Kazakh words, but I try to mimic Laura and the teachers, singing out when we return to the chorus.
After singing, Laura hands some presents to her teachers and she gets some presents in return. We sit together and enjoy some Kazakh food and chocolates. I learn some new Kazakh words during this time and that only makes me that much more excited to take Kazakh language classes when I return for the flagship capstone. When we leave the room, we leave to get some food at P-love, and we are joined by Bryce. There is a large crowd of Kazakhs in military uniform sitting by this small street restaurant, but we are able to secure ourselves a table as a man finishes his food and leaves. Bryce and Laura comment on the fact that this establishment is usually sold out of plov by the time our classes are over, and reason that this is likely due to the soldiers ordering out every dish until only doner is left! We eat and chat a bit before saying our goodbyes: Laura is not going to come with us to Astana because she is renewing her Kazakh visa for the academic year, so this is likely the last time we would meet during the program.
I accompany Bryce as he looks for a place to buy some train tickets from China to Kazkahstan. His father is flying to China, so Bryce was looking to get some train tickets for them to explore Kazkhastan together before his father flies out. We find a travel agency place near the university and Bryce asks about the tickets. Unfortunately, this location couldn't sell the tickets Bryce was looking for, but the agent informs us that we can get the tickets we are looking for at Almaty-1, which is all the way up north, about 15 minutes away from where my host family's house is. We than the agent and head out to the street.
As Bryce is about to order a taxi to Almaty-1 to get his tickets, the agents comes out and starts to talk to us. Of course, he is excited that we are Americans and begins to ask us the usual questions: Where are you from? What's your nationality? Why are you in Almaty? As usual, the agent talks about how he wants to go to America and complains about how difficult it is to get an American visa. Then the conversation takes a sharp turn into something inappropriate: he complains about how difficult it is to develop romantic relationships with Kazakh women without spending a lot of money and freely tells us about the various escapades his Kazakh friend has abroad in Miami, Florida. Apparently, American women are very easy to win over and this travel agent is willing to tell us all about it. He tries to invite us to a bar later on to drink some beer and smoke some non-legal substances (he assures us that it's not a problem), and I add that we, unfortunately, are leaving to Astana and can't join him. We book it out of that uncomfortable situation and Bryces leaves to get tickets at the Almaty-1.
After we pack up and leave, I head over back to CoffeeDelia and watch some youtube videos about technology while waiting for the rendezvous time. At around 2:40pm, I head back over to the university and wait for Harry to gather us up to leave for Astana. When it's time to leave, we all pack up into white vans and leave for the airport. This van was small and the air conditioner was not doing a really good job fighting against the heat, so I melt as we ride in the stifling Almaty heat.
This airport was dark, as the lights were not turned of, yet there were not enough windows for natural light to sufficiently brighten the place up. We get in line to get our boarding passes and check in luggage, and I see a man with what looks like a cake talking to a flight assistant. Upon closer inspection, I notice that the cake is really bumpy. Actually - this cake was made out of diapers! What?! After everyone gets their baggage checked in, we head on through security. A security guard mans the plastic buckets and tells us what to put into the buckets: laptops, phones, etc. However, it isn't a requirement to take off our shoes. As I make it through security, I notice that I forgot to drink all of my water. However, it still manages to pass through security. Alright.
Soon enough, we pile into the plane and are on our way to Astana. The long security video is played THREE times: once in Kazakh, and then Russian, and finally English. For some reason, it is filmed in a way where people do yoga poses such that their shadows make shapes of various objects like plane seats or carry-on luggage. By the second video, I'm already annoyed and find out that you can turn the brightness of the screen to 0 to cheat your way out of not having to watch the same video three times in a row. As we fly over Kazakhstan, I see some crazy looking clouds and then the sky opens up to Astana. It's interesting to see the city from up above, where the crops make distinct shapes.
- After a while, we arrive at the airport and head out as a group out to a bus, which would take us to our hostel in the city. We settle down in our rooms and head out to the city to get some dinner. Walking around in the country's capital is strange. The city is not surrounded by mountains and it is noticeably cooler and windier in comparison to Almaty. There are not many people walking around, which makes the large, spotless city seem devoid of life. I take notice of the fact that there are many trash cans located at every few feet, yet no signs of recycling bins.
- We make our way to a mall and sit down in a Georgian restaurant. I order some pear flavored lemonade and the cheapest khachapuri, baffled by the price difference. Everything in Astana is about 150 - 200% pricier than in Almaty! I am the first on my table to get my food and it looks like a really cheap quesadilla. I share my food with the table and after a long wait time, everyone gets their food. On the table there is an advertisement for the restaurant, boasting short wait times to the extent that you don't have to stand in line. I joke that this advertisement isn't far from the truth - we didn't have to stand in line. Instead, we just had to sit in line for an eternity! After dinner, we try to find our way out of the mall. It is closing, and the escalators are for some reason closed off, so we look around for stairs to exit. We find the exit stairs hidden in the back of the mall and go down one flight of stairs. We try to explore the second floor of the mall to see if we can find a convenience store to buy some water bottles for the following day, but a janitor yells at us that the mall is closed and we are forbidden from staying longer. This is really strange to me, considering that some of the restaurants are open for a few more hours, but whatever.
We exit the mall and separate ways. I head over to find a convenience store with Bryce, and the rest of the group goes over either back to the hostel or to a bar. Me and Bryce walk around for a bit and then I ask a local for some help. All of the signs are in Kazakh, including most of the store names, so it was a bit hard to navigate, but the local pointed us the correct way to the nearest convenience store. Me and Bryce secure some supplies and head our way back to the hostel. On the way back we pass a couple of Kazakh cops in groups of 3 that are probably looking around for drunk people to arrest. They are dressed in dark blue and look more like American cops, and as we pass them, they fortunately don't bother us.
Me and Bryce pass back around a large building in the center of the city that is topped with a golden sphere and I remember information about attempts of Astana turning into a smart city. Me and Bryce look around for signs of technology: wifi trees and charging benches, and find some signs of these technologies being implemented in the city. I open up one of the trash cans to see if it is easily accessible to janitors or other people, and have trouble closing it. me and Bryce quickly wander off and return to the hostel. On the way back, we get a bit lost due to very similar looking buildings. We get to a building that has a large 5 written on it, but I remember that our building had 7 written on it instead. However, we try going to this building and it feels wrong. I look at the flowers in the playground and notice that a flower in a certain spot is alive, where as in our playground that certain flower was dead. Bryce finds the way back to our actual hostel, which was right across from the burger king, and we get back safely. I give Floyd a water bottle for tomorrow and head off to bed.
Day one of the our week-long vacation is completed!
Finals Week
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