Women's Day Weekend
Next Tuesday is International Women's Day. Which means volunteers have to go execute this conversation over and over and over again with everyone we know: "Next Tuesday is International Women's Day." "I know." "Do you celebrate it in America?" "No, we don't." "How can you not celebrate it? It's INTERNATIONAL Women's Day." "Yep."
It also means we get Monday and Tuesday off work. Between this and the two weeks we allegedly get off for Nauruz, I'll be vacationing more than I'll be working this March. All the volunteers from the area between and including Petro and Astana congregated in Kokshetau, bascally spontaneously, which was the biggest Kokshetau gathering since Mckay's birthday. Bryan, Mckay, and I were thus de facto hosts, a task that we executed well enough, I think, considering it was the first time Bryan and I tried to handle so many people. What did we do?
We had a bayna at Mckay's on Friday. It was a normal banya, with the usual whacking-with-branches and standing naked in the snow looking at the stars. Bryan and I got a ride back to Kokshetau from Mckay's dad, who, on the way, explained his financial troubles and entrepenureal hopes for overcoming them. He has two plans - the first is to plant wheat in some land he's managed to gather together. He has all the equipment he needs, he says, but cannot afford seed. To get a bank loan (at 20% interest), however, his farm must be in operation for a year. So he needs to somehow raise money for seed to start. One of his plans to raise money is to sell to a wealthy western businessman the rights to a process his friend, a Kazakhstani mettalurgist, designed, which he claims will increase the output of any steel refinery by ten percent. Now he just needs a trustworthy contact in the west with a lot of money.
He talked about his projects so intensely and passionately that he had to stop the car once to elaborate them for us. It's probably mostly the company I happen to keep, but whatever the actual merits of his plans, I've never met anyone in America who seemed to believe so passionately in the possibility and promise of entrepeneurship. He spoke with an urgent and real sense that with the fall of the USSR, Kazakhstan had been opened up, and there was money laying out there for him and his family if he was only smart and dedicated enough to get it. Damn, I hope he makes it, one way or another.
After Mckay's, volunteers slowly conglomerated variously and without coordination in both my and Bryan's apartments until about six, when we went sledding. This was like no sledding I've ever experienced in my life. For sleds we had six $1 butt-sized pieces of sturdy, purple plastic with handles in front.
To get to the hill, we took the number one bus to the edge of town, where there are some woods and what seems like some sort of artificially dug pit with one very, very steep side. On the steep side, sledders have worn down two parallel chutes that have been worn Kokshetau sidewalk-smooth and slick. You put the plastic between your legs, shuffle to the top of one of the chutes, sit down, lift your legs, and off you go. After about ten feet you're going a comfortable speed, after twenty the speed becomes uncomfortable, and after thirty you no longer have any control of anything. About now, your sled comes out from under you and you can't see anything from the flying snow. If you try to steer or slow down with your feet, you'll only do somersaults the rest of the way down. It's best to keep your legs up and in a devil-may-care manner slide on your back until you slowly realize that you are no longer moving and are face-down in a snow drift somewhere near the bottom. Then you'd better start hustling back up the hill - the exercise will make all the snow inside your clothes seem less cold. It wasn't until we were waiting for the bus that I finally managed to get all the ice out of my eyelashes.
Bryan and I cooked spaghetti and garlic bread for everyone that night, which went mostly well except that we had only three forks and about fifteen people, and then we went to a disco. On Sunday we played chess in the morning, the crowds mostly dispersed, Gulshat and I tried to learn how to sing "I'll Fly Away" in two-part harmony (which will be an insufferably-cute-couple thing to do if we ever get it right), played pool at Jekebatyr, and ate vereniki and watched "Big Fish" on Bryan's computer. And so the weekend ended.
All in all, a good time, and good practice -- I understand the traditinal duty of Thanksgiving for the volunteers in the North will fall to Kokshetau next year.
It also means we get Monday and Tuesday off work. Between this and the two weeks we allegedly get off for Nauruz, I'll be vacationing more than I'll be working this March. All the volunteers from the area between and including Petro and Astana congregated in Kokshetau, bascally spontaneously, which was the biggest Kokshetau gathering since Mckay's birthday. Bryan, Mckay, and I were thus de facto hosts, a task that we executed well enough, I think, considering it was the first time Bryan and I tried to handle so many people. What did we do?
We had a bayna at Mckay's on Friday. It was a normal banya, with the usual whacking-with-branches and standing naked in the snow looking at the stars. Bryan and I got a ride back to Kokshetau from Mckay's dad, who, on the way, explained his financial troubles and entrepenureal hopes for overcoming them. He has two plans - the first is to plant wheat in some land he's managed to gather together. He has all the equipment he needs, he says, but cannot afford seed. To get a bank loan (at 20% interest), however, his farm must be in operation for a year. So he needs to somehow raise money for seed to start. One of his plans to raise money is to sell to a wealthy western businessman the rights to a process his friend, a Kazakhstani mettalurgist, designed, which he claims will increase the output of any steel refinery by ten percent. Now he just needs a trustworthy contact in the west with a lot of money.
He talked about his projects so intensely and passionately that he had to stop the car once to elaborate them for us. It's probably mostly the company I happen to keep, but whatever the actual merits of his plans, I've never met anyone in America who seemed to believe so passionately in the possibility and promise of entrepeneurship. He spoke with an urgent and real sense that with the fall of the USSR, Kazakhstan had been opened up, and there was money laying out there for him and his family if he was only smart and dedicated enough to get it. Damn, I hope he makes it, one way or another.
After Mckay's, volunteers slowly conglomerated variously and without coordination in both my and Bryan's apartments until about six, when we went sledding. This was like no sledding I've ever experienced in my life. For sleds we had six $1 butt-sized pieces of sturdy, purple plastic with handles in front.
To get to the hill, we took the number one bus to the edge of town, where there are some woods and what seems like some sort of artificially dug pit with one very, very steep side. On the steep side, sledders have worn down two parallel chutes that have been worn Kokshetau sidewalk-smooth and slick. You put the plastic between your legs, shuffle to the top of one of the chutes, sit down, lift your legs, and off you go. After about ten feet you're going a comfortable speed, after twenty the speed becomes uncomfortable, and after thirty you no longer have any control of anything. About now, your sled comes out from under you and you can't see anything from the flying snow. If you try to steer or slow down with your feet, you'll only do somersaults the rest of the way down. It's best to keep your legs up and in a devil-may-care manner slide on your back until you slowly realize that you are no longer moving and are face-down in a snow drift somewhere near the bottom. Then you'd better start hustling back up the hill - the exercise will make all the snow inside your clothes seem less cold. It wasn't until we were waiting for the bus that I finally managed to get all the ice out of my eyelashes.
Bryan and I cooked spaghetti and garlic bread for everyone that night, which went mostly well except that we had only three forks and about fifteen people, and then we went to a disco. On Sunday we played chess in the morning, the crowds mostly dispersed, Gulshat and I tried to learn how to sing "I'll Fly Away" in two-part harmony (which will be an insufferably-cute-couple thing to do if we ever get it right), played pool at Jekebatyr, and ate vereniki and watched "Big Fish" on Bryan's computer. And so the weekend ended.
All in all, a good time, and good practice -- I understand the traditinal duty of Thanksgiving for the volunteers in the North will fall to Kokshetau next year.
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