A Trip to Almaty and Astana. International Friendship.
I went to Almaty with Bryan to help with the English education training sessions for the next group of Kazakhstan NGO volunteers.
On the way, we stopped at Almaty, the new capitol of Kazakhstan. It's quite an experience to see a modern city raised by dictat. I have never seen so many cranes in a single place as from the center of the new government complex, and never have I seen such an enormous government complex, with a design taken out of a new Star Wars backdrop, go up with so little around it. Astana is a sprawling city by design, and to get from the center to the various monuments required long bus trips through very little. Astana is also an impressive exhibition of modern Kazakh taste in architecture, which has inherited the Soviet taste for expansive grandiosity without a trace of its restraint.
We ascended Astana's towering art-tower, which has a real name that I cannot recall, but it's colloquial name is "Chupa-chups", a brand of lollypop. The tower resembles a very round egg born aloft by a fountain of water, or possibly a chupa-chups. From the top of it, you can look from a bird's eye view of Astana-in-transition, put your hand in a bronze negative relief of Nazarbayev's, and buy a real chupa-chups, the candy, all of which I did.
We then rode the train down through spring to summer in Almaty, where training was to be. I alternately had my teeth cleaned and my spleen measured in Almaty and gave lessons an hour away in Kapchegai, which another volunteer has aptly described as a "Mad Max Beach Resort".
The new group of volunteers seemed very cool and capable, from what little we ended up seeing of them. An unofficial part of our mission was to pick a nickname for them. Every Kazakhstan volunteer group has a nickname. Kaz12 was Kaz Drunk, Kaz13 was Kaz 90210, Kaz14 was Kaz Spoiled, and we were (ta-da!) Kaz Lame, because of our not-going-to-disconess. We are recommending that Kaz16 be Kaz Tastrophe, because of the incredible number of injuries, hospitalization, elective-termination-of-services, and other mishaps that characterized their training.
I was riding on a bus in Almaty with my American volunteer friend Bob, who sports a black, bushy beard, and we were speaking English. Consequently, the conductor asked us where we were from. Bob replied that he was from Iran. And I am from America, I said. It is an international friendship, said Bob. It is for world peace, I said. Can you imagine? said the conductor to his friend. An American!
On the way, we stopped at Almaty, the new capitol of Kazakhstan. It's quite an experience to see a modern city raised by dictat. I have never seen so many cranes in a single place as from the center of the new government complex, and never have I seen such an enormous government complex, with a design taken out of a new Star Wars backdrop, go up with so little around it. Astana is a sprawling city by design, and to get from the center to the various monuments required long bus trips through very little. Astana is also an impressive exhibition of modern Kazakh taste in architecture, which has inherited the Soviet taste for expansive grandiosity without a trace of its restraint.
We ascended Astana's towering art-tower, which has a real name that I cannot recall, but it's colloquial name is "Chupa-chups", a brand of lollypop. The tower resembles a very round egg born aloft by a fountain of water, or possibly a chupa-chups. From the top of it, you can look from a bird's eye view of Astana-in-transition, put your hand in a bronze negative relief of Nazarbayev's, and buy a real chupa-chups, the candy, all of which I did.
We then rode the train down through spring to summer in Almaty, where training was to be. I alternately had my teeth cleaned and my spleen measured in Almaty and gave lessons an hour away in Kapchegai, which another volunteer has aptly described as a "Mad Max Beach Resort".
The new group of volunteers seemed very cool and capable, from what little we ended up seeing of them. An unofficial part of our mission was to pick a nickname for them. Every Kazakhstan volunteer group has a nickname. Kaz12 was Kaz Drunk, Kaz13 was Kaz 90210, Kaz14 was Kaz Spoiled, and we were (ta-da!) Kaz Lame, because of our not-going-to-disconess. We are recommending that Kaz16 be Kaz Tastrophe, because of the incredible number of injuries, hospitalization, elective-termination-of-services, and other mishaps that characterized their training.
I was riding on a bus in Almaty with my American volunteer friend Bob, who sports a black, bushy beard, and we were speaking English. Consequently, the conductor asked us where we were from. Bob replied that he was from Iran. And I am from America, I said. It is an international friendship, said Bob. It is for world peace, I said. Can you imagine? said the conductor to his friend. An American!
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