Now for the Summer Action

Winding down the school year demands patience and flexibility. The school year ended on May 25th. After all the testing and grades, I can still honestly say I still love teaching after four years of it. So, the first year of Peace Corps teaching has ended. What am I going to do during those long summer days when the sun only sets around 11pm? I’ll be busy at summer camps and traveling. As of now, I’ll be leading a summer camp in Lesnoye, assisting at a camp in the southern city of Taldykalgan , and then helping out a fellow volunteer with his museum project afterwards in the north. Finally, I’ll probably tour Kazakhstan with my parents after savoring spicy curry and drinking some cooling coconut juice with them in South India .

Almost everyone in Lesnoye grows their own vegetables and potatoes. Cabbage, onion, radish, beets, and carrots grow well in Kazakh soil. My host family has substantial property. Their vegetable garden is huge and demands lots of work. On top of growing vegetables, they also grow strawberries, boysenberries, and blackberries. After getting home around 4, I till the earth and shovel soil till about 9pm with Aliona and Anatoli. Getting to see the results of your hard work and feeling your back muscles strengthen is a reward in itself. Plus, you sleep like a sack of potatoes after working. This rigorous farm hand work is a first for me in my life. I wouldn’t make a profession out of it but it’s great for the time being. After all this work, the family and I went to the nearby forest for some R & R.

AHH! The thrill of Spring!

Kazakhstan is not all barren rough steppes. The snow has melted and many wildflowers and streams have surfaced almost overnight in the north. Though professional projects and duties occupy much time, I still have time leftover to relish the outdoors since the sun only sets around 9:30 nowadays. Two fish species swim through Lesnoye for a period of 10 days. The locals are on this. At the streams, locals catch the 6 inchers with their wire nets. The fishing is relatively simple: dip your wire net into the stream, hold it very still for about 10-15 seconds, and finally pull it swiftly out of the water. Sometimes, there’ll be as many as 3 or 4 six inchers flapping away in the wire meshing. Over the course of two hours, Viktor (one of my students) and I caught about 70 fish. The locals enjoy salting and sun-drying the little fellas.

Russian food does not have the best reputation. Yes, Russian food is generally on the bland side of the taste spectrum but when you sample fresh Russian honey and sallow, your opinion on Russian cuisine will change. My host father Anatoli is a businessman. He sells honey to local villages and pork to the cities. He has ten pigs in the sty year round and raises 6 bee homes (about 50 hives) during the warmer months. So, this means we sometimes eat very fresh pork and get to sample fresh honey. Honey straight off the comb is out of this world delicious. Sallow is a Russian delicacy. It’s like really fatty tasty bacon (see pic) without the meat. So, it is 100% pig fat and keeps you real warm and satisfied during the 6 months of snow.