11 Nov. – Pre-Service Training (PST) ended with quite a bang. It was busy, fun, exciting, and emotional all at once.

Last week we spent nearly every day in Almaty at the office. We have more than a couple members of the OCAP group who follow politics feverishly. Since Tuesday was election day, our program and training officer (Karen) arranged for us to go to the office early Wednesday morning, the same time the polls were beginning to close. (My host-mom thought we were crazy; I had to leave the house at 5:30 AM.) And Karen was so kind as to purchase pancake mix, syrup, butter, and peanut butter for us!!! So while most of the group was glued to the TV, a few of us were cooking or supervising the cooking. (I was supervising, believe it or not. It turns out that my new beau loves to cook pancakes, and some other things too!) And the staff kitchen/dining area is super cool – it looks like a bistro. When I walked in I commented that I want my next kitchen to look something like this, although just a bit more spacious I think.


Anyway, Sean cooked many, many pancakes before we decided that the cooks and supervisors should eat. It was well worth the wait. The pancakes were so delicious! (Don’t worry, Mom—yours are still the best. What can I say; I’m deprived.) And my friend Melanie and I convinced Sean to try peanut butter and syrup on his pancakes. He typically eats them with butter and had never heard of eating them with peanut butter. But he was game for trying it and he loved it!! I know my Dad is proud of me for spreading one of the many delicacies involving peanut butter.

The same morning I also learned that I can make peanut butter!! Many people here have meat grinders. Apparently peanuts can be run through the grinder two times and wallah: you have peanut butter!!! I am so excited. Surprisingly I am not missing peanut butter, but I do love it. It is also a source of protein which is often lacking in the diets of volunteers serving in Kazakhstan. So I may be purchasing a meat grinder later. And just like much of the food here, this will be the all natural variety which I started buying at home earlier this year.

Friday, November 7, was our swearing in ceremony. Aside from the Peace Corps staff, attendees included former and current volunteers, various Kazakhstani government dignitaries, the U.S. Ambassador to Kazakhstan, and some of our host families. It was held in Almaty, and this was the first time since August that all of the 20th group of Kazakhstan volunteers had been together. We started with 63 in Philadelphia, now we were down to 55. The ceremony included speeches from several individuals, including the Ambassador, who also swore us in as volunteers. Three different groups of volunteers sang songs. And one volunteer gave a short speech in Kazakh followed by a Russian speech by Sean.

A reception followed and there was an enormous amount of food (mostly pastries of the Kazakhstani variety) along with the largest sheet cake I have ever seen. After at least 30 minutes, I began seeing women with plates piled high with pastries. They were looking for sacks or other plates to cover the plate in hand. Many, many other women followed suit. Then I realized these host-mothers were gathering food for the volunteers departing for site that afternoon. Others just wanted the food to take home. I was completely bewildered by what I was witnessing. Even Sean’s host-mom gathered a good pile of pastries and found a sack for him to take them on the train. My initial reaction, the American one, was that these people had a lot of nerve taking this all of this food!! Who did they think they were?

Following the ‘pilfering’ people began migrating outside to take pictures and say their goodbyes. Most of the volunteers began departing for their permanent site, but some of us, including myself, went back to the training site for one more night. It was a very sad time for obvious reasons but I will not dwell on that here. Suffice it to say that Sean’s train left that night and mine did not leave until the following night.

After returning from Almaty I learned that my host-mother had also claimed a share of the pastries!! We sat down for tea and pastries with my host-dad and they finally explained to me that the taking of food at parties is a Kazakh tradition. My host-mom said she has never done this, and only did it then because her friend persuaded her to since so many other women were doing it. At least I have an explanation now.

That afternoon my host-parents went to the bazaar while I packed. When they returned my host-mom gave me slippers to keep my feet warm since I was moving north. If only I hadn’t taken so many books from the Peace Corps office to accompany me to the north. Before we boarded the bus for swearing in Sean grabbed a duffel bag for me from our training site that was left by a departing volunteer. I desperately needed this bag and only hoped it would hold the weight of the books that I crammed into it. Not only had I obtained more reading books for the long, cold winter, but I also had books that our resource center was getting rid of. There were piles of books that were either outdated or not checked out by anyone in a few years and all were free for taking and leaving with our organizations. Between the reading books, resource center books, language books we had been carrying daily for over two months, other materials Peace Corps had given us, and piles of paper we had accumulated during training, we were all weighted down with paper in various forms!!! And we were all cursing ourselves for taking so many books, especially when many of us had already taken most of the books to site (in mid-October) that we had accumulated during the first part of training.

After one last night with my first host-family, a Peace Corps van picked up those of us bound for the Ust-Kamenogorsk area early Saturday afternoon and delivered us to the train station. It was then that I learned we had another volunteer decide to return to the United States. (Kaz-20 now numbers 54.) This happened to be my site mate, an education volunteer. For the next year at least, I will be the only volunteer in my town. Perhaps an education volunteer from the next group will be placed here, but that will not be known for many months, I imagine. It really makes no difference to me. I just have the additional advantage of not having a fluent English-speaker nearby so I am forced to communicate in Russian all the time except during English Club. (More on that at a later date.) The concern with speaking almost solely in Russian is that I know of two volunteers who now speak in very broken English. But not all volunteers fluent in Russian have this problem with English so I am not sure how it happens or how to keep it from happening. Although I think it is a problem that will remedy itself once residence in the U.S. and regular communication in English is re-established.

After a relatively uneventful trip to site (as long as you don’t take into account the arguments with the ridiculously heavy bags), I am now residing with a single woman in an apartment. She is about 50 years old and speaks only Russian. This is just what I wanted: more Russian and no English. The apartment building was built for the Soviet elite. The ceilings are approximately 10 feet high, the common corridors are at least twice as wide as other apartment buildings I have been in, and the apartment itself is quite spacious. I have a nice-sized room with ample storage. My walk to the office is about 5 minutes. And this is all very near the center of town so almost everything I need is within walking distance. There are a number of city buses, though, if needed.

So PST is over and the first three months at site begins. We have all been looking forward to this time, knowing that a whole new set of challenges awaits us. While we have developed significant language skills during the last several weeks, we must function on our own in this still new country and culture, working at a new job, living with a new host family, and without a cadre of our fellow volunteers/Americans nearby. Yet, if we did not have some idea of the many trials and tribulations that await us during the coming months and feel that we have the courage, determination, and perseverance to face them head on, I think most of us would not be here now. We have much to gain, personally and professionally, from struggling through whatever is thrown at us.