spring and summer updates

So blog access is still blocked so I haven’t been updating my blog. I can’t post any pictures on here through the proxy but you can click on this link to see some photographs from my recent trip to South Africa, Lesotho, and Swaziland:

copy and paste this to your browser

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2171315&id=2802786&l=a4200e1105



A lot has happened since my last real update which was way back in February. So in Feb there were only a few days of school. It was very cold. I went to Kostanai one weekend to hang out with Consin and we went bowling and hung out for a few hours before I had to take another train home to get to school. All of my local friends moved from the town at this time.



In March I worked a lot in other places besides my normal school. I started to work at the other school in town on a regular schedule and I was at the President’s School in Astana every Saturday too. I also started an English club in Astana after my lessons at the American Corner, which is a place sponsored by the US Embassy. A lot of people come to that and each meeting averages about 30 people. Since it started, I have had many guest speakers come from not only the US to speak but also from various other countries. It’s more of an international club that uses English as a common language. I hang out with the coordinator of the American Corner a lot, her name is Nurganym. At the end of March was Nauryz, an important Kazakh holiday. I went to Astana with Tobin, Jenny, Brendan, and Sagar to hang out and AC met up with us on our last day there. Then I got sick. But then the snow started to melt and was gone by April 15th! The first weekend in April, I hung out with Michael and his friend from America, Brad, that was visiting and we met with Berik and chilled in Astana. I saw Sholpan and Aigereem one day before they moved to Almaty. I went out with my colleagues from the Pres School one night for ice skating and then to a bar. Towards the end of April I hosted a conference at my school for English teachers in this state. About 30 came and it went well. I’ve also been working with the 5th graders more often at the orphanage.



May came and that brought the end of the school year. I did an activity in Astana with teenagers based around “Twilight”. I invented the chimana food and secret nachos which taste much better than regular nachos. The twist is that the real secret is the secret quesadilla that comes at the end. I was going to Astana about twice a week during May and then on the 25th school ended. My summer camp started the following week and was attended by Brendan, Sagar and AC. We taught about 15 girls how to play ultimate Frisbee and then we played it everyday for 2 weeks. However, 15 girls didn’t always come everyday. AC also didn’t come everyday. In our free time we watched a lot of TV shows and had ice cream sandwich parties when we made lots of cookies. I went to Astana to watch the USA-England game with David(he’s British). After camp ended I went down to Almaty on the train and saw Zhanna one day and then Mike Quinn another day. We went out clubbing and I came back and got my stuff for my trip to South Africa.



I got to SA on the 20th and me and Sagar met with Kristen and got to stay in her place for the first week we were there in Cape Town. We climbed Table Mountain, visited the Penguin Colony at Boulders, went to the Beach, went to the Netherlands-Cameroon game, watched a ton of soccer, met lots of people, went to museums and had a good time. After our first week there we went to Durban with Kristen where we witnessed America lose. It was heartbreaking, especially when you are in Africa at a beach party with 50,000 other people cheering against America and blowing vuvuzelas at you as your team loses. We decided to flee from that depressing place as the rains blew in that night and went up the Indian Ocean coast to the heart of Zululand. We met up with a PCV there and stayed with her in her village and then got to St Lucia where we hung out on the beach and went swimming in the ocean and relaxed. The next day we spent hitchhiking/walking to Swaziland. At one point, right after we crossed the border and didn’t really have a plan, a guy pulls up next to us and asks us where we are going and we respond that we aren’t sure and he tells us to get in the car because he’s going to the right place. He drops us off 50km later amid giraffes. It was indeed the correct place. Before nightfall we get to a hostel in Ezulwini Valley and we hang out. There we meet a girl named Jenna and her mother Katherine and they take us around on a tour for half a day in Swaziland the next day in their car (they are American but they used to live there and now the mother lives in Mozambique but the daughter just graduated from uni in the States). We visit a game reserve and see all sorts of wild animals and when it gets dark and we ask the guard how do we leave he tells us to drive out the road we came in on. Unfortunately, we don’t have a car and got a ride there. He tells us we should run because the hippos like to walk the roads at night and they are Africa’s deadliest animal. So we ran. All was good. We went back to SA and hung out til we got to Pretoria where Kristen left us. We met up with other PCVs there and hung out for a few days and celebrated the 4th. We left on the 5th and went to Lesotho where we stayed in a hut and trekked on horses across Mordor (the inspiration clearly, because Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein). We visited 27,000 year old cave man paintings and a waterfall and I hurt from riding the horse for so long. We eventually went back to Cape Town and couldn’t go shark cage diving due to bad weather. So we went to an Afrikaner cookout and then hang out with Danie and learned all about sames and opposites - that being fireballs and dishes. And off we went to Abu Dhabi where we couch surfed. It was about 120 degrees and humid so we hid in the A/C buildings. Before we knew it we were on a plane to Kaz. We were gone for 25 days. So more stuff happened but I’m making this short. The world cup was a lot of fun. The atmosphere was awesome and I met so many cool people from all over the world. South Africa is not only beautiful, it’s really nice too, and I did visit villages and stuff too so I got to see both sides of it and it was really a cool place. Lesotho was so rugged and had no roads and you can only travel by horse – very cool. Swaziland might be the most leisurely place in the world, it’s a shame so many people don’t stay there to experience it.



I took the bus right away to Taraz and then to Asa for baseball camp for 1 day and then the next day I left to go home. I sang Karaoke first and scored a 100 on a song in Russian. The bus was terrible and took forever and broke down once. They fixed it by throwing buckets of water on the overheated engine. I was in Astana for a few hours, went home, woke up , hung out with Aitugan and then went to language camp in Schuchinsk for a week where we watched movies in Russian and then I went to Astana with Michael and saw Berik and did English Club. Woke up, saw Nachalo, which is the Russian title of Inception, half understood it in Russian, and then met with Shinar before I went home and finally I’ve been home for a full 2 days now. After being all over for the past 6-7 weeks. Look at my pics, if you want to ask me about anything just send me an email. Laterssssssss.