At COS Conference back in June, one of the activities we did was to write down a funny/interesting story that we will remember from Kazakhstan. After a long time spent tracking down these scraps of paper from my peers, I finally have them in hand and will transcribe some here for your reading pleasure :D
"We sang 'Better Together' by Jack Johnson at our 5-year old host brother's circumcision party."
-Corinne
***************
"In my apartment that I share with a local, I've slowly been accidentally and absentmindedly destroying things. I've burned the carpet, stained the pans with curry, and caused the wallpaper to rip simply because of opening the window. I expected to be chastised and yelled at for my idiocy. The local's response was, "Eh, want some homemade wine?"
-Scott
***************
"My host mom told me I will never get married because I can't cook without a recipe. Unfortunately, this did not stop the marriage offers from coming..."
-Anna
***************
"This winter in my village around January, the septic tank froze. My host dad curtly said 'Roshan, you will need to tolerate soon'. So, for the next two months, we had no septic, and since we have no outhouse at my home, I went to the toilet literally with the pigs almost on a daily basis. Oh how I missed the privacy of an outhouse."
-Roshan
**************
"After getting a stomach bug in India, I was forced to give a stool sample at side in a local clinic. I had to give said stool sample in a household cooking pot, because apparently that was the most suitable apparatus they had, and I was given strips from magazine pages for toilet paper. It was super."
-Tom
****************
"For the first 6 weeks at my VERY professional NGO, I mistakenly called a common, cherio-like cracker (whose name is 'sooshkee'), by a horribly wrong name. Instead of saying 'sooshkee', I kept saying 'sooCHkee', which in Russian means 'little bitches'. So, they didn't correct me because they thought it was hilarious to hear me say, 'Mmmm these little bitches are tasty!' or 'Can we get some more of these little bitches?' or 'Can you pass me the little bitches?' or even 'Gosh, I sure love these little bitches!!' They still laugh at me, actually."
-Me
***************
"At a teacher's picnic, we had a skit competition. Everything was in Kazakh and I am a Russian speaker, so when a man dressed in banana peels and leaves started acting, all I understood was my name, 'America', and 'Africa'. All of a sudden he charged me, scooped me up and ran into the hills with me. That's when I realized he was bride-napping me. But don't worry, I am still without a husband."
-Sam P.
**************
"I had to come to Almaty unexpectedly and bribed my way onto a 'full' train just as it was leaving and station, only to realize I'd forgotten to leave my keys for the person watching my apartment and feeding my cat. He called from the station to tell me, and in a panic, I threw my keys out of the window of the moving train for him to go and find along the tracks."
-Bree
***************
"First train ride. The guy next to me was so impressed by my Kazakh toast that he made me repeat it for 3 groups. Later, after his wife fell asleep, he snuck out vodka and we took a few 100gram shots and sand Beatles songs together."
-Michael
***************
"I was trying to say 'When we arrive in Petropavlask the weather will be chilly', and instead what came out was, 'Tomorrow I will need a sanitary napkin'".
-Aaron (this was in sign language)
***************
"3 Volunteers and myself were in Karaganda and hopped in a taxi to go to Karkaralinsk, a village in a national park. We all fell asleep and when we woke up, we were outside of Astana, where we had been earlier that day. We asked him to take us back, and he said he would for double the price. Why double the price? Because it's holiday pricing to go back. We made it a night in Astana."
-Chris T
***************
"Once, I saw a cow in the middle of a luscious, green pasture...eating a cardboard box."
-Jon
***************
"I got my butt grabbed by a FIVE YEAR OLD...good to know I still got it :D"
-Echo
***************
"Because the air in Kazakhstan is so dry, clothes tend to stick to each other. One day, in a lesson, I had been sitting for probably ten minutes, wearing a loose-fitting skirt and nude-colored tights. I got up rather quickly to write on the board, and my skirt had gotten stuck into my tights...I was exposed. Thank God for Christmas-package granny panties..."
-Audrey
***************
"For 15 months, I thought our cat was named 'Trash', and my host family just thought that my accent was off every time I said its name."
-Gambrill
***************
"I was going to a conference where I was going to speak only Kazakh, and I was nervous, so my counterpart, in an effort to comfort me, sent me a motivational SMS of 'Don't worry, you'll do great. Break your leg.'"
-Laura M
*************
"I was reading over a translation that a teacher of mine had done about biology and plants. I was reading about some kind of tulip or something, and read 'the tulip is bisexual'. I think the idea was that it had both male and female parts."
-Dawn
*************
"At 10pm in the middle of the frozen steppe, my bus silently tipped over. I say silently because no one made a noise, including the child that I fell on. No explanation, no plan of action, and a lack of free tickets for life reminded me that I was in Kazakhstan."
-Sam C
**************
"My counterpart asked me to be her 'padrushka' at her wedding, which is the person who sits next to her at both weddings, the bride's and the groom's. Well, by the end of the first wedding ceremony, I hadn't slept in 36 hours, so I got ridiculously sick, and I spent half of the groom's wedding puking in the bathroom of the cafe. The worst part was everyone was so worried about me, that attention shifted from my friend, the bride, all onto me. It was mortifying. Now it's funny, though."
-Sarah
***************
"Kazakhstan has tried to maim me in bizarre and unsettling ways throughout my service. I fell into a manhole filled with steaming human waste, almost fell into a water-filled trash pit while rescuing a dog, and recently got bitch-slapped by a six-year-old on a train."
-Katharine
***************
"I pooped myself two and a half times in one day IN PUBLIC. Thanks giardia <3"
-Phillip
***************
"My Russian still sucks, so when I was describing my kids to my tutor, I told her my daughter works at a store which sells 'man parts' instead of 'car parts'. In Russian, 'man' and 'car' are very similar. She was horrified until we got it finally to a place where she understood my daughter was not actually a sex worker."
-Paul
**************
"During my second Russian tutoring session at my site, my Russian tutor's 6-month old son woke up from a nap and began to cry. This meant it was time for dinner, I guess. She came back with him and an unbuttoned blouse. Dinner time happened right in front of me. I found this rather distracting."
-Myles
**************
"Riding in a 4-hour marshrutka ride going home, I had to pee so badly that I was trying to plan a way to go in my Nalgene. I had my pants unbuttoned, and my fellow Volunteer had her coat held up, when the man sitting in the seat beside us woke up. I lasted the next 30 minutes until we got to the rest stop. At the rest stop, the hole was completely frozen over and I had to watch my stream run out the open door. Also, I told the driver at one point, 'It's a collision', instead of, 'It's an emergency' to get them to pull over."
-Hannah
**************
"I was asked to judge a student 'debate' at a local university, only to find that it was actually a KBH comedy show with sparkly Lady Gaga dancers and inappropriate jokes. CULTURE SHOCK."
-Becca
***************
"I was walking with another Volunteer roughly my age, and someone asked if she was my mother."
-Chris
***************
"Hit a cow while in a taxi with a drunk driver (with visiting PCTs in the backseat)."
-Jessica
***************
"Got proposed to on the marshrutka on Valentine's Day by the bus driver. We had just met."
-Becky
"We sang 'Better Together' by Jack Johnson at our 5-year old host brother's circumcision party."
-Corinne
***************
"In my apartment that I share with a local, I've slowly been accidentally and absentmindedly destroying things. I've burned the carpet, stained the pans with curry, and caused the wallpaper to rip simply because of opening the window. I expected to be chastised and yelled at for my idiocy. The local's response was, "Eh, want some homemade wine?"
-Scott
***************
"My host mom told me I will never get married because I can't cook without a recipe. Unfortunately, this did not stop the marriage offers from coming..."
-Anna
***************
"This winter in my village around January, the septic tank froze. My host dad curtly said 'Roshan, you will need to tolerate soon'. So, for the next two months, we had no septic, and since we have no outhouse at my home, I went to the toilet literally with the pigs almost on a daily basis. Oh how I missed the privacy of an outhouse."
-Roshan
**************
"After getting a stomach bug in India, I was forced to give a stool sample at side in a local clinic. I had to give said stool sample in a household cooking pot, because apparently that was the most suitable apparatus they had, and I was given strips from magazine pages for toilet paper. It was super."
-Tom
****************
"For the first 6 weeks at my VERY professional NGO, I mistakenly called a common, cherio-like cracker (whose name is 'sooshkee'), by a horribly wrong name. Instead of saying 'sooshkee', I kept saying 'sooCHkee', which in Russian means 'little bitches'. So, they didn't correct me because they thought it was hilarious to hear me say, 'Mmmm these little bitches are tasty!' or 'Can we get some more of these little bitches?' or 'Can you pass me the little bitches?' or even 'Gosh, I sure love these little bitches!!' They still laugh at me, actually."
-Me
***************
"At a teacher's picnic, we had a skit competition. Everything was in Kazakh and I am a Russian speaker, so when a man dressed in banana peels and leaves started acting, all I understood was my name, 'America', and 'Africa'. All of a sudden he charged me, scooped me up and ran into the hills with me. That's when I realized he was bride-napping me. But don't worry, I am still without a husband."
-Sam P.
**************
"I had to come to Almaty unexpectedly and bribed my way onto a 'full' train just as it was leaving and station, only to realize I'd forgotten to leave my keys for the person watching my apartment and feeding my cat. He called from the station to tell me, and in a panic, I threw my keys out of the window of the moving train for him to go and find along the tracks."
-Bree
***************
"First train ride. The guy next to me was so impressed by my Kazakh toast that he made me repeat it for 3 groups. Later, after his wife fell asleep, he snuck out vodka and we took a few 100gram shots and sand Beatles songs together."
-Michael
***************
"I was trying to say 'When we arrive in Petropavlask the weather will be chilly', and instead what came out was, 'Tomorrow I will need a sanitary napkin'".
-Aaron (this was in sign language)
***************
"3 Volunteers and myself were in Karaganda and hopped in a taxi to go to Karkaralinsk, a village in a national park. We all fell asleep and when we woke up, we were outside of Astana, where we had been earlier that day. We asked him to take us back, and he said he would for double the price. Why double the price? Because it's holiday pricing to go back. We made it a night in Astana."
-Chris T
***************
"Once, I saw a cow in the middle of a luscious, green pasture...eating a cardboard box."
-Jon
***************
"I got my butt grabbed by a FIVE YEAR OLD...good to know I still got it :D"
-Echo
***************
"Because the air in Kazakhstan is so dry, clothes tend to stick to each other. One day, in a lesson, I had been sitting for probably ten minutes, wearing a loose-fitting skirt and nude-colored tights. I got up rather quickly to write on the board, and my skirt had gotten stuck into my tights...I was exposed. Thank God for Christmas-package granny panties..."
-Audrey
***************
"For 15 months, I thought our cat was named 'Trash', and my host family just thought that my accent was off every time I said its name."
-Gambrill
***************
"I was going to a conference where I was going to speak only Kazakh, and I was nervous, so my counterpart, in an effort to comfort me, sent me a motivational SMS of 'Don't worry, you'll do great. Break your leg.'"
-Laura M
*************
"I was reading over a translation that a teacher of mine had done about biology and plants. I was reading about some kind of tulip or something, and read 'the tulip is bisexual'. I think the idea was that it had both male and female parts."
-Dawn
*************
"At 10pm in the middle of the frozen steppe, my bus silently tipped over. I say silently because no one made a noise, including the child that I fell on. No explanation, no plan of action, and a lack of free tickets for life reminded me that I was in Kazakhstan."
-Sam C
**************
"My counterpart asked me to be her 'padrushka' at her wedding, which is the person who sits next to her at both weddings, the bride's and the groom's. Well, by the end of the first wedding ceremony, I hadn't slept in 36 hours, so I got ridiculously sick, and I spent half of the groom's wedding puking in the bathroom of the cafe. The worst part was everyone was so worried about me, that attention shifted from my friend, the bride, all onto me. It was mortifying. Now it's funny, though."
-Sarah
***************
"Kazakhstan has tried to maim me in bizarre and unsettling ways throughout my service. I fell into a manhole filled with steaming human waste, almost fell into a water-filled trash pit while rescuing a dog, and recently got bitch-slapped by a six-year-old on a train."
-Katharine
***************
"I pooped myself two and a half times in one day IN PUBLIC. Thanks giardia <3"
-Phillip
***************
"My Russian still sucks, so when I was describing my kids to my tutor, I told her my daughter works at a store which sells 'man parts' instead of 'car parts'. In Russian, 'man' and 'car' are very similar. She was horrified until we got it finally to a place where she understood my daughter was not actually a sex worker."
-Paul
**************
"During my second Russian tutoring session at my site, my Russian tutor's 6-month old son woke up from a nap and began to cry. This meant it was time for dinner, I guess. She came back with him and an unbuttoned blouse. Dinner time happened right in front of me. I found this rather distracting."
-Myles
**************
"Riding in a 4-hour marshrutka ride going home, I had to pee so badly that I was trying to plan a way to go in my Nalgene. I had my pants unbuttoned, and my fellow Volunteer had her coat held up, when the man sitting in the seat beside us woke up. I lasted the next 30 minutes until we got to the rest stop. At the rest stop, the hole was completely frozen over and I had to watch my stream run out the open door. Also, I told the driver at one point, 'It's a collision', instead of, 'It's an emergency' to get them to pull over."
-Hannah
**************
"I was asked to judge a student 'debate' at a local university, only to find that it was actually a KBH comedy show with sparkly Lady Gaga dancers and inappropriate jokes. CULTURE SHOCK."
-Becca
***************
"I was walking with another Volunteer roughly my age, and someone asked if she was my mother."
-Chris
***************
"Hit a cow while in a taxi with a drunk driver (with visiting PCTs in the backseat)."
-Jessica
***************
"Got proposed to on the marshrutka on Valentine's Day by the bus driver. We had just met."
-Becky
Funny and insightful. Would make good training material.
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