ADJUSTING TO KARAGANDA

Well we have now been in our new city of Karaganda for a little over two whole days. It has been quite the adventure to say the least. First of all, the train ride was a lot of fun and a good experience. We did not have any delays once we were on the train, and it seemed to pass by fairly quickly. We spent our time talking, reading, and blundering our way through conversations with Kazakh or Russian speaking folks (who were very patient with us for the most part) on their way to Karaganda. I enjoyed it and found it a good time to relax, especially since there was really nowhere I could go for 18 hours straight.

The city is hard to describe at this point. We are in an apartment complex surrounded by many, many other apartments that rise high into the sky. I call it the San Francisco of apartment complexes because the windows on the outside of the complexes are all so close together and they rise up 10-15 stories high. The weather has been great every since we got here, so that has been really nice.

We have been getting used to travelling around town by bus and Mashruka (a bus-like van). There are certain numbered buses that we must take to get us into town and to the school, so we were glad when we went downtown today and actually got off at a stop that was fairly close to our school. Walking by foot will also soon become a favorite past-time for all of us as we must do a lot of it to get anywhere we want to go when not riding on the buses.

Tomrrow is Sunday, and we will be welcoming two new teachers into town at the train station in the afternoon. Classes start a week from Monday (Sept. 11th), so we will be spending this coming week preparing our lessons and getting ready to meet our students at the Small Business Training Center (SBTC). I will be teaching two classes of Business-English, which will be different from the original English classes I had planned on teaching. My classes will be more focused on business vocabulary and writing, and the students will be a little more advanced. I look forward to that opportunity and the chance to meet these new students.
- posted by Joel @ 8:14 PM

 
PLANE FLIGHT TO KAZAKHSTAN

Flew out of San Francisco and arrived in Frankfurt. Plane flight in was very smooth. We arrived in Almaty, Kazakhstan late last night from Frankfurt and found a hotel about one hour later. Everyone was wiped out about that time, so it was very easy to get to sleep. Almaty is a nice city with a lot of trees. I don't expect to see this once we reach Karaganda. Our train for Karaganda leaves tomorrow and it is about a eighteen hour ride up north to our final destination. So far it has been interesting walking around town today. We found a money changing place, ate lunch at a restaurant...bought vada su gazam by accident (water with gas/bubbles), took a bus ride downtown, registered ourselves at the US Embassy, and now we are in a mall and we have found an internet cafe. Tonight we will be getting a good rest and getting set to go for our train ride tomorrow. I hope to connect online again later this week once in Karaganda.
- posted by Joel @ 6:21 PM

 
First Entry:

Leaving from San Francisco International tomrrow at 2:20pm. Will meet my team at the airport as they arrive from LAX. We fly to Frankfurt, Germany and from there will change planes and fly into Almaty, Kazakhstan. From that point, we take a 20 hour train ride to Karaganda. We expect to arrive in Karaganda on Wednesday Afternoon
- posted by Joel @ 1:53 AM