IS THERE A PROBLEM OFFICER?

Here is something that just occurred to me recently that I had never thought about the entire year even though it was a common occurrence in my daily life. Imagine if you were riding on a public bus and you’re on your way to work, or maybe you’re in a taxi cab and you’re heading home for the evening. You’re just sitting and minding your own business when all of the sudden…two police officers climb into the vehicle and sit down on the bench next to you. Would you take notice of them? Would watch them out of the corner of your eye to see why in the world they are riding on a public transport vehicle? I certainly would be curious and maybe even a little scared. What if they’re tracking a suspected gunman or thief who is sitting in the seat right behind me and trying to figure out how to escape? Usually when the police are around, something is going down and people take notice.

Well I just realized this the other day when I happened to be riding in a marshrutka on the way to work and there were two local police officers sitting right next to me on the bench. Do you know how I felt…absolutely fine. Funny thing about different cultures…even when it comes to law enforcement there is still a different mentality about the way people perceive or think about these things. Here in the city, many officers don’t seem to have their own mode of transportation and they are often seen taking local buses or marshrutkas to get around town. I wonder if they get reimbursed for all of their bus rides, or maybe if they don’t have to pay at all. There’s a question I would not be willing to ask them though. I do get a little nervous sometimes because I wonder if they’ll notice that I am a foreigner and become suspicious of me (there can be reasons to be worried), but I haven’t been bothered the entire year and for that I have been grateful. Just another interesting difference in the adventures of getting around the city of Karaganda.

- posted by Joel @ 12:38 AM

 
TWO WEEKS LEFT OF TEACHING

The countdown has begun (for teachers and students) as we are down to our final two weeks of classes for the semester. This week my classes will be preparing for their final exam that will take place next week. They will have a test that will cover the major topics discussed this semester in business. We have had some interesting discussions in the areas of management, business letters, business ethics, accounting, resumes, marketing, and business meetings.

I am excited about the end drawing near, and I am also excited about seeing these students finish the semester and receive a certificate at the graduation ceremony. We will spend our last class of the year before graduation as one group with a traditional Kazakh/Russian celebration that will include food, music, and games. Out of the thirty some students that began the class last September, about twenty-three of them will complete the class. It is a good accomplishment for them because this is a class that they have taken in addition to their regular studies, their regular jobs, and their daily activities. Most of them are not required to take this class (unless their parents are paying), and they do it because they want to improve their English. I only hope that I have helped them in their efforts a bit and they that will remember much of what we have studied and discussed during the past year.


ALLERGIES AND MOSQUITOES

Yes they have both of these dreadful things here too. Normally I am severely afflicted with the spring hay fever which knocks me out for about a month in the early spring. The pollen and dust just drives me crazy. This year I have been fortunate in that I have not suffered any allergies, but now that it is warmer I have noticed the mosquitoes are starting to appear more often. The evidence of their activity is currently swelling up on my arms and legs thanks to bad allergic reactions I have to mosquito bites. When I lived in North Dakota, they used to have a joke that the mosquito was the also the state bird. It seems that they could qualify for that the country bird here as they are fairly large and intimidating as well.

- posted by Joel @ 6:54 AM

 
MORE INTERESTING STUDENT OPINIONS

Today in class we discussed the topic of “burnout” and how it can affect so many people today in work, school, or at home. I asked my class to give me a list of jobs they felt had the biggest potential for producing burnt out workers. My first class had an interesting combination. Their top three choices were a student, a stay-at-home-mom, and an unemployed person. Teachers were also mentioned and I tried to hint to them about how a teacher might be burned out from teaching, and one student mentioned that it can happen if the class doesn’t listen to the teacher. I said in my best sarcastic manner, “That’s right, especially when the teacher is trying to talk, but half the class is whispering to each other in Russian!” Only a couple of students got the joke and started laughing. I think the others missed it because they were too busy whispering to each other.

The second class’ top three choices were also interesting to me. Number one was a teacher, and then a soldier and oddly a ticket collector on a bus. That may not seem like such a horrible job, but here in Karaganda I have had my share of watching the work of those ticket collectors who have to wander the aisle of a bus for the entire day trying to remember who paid and who is trying to escape without paying. It is a thankless job that doesn’t have opportunity for promotion I suppose. This week was really bad to be a ticket collector because we had temperatures in the mid 90s that just made those buses roast like an oven. At the end of the day, everyone getting on the bus from work or school has a tendency to permeate the air with some pretty unpleasant smells, and the collector has to deal with that for the whole time. I can see how burnout might be a quick reaction to dealing with those sort of things.

- posted by Joel @ 7:13 AM

 
FINAL ENGLISH CLUB

This last weekend we finished up our final week of English club at the church. Well we will still have another meeting together but we plan to just have a time of fellowship together and not do anything organized. This last weekend however, I breathed a little sigh of relief as I realized that we had made it through a whole school year of clubs on Sunday. I have to admit, there were days when we had a difficult time coming up with new material to discuss, but things always seemed to work out well and people continued to come. We still get new visitors from time to time and on this last day there were several who I had never met before, and I was a little sad that they wouldn’t be able to come to any other meetings until next fall the club starts up again with the remaining teachers who come back.

Overall, it was a great year of weekly club meetings. We had so many opportunities to share interesting idioms relating to real world topics, and it was a great way for us to share with them about American opinions on life issues, but more importantly for me I was able to hear so many differing opinions about these life issues from these different people who came to our club during the last nine months. Thinking back on all the people who visited the church where the club was at, I am surprised to know how many different backgrounds and cultures we were able to interact with during our times of discussion. Obviously most of the attendees were from Kazakhstan, but many of them have Russian, German, and Korean ancestors who certainly have influenced their own lives and values. We have had regular visits from a native Korean, and other various visits by a man from Pakistan, a British man living in New York. All these people have provided a dynamic mix of opinions and theories about important life issues that we have discussed, and at the same time we have had the chance to share the eternal hope that fills our own lives with peace and joy.

Certainly this entire club was a new experience and I did not expect to be so involved in such an activity when I arrived here, but I feel blessed to have been able to serve in such a way while also having the opportunity to learn a lot from others who have grown up in entirely different situations from me. Check out our group picture we took here. This is about the size of the group we had each week although it varied with different individuals on a regular basis. Notice I am sitting on the floor in this picture, and that is a big cultural no-no because it is usually not so clean, but this time I did not have a choice because I couldn’t fit myself into the picture before the timer went off.





DIFFERENT MENTALITIES

Yesterday I had a fascinating discussion in class with my students about a topic that varies greatly between our two cultures when it comes to public opinion. We had just finished up a segment on accounting in our class, and students completed their quiz on what we had learned. I decided at the end of class to have a short discussion on fairly recent news that has hit the American national media in the last few years; accounting scandals and whistleblowing. I focused more on the aspect of whistle blowers because I wanted to get my students opinion on what they thought of someone who could be labeled as one.

I used a year-old Time magazine article that had announced it’s “persons” of the year for 2002 to be three women who had all come out against illegal or questionable activities in their respective organizations in efforts to make sure that the truth was known and the right decisions be made. The three women worked for three different organizations: The FBI, WorldCom, and Enron. I think most people have heard about how the latter two companies have been ravished by accounting scandals where it was shown that they had been inflating profits with illegal accounting procedures. By massaging the numbers a certain way, they made their companies look a lot more profitable than they really were, and that did great things for their stock prices until it all came crashing down when these whistleblowers decided to do the right thing by bringing the illegal actions to light. There was a poll shown in the Time article that said that over 50% of Americans thought that these employees were heroes for their actions even though what they did caused the company to lay off many, many people and also badly hurt its reputation. My first class did not agree that they were heroes.

The ten or so students in my first class consisted of mostly young teens who were pretty opinionated about the whole situation, and not one of them thought they these people were heroes but rather traitors to the company. Some of the responses from them went something like, “If it doesn’t affect them, they shouldn’t worry about it,” or “Their actions caused many people to lose their jobs”. Basically my students wouldn’t really go into whether what the company was doing was right or wrong, but they were more concerned about causing people to lose jobs or getting themselves in trouble if it was an issue that didn’t personally affect them.

So I let them talk it out and we eventually made it around to the idea of differing mentalities that they have here and we have in the States. There was a clear socialistic influence in their thinking. The idea of preserving the entire community was evident in their thinking as they showed their disapproval for someone who would blow the whistle on something that might have a large impact on a number of others who were not in the wrong. We discussed the idea of how a socialistic community is focused more on the group as a whole, working as a team, and sharing all things good and bad. In contrast they realized how in America, the capitalistic society we live in focuses more on the individual effort and competition between people and groups.

The same mentality can be seen in their classroom behavior. Most students would never rat on another classmate who was cheating, even if they didn’t like that person. They protect each other and watch each others back. When it comes to sharing answers, they gladly help each other out and the concept of cheating is not a serious issue like we see it back in the States. Not only will they help each other, but they will deny, if asked, that they did anything wrong.

My second class surprised me a little bit more with a more mixed response. Some of them were in favor of whistleblowing in certain situations, and I thought that maybe it had to do with the fact that more of them are older and have real-world jobs where they see this type of activity happening on a daily basis. Many times though I still heard them say, “It depends on the situation.” I suppose that is not totally different from the answers we might here in the States because with human nature there is always a natural reaction toward self-preservation as each person always weighs how taking action on something would affect their own life.

The discussion was interesting for me and I got to see another angle of the social mentality of a post-Soviet community that is ever-changing and making efforts to move toward a free-enterprise system where at some point capitalistic ideas may begin to make its way into the society. The country is still less than fifteen years from its birth as a republic and I have often found myself wondering what exactly America was like fifteen years into its existence and how it would have been different if it was not starting new but rather changing its economic and governmental system completely upside down after years of following a different one. The chaos that would ensue would surly be overwhelming.

- posted by Joel @ 7:02 AM

 
CONTRASTING THE SEASONS

Well back in Sacramento, the weather certainly does have its changing weather patterns, but in comparison to what I have experienced in the last year in Kazakhstan it seems fairly mild. This last weekend I was up in the capital of Astana for our final teacher’s meeting, and I had chance to walk around to some of the same areas I had first seen back in November.

In the downtown district of the city, there is a large river that flows through the area, and when I was here last November, it was frozen solid. I walked across the river on foot and took pictures of the ice fishermen who were somehow managing to survive sitting on the frozen ice while trying to catch fish. There was a good snow cover on the ice and the river had many people walking on it and even pulling their children on sleds across it.



Last weekend when I went to the river, I saw how the warmer weather had dramatically changed the atmosphere of the river and the surrounding area. I could not longer “walk on water” but I think I like this spring-time look a little bit more because now I’m not freezing and there is no need to wear a coat, a hat, or gloves to enjoy the scenery. Take a look at the change of the same area.




ANOTHER UNUSUAL CULTURAL EXPERIENCE

Yesterday I was leaving my friend’s apartment complex when I was stopped dead in my tracks by a very unexpected sight. I had just finished walking down five flights of stairs, and I was coming out of the entrance of the apartment complex when to my surprise I found myself staring at a parade of people walking down the sidewalk. There were probably fifty or sixty people all walking rows of two or three. They were walking slowly with sad looks on their faces and there was not much talking going on. I immediately wondered what was going on. It wasn’t long before I figured it out.

Immediately to my left I noticed four officers dressed in formal uniforms each carrying above them one of the four corners of a large box. It was a coffin, and there was a body in the coffin. My mouth dropped open as I realized that his was a funeral procession taking place in the middle of an apartment complex, and the body of the deceased was being carried in an open casket at the front of the procession. I had to stop and just watch for a minute as everyone passed by. I figured this must be a man of importance because there were several police officials in attendance along with the men who were carrying the casket.

The procession was heading out of the complex and towards the main road. I didn’t know where they were going with it, and I did not follow them to find out. The whole experience was very foreign to me and it reminded me of the time when I saw another funeral last spring taking place in a public area right next to a common walking path. I guess this is a common occurrence here, but to me it is unusual to see a dead body being carried around in public where anyone else who happens to be walking around can stop and watch.

- posted by Joel @ 6:11 AM

 
LET’S GO FOR A WALK

This week during our break from teaching, I took some time to walk around the city and take pictures of some of the monuments and interesting sights of the area. I did a lot of walking and thankfully the sun was shining bright during the afternoons that I ventured out of my apartment. To my surprise, I even came home on my first day of walking with a little bit of a sunburn on my face. I had almost forgotten what that was and that I am an Irish-Canadian who needs to protect my skin carefully. My ancestry does not lend to a high amount of UV protection when it comes to being out in the sun. The term lobster comes to mind when speaking of the experiences that I have had when forgetting to put on sunblock. I was not upset by this recent exposure to the sun though because it was very nice just to add a little bit of color to my face. I was really starting to have a ghostly complexion.

Anyway, I had a great time getting out and just wandering about the city for a while. One thing did occur to me now that it is warmer again; I now understand why people here like to walk so much. When I first started teaching, I used to ask my students what they would do on the weekend, and it would always puzzle me when the teenage boys would tell me that they went walking with their friends on the weekend. Now when I was in high school, I think that I would have gotten laughed at by my friends if I suggested that we go walking. I mean, there is so much else to do right? Well when one is trapped inside all winter long due to dreary weather, this bright sunshine has a way of attracting everyone to just come out and enjoy it.

So let me show you some of the pictures I took…

Monument of Lenin



Now this is a picture of the standard monument of Lenin that can be found in most all former Soviet cities. When I first came, I heard stories of debates between people in the city who wanted to remove the monument. Many of the people who have a Kazakh heritage want to take it down and start to look to the future of their new country and culture, but the older people of Russian heritage have stemmed the tide to this point and have managed to keep it standing. I have a feeling it will come down sooner or later as people continue to build more toward their national heritage. I don’t suppose American colonists would ever have allowed a monument of King George to grace their cities after they gained independence from England, but the big difference for the colonists is that they didn’t have English citizens living with them in the new land who also wanted to keep a part of their heritage intact. I can see how it would be a difficult topic to come to agreement on.

Miner’s Statue



This statue is considered the symbol of the city. Karaganda is known as the city of miners and it has a great history of mining. Underneath the city itself and surrounding it are mines that produce some of the largest deposits of coal in the country. Mining is a main occupation here that keeps the city going. I have heard a lot of interesting stories about this statue and people argue about whether or not a Kazakh man or a Russian man is the one holding the statue with just one hand. Some say he does it because he is lazy, and others because he is stronger and only needs to use one hand.

Miner’s Palace



As just mentioned, this is the city of miners, and we also have a theater called the Miner’s Palace. I saw a great performance here last winter of some river dancers from Kazakhstan. It was really enjoyable. You can see on the top there are different people of different occupations. The man on the far right is playing a dombra, the national instrument of Kazakhstan which is similar to a guitar, but with only two strings and is played much faster.

- posted by Joel @ 6:34 AM

 
SAYING “I DO” IN RUSSIAN

No it wasn’t me who said, “I do”, but recently I had the privilege of attending my first Russian wedding which was also happened to be the marriage of one of my own students. I didn’t understand a lot of the words spoken during the wedding, but I was exciting about experiencing a new cultural event and really happy to see my student and his new bride happily married. Now I had heard some things about a traditional Russian wedding, but I realized after I came to this one that it was actually an interesting mixture of Russian, religious, and family traditions all mixed together, so I don’t know how much of a traditional Russian wedding I actually observed. However, I can give you some of the details that were definitely different from an American wedding.

Now as I wrote last August, one of the biggest traditions in weddings is when the new couple gets in their car with their friends and they have their own mini-parade through the city, honking their horn, and telling everyone that they got married. They also go to all the best picture spots and have a little photo shoots with those who are in the cars. I was hoping this might be a part of the wedding I attended, but I found out that they performed this ritual before the reception, so I didn’t experience the excitement of breaking road laws and speeding through traffic.

First of all, it may be surprising to know that traditional Russian weddings do not involve a ceremony in the church, but usually just a reception/party for all the guests. From what I have heard, the bride and groom will go to the church with only a few witnesses to complete the legal process of being married (signing documents, etc.) and then they will come to the reception where all their guests are waiting for them. It is at the reception that the real celebration begins. Well I arrived at the reception hall (a Uzbek restaurant) with some other friends from the school who were invited and we waited in the lobby for a while before we were invited to come into the reception area and be seated at the our table. There were about six long tables seating maybe ten people each, and these tables were decorated very nicely and the first course of salads and drinks had already been set out. We took our seats and waited for the bride and groom to arrive and greet the guests. When they arrived, we all stood and welcomed them. The man was dressed in the traditional tuxedo, and the woman in the traditional wedding dress.

They came in with a best man and a maid of honor, and proceeded to their own table just as we would have at an American reception. At this point I found that they reception changed from Russian tradition and moved in a more personal and religious preference of the two families involved in the wedding. After arriving at the reception, the pastor who was to perform the official marriage with the couple started to give to the guests a talk very similar to what would hear at the actual wedding ceremony in the church. He introduced us to the couple, told us about their lives and their love for each other, and then proceeded to have them take their vows. They did their vows, exchanged rings, partook of communion, and had the traditional kiss at the end. I was told that all of this was unusual at a Russian reception, but I was glad that they did it because it seemed to make the reception a little more personal for all of us in attendance.

After the vows were exchanged and process complete, we all sat down and ate the first course of our meal. The food included local salads and drinks. One surprising element that was missing from this reception was alcohol, and I was happy about that too. The joke that I have heard about Russian weddings (I'm sure it has happened in America too) is that it is not a real wedding without at least one fight during the evening and that fight is usually a result of drinking a little too much alcohol. At least no one would be fighting for that reason because we were all drinking juice, tea, and water.

During the course of the meal, certain families and friends of the couple would get up and come to their table to present them with a toast and a blessing. After the blessing, they would usually present them with their wedding gift. In Russian culture it is considered more appropriate to not show a lot of enthusiasm for a gift that you receive but rather to focus your attention on the gift-giver, so each gift that was presented was gratefully received but then put aside as the bride and groom continued to converse with the friends who were saying the blessing. When it came time for our gift, our entire school team got up from one table and presented our gift together. Three of us gave a blessing to the new couple, and I had the honor of being one of those three who offered our congratulations and well-wishes to them in their new life together. I shared in English and had while one of my friends translated my words into Russian. It was a little never-racking at first, but I was happy I could honor the groom and his wife because he has been a good friend to me and someone that I have enjoyed having in class for the year.

Now another traditional part of a Russian wedding reception is the hiring of a MC who will usually fill the time with jokes and humorous moments that often involve poking fun at the groom and bride. These jokes are usually meant for fun, but it often requires the new couple to do certain things for the enjoyment of the audience. The MC will also have his own comedy routine and he will supply the music for entertaining the guests. There was an MC at this banquet, but he was toned-down quite a bit from the normal routine. He did have a few activities planned for the bride and groom and it was quite amusing to watch. In between all the blessings, eating, and conversing, the MC would invite the audience to listen as he asked the couple some questions about themselves. It was very similar to the Newlywed game as each one took a turn trying to answer a question about the other as to what their favorite thing was on a particular topic. They went on to perform many other activities which included a version of charades that was pretty funny. I’ve never seen a bride in her wedding gown act out a character, but it was quite enjoyable to see them having a good time trying to guess each other’s character while the rest of us watched.

The reception went on for a long time and eventually we were served a second main course at dinner time. I was thoroughly stuffed by that point, but there was one part of the course I had been eyeing since the time I came in: dessert! One entire table had been layered with just desserts and chocolates, and I continued to wonder when we would get to that part of the meal. As it turned out, I never got to experience “taking a little of each” dessert because I left at about 7pm, five hours after the reception started. Many people had left by that time, and the closest family members were left to enjoy the time with the happily married couple. I don’t know how long the reception went on that night, but I knew that if it followed Russian tradition, there wouldn’t be a problem with it ending well after midnight.

Overall, it was a great experience and I was honored that they invited me and I enjoyed seeing a little bit of how a Russian wedding is performed. I know this couple pretty well and I could tell that they really loved each other and that they would have a really strong marriage together.

- posted by Joel @ 7:01 AM