Kazakhstan!

My host sister didn’t pass the FLEX test. FLEX is a program that sends roughly 60 students from each ‘stan’ country to America for a year of study abroad while they are in high school. We’d been studying together for about a week and the big day finally came on October 28th. I went with her at 7 in the morning to Talas city for moral support as well as to help with the proctoring of the exam. Damn, this test is hard! She was in the first round of students to take it and I got a chance to see the test before it was administered and honestly I don’t know how many native English speakers would score 100% on it! This first round of testing covered English grammar, phrasal verbs, context reading and vocabulary. Had she passed onto the second and third round of testing there would have been essay writing and interviews for her to excel at before being given the chance to go to Bishkek for the final decision. Hopefully she does better next year (she’s actually got two more years of eligibility), and at least in the meantime we’ll know what to focus our studying on.
At my main job in Manas Secondary School I have begun to prepare three girls for the ‘English Olympiad’ that’s coming up in about a month. This is more of an opportunity for the students of each respective competing school to win bragging rights for their school than any real opportunity for themselves, but it will at least give me a better taste of victory than the impossible FLEX test did:) With that said, things are going better here in lovely Kyrgyzstan. It’s now dropped to a manageable yet bloody-freezing degree outside and the days are remarkably shorter, but I’m finally feeling a bit more settled in to somewhat of a routine. The fact that I’ve begun these little side-teaching projects has certainly aided in my continuing sanity so for them I’m eternally grateful. I also have a very supportive group of friends here in Talas. Every single one of the K-15’s and remaining (we’ve had two ET since getting here) K16’s are awesome! Honestly, I couldn’t have asked for better site-mates or a better and more supportive group of great people than the one’s I wound up with!
All in all everything is shaping up to give me a very positive outlook on what my next two years have in store for me here. We’ll see how I feel once the winter really kicks in, but that’s only about 3-4 months of sheer freezing torture so I’m sure it won’t be that bad! Plus, I’ve got so many more adventures coming up already. Today I just got back from my first sojourn into Kazakhstan. As a volunteer in Talas I’ve been given a ‘multiple-entry/exit’ VISA for Kazakhstan because I’m so close and “in an emergency” it’s safer for me to go there than all the way back to Bishkek. So, of course, I’ve already made use of this privilege for tourism purposes:) Taraz, the big city closest to the Kyrgyz-Kazakh boarder, is gorgeous! Anyone who’s seen the movie “Borat” probably thinks of Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan for that matter, as backwards remnants of their Soviet past. While that may certainly be true in small villages and isolated instances Taraz is by far the most glaring exception I’ve experienced here thus far. It has beautiful wide boulevards, three lined intersections and great great great food! My site-mates Patrick, Liz and I all went to eat at a local Georgian restaurant (no, not like ‘Georgia’ in America, but ‘Georgia’ the country…that was a necessary explanation for my American readers out there:)) and split a bottle of vodka at the table while indulging in the best tasting food I’ve had in almost 5 months! Then we walked around, and actually met a Kazakhstan volunteer named Susannah! We’re all going back the first weekend in December and will meet up with her and some other Kazakh volunteers so that was a great connection:) At any rate we caught our taxi back in time and have made it back to Talas for my friend John’s birthday. So far this weekend has been a blast, and next weekend a bunch of volunteers (and yours truly, of course) are going to Bishkek for two nights of Bacchanal debauchery. Between getting my teaching off the ground and all of these extracurricular activities I have planned my time is just soaring by!