Well, my back is feeling better, so that has cheered me up considerably. My lyceum and most of the country’s secondary schools’, “Last Bell” is May 26th, which teachers everywhere look forward to like Christmas morning. My college goes into testing a few days later. Also, the weather has finally, and one hopes irrevocably, warmed. Last night I went out to Pyatachok—local PCVs’ favorite bar—in just a T-shirt (two volunteers from out of town were here; that was the occasion. I’m not such an alcoholic that I feel compelled to drink on a Thursday).
The big story in my life right now is an ongoing conflict with one of my administrators in Almaty. Basically, the second-in-command of PC Kazakhstan, having learned that I was accepted to grad school and intended to leave at the end of August, has taken it upon herself to have me drummed out at the beginning of June (thus saving the Peace Corps… oh, about $1500 over 3 months. Though they’ll probably lose quite a bit of that having to buy my plane tickets on much shorter notice). Nothing is certain at this stage though; the Country Director is still in DC, he’s been gone for about three weeks, and returns on the 21st. He’s the only one that can make the call.
I have changed my summer plans so that I am working more (allowing a huge number of vacation days I accrued over the last two years to vanish into nothingness), in an attempt to prove my worth. If I stay, there should be a pleasant summer-is-here post on my blog in a couple of weeks. If I am forced out, I promise a tirade.
Last week was “Victory Day” here in Kazakhstan, a topic I wrote about last year. This year the celebration seemed a little less nationalistic and in-your-face, though it might just be that I have grown number to that kind of thing. It was still just as historically-revisionist, with a pure-as-undriven-snow Soviet Union single-handedly saving the world from the fascist threat (no mention of the non-aggression pact with Hitler, the invasion of Poland, the crushing of Finland, etc. nor the role of any of the other Allies).
Russia marked the day with its first missiles-brandished-down-Red-Square parade of the post-Soviet period, replete with breathless news coverage beginning a full three days before the event (all the tanks and soldiers had to practice, and the Kremlin made sure everyone knew what a wondrous display of courage and power was occurring. Because RUSSIA IS BACK, you see). Somehow the fact that Medvedev and Putin are 5’4’’ and 5’7’’ respectively makes the whole thing seem a wee less fierce. I cannot wait for the first joint Obama-Putin press conference, with our lanky Obomber looming a full head over the pugilistic little neo-fascist.
The week before Victory Day (I’m moving backwards in my thoughts this post), Phil, Mike, and I took a bus south to Yavlenka—a village about 70 kilometers away, and home to Tim Suschland, another Kaz 19. There we met Tim’s charming host family, who laid out a sumptuous feast for us. We also went to the public banya with his host brother, the first time I have gotten naked in a semi-public place since Ecik during PST. Afterward there was a party in the center of the town, but by that point we were all so wiped out by the beer, banya, and beshparmak, we told the host brother to go on without us. I slept like the dead.
Back in the present, it seems everyone is traveling these days. Yesterday, my friend Sven emailed me from a wireless connection in Istanbul. The two volunteers who visited us yesterday had been touring therir way north for twenty days. And the first week of June, Mike is joining a group headed to Kyrgyzstan. Yet, for some reason, Karen Ramsey (that’s the administrator out for my blood) thinks I am a particular drain on the finances of the Peace Corps. Keeping me around for the summer vacation after I just worked a full school year might not “make sense”. Well, we’ll see. However it turns out, I think the teachers and students at my school will have fond memories of me, and I of them. And that’s what’s important.
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