So I have been in Karaganda, Kazakhstan for about a week now, and my experience has been nothing short of wonderful. Let me walk you through some of the highlights.
I arrived in Karaganda by train late last Wednesday 10/1, and the next day began with breakfast with Rada, the director at our English center here. We talked about teaching and about what my role would entail, but also about Kazakhstan more generally. I learned a funny joke about how all the food here is some derivative of meat and dough, and I also got to finally ask if people really eat horse here. I was somewhat disappointed when her answer made it sound like they commonly don’t. I was really ready to try horse.
Nothing super eventful happened those first few days. I participated in the classroom as an assistant and got to learn about teaching English, I walked around a whole bunch, and I tried some of the local restaurants. No horse yet to be found, although I wasn’t necessarily looking that hard.
As alluded to in the picture above, Kazakhstan is largely a tea culture. Which is incredible for me because I love tea and don’t drink coffee. I’ve found ordinary green and black tea, but also more interesting fruit tea like the one pictured above.
A Walk with the Russians
Things took a turn towards the interesting when one of the assistants, a younger Russian girl named Nadya, offered to take me on a walking tour of the city with her father. Both Nadya and her father speak English well, and I had a great time exploring the city with them. The father, Denis, did an amazing job giving me the inside scoop on different monuments, statues, etc. We got to tour the tech start-up building (like a shared office space) he works in, and we had some good Vietnamese food while we were there. They sold some merch inside, and I found a hilarious hat inspired by a certain American politician.
Denis taught me a lot about the history of the region. Karaganda began as a mining venture about a century ago, and sooner or later it became a major producer of coal for the Soviet Union. Even to this day smoke from the coal can choke the air and cause significant pollution. This evening in fact my room smells very smoky because I left my windows open.
Most of the coal production in recent times has actually been controlled by an Indian businessman whose company is centered in Luxembourg, although I was told this changed very recently due to multiple deaths in the mines. Apparently the company in charge did little, if anything, to prevent further deaths, so the Kazakhstan government decided to take over the mine in the interest of its own people. Good for them.
Karaganda was also apparently the location of the largest Gulag in Kazakhstan. Denis told me all about how people could be sent to the Gulag for ‘anti-state crimes’ as benign as making a joke to the wrong person. Moreover, many ethnic Germans actually lived in Karaganda as a result of this prison camp. These ethnic Germans, who had been living in the Soviet Union for some time, were forcibly deported from their homes by Stalin when Hitler invaded in 1941, presumably for the same reason the American government decided to intern Japanese/Japanese-American citizens after Pearl Harbor. Some of these ethnic Germans were sent to Siberia, and many others to Kazakhstan. There is a Catholic church here in Karaganda that was built by these ethnic Germans.
Continuing on our tour, we saw numerous administrative palaces, as well as a couple theaters and some other notable buildings and monuments. One of the most recognizable is the coal miner’s monument called Miners’ Glory, which stands across from the Miners’ Palace of Culture, a large theater. The Palace of Culture is adorned with the statues of six people who represented core pillars of life in the Soviet Union when it was built. From left to right, there is a miner, a shepherd, a soldier, a farmer, an engineer, and a poet.
Speaking of culture, one thing Denis taught me was how Kazakhstan struggles to find a national cultural identity. This is not surprising considering how the country has only been independent from the Soviet Union since 1991. Many people here are attached to Russian writers, playwrights, poets, painters, etc. Denis, a Russian, said something playful about them needing to find their own cultural icons.
Another random tidbit of Kazakhstan concerns its medical school, which is apparently popular internationally. Many people from small villages elsewhere in the world, like in India for instance, come here to study medicine. They essentially round up a bunch of money for tuition and study here with the plan to go be the doctor for their local villages.
After walking through the more urban old part of the city, we spent another hour or two strolling through the park, which is quite beautiful! This time of year in Karaganda is not unlike New England. It is chilly (a little chillier than Massachusetts, but perhaps similar to northern Maine and Vermont), and the autumn leaves drift gently to the ground. Walking through park you can’t help but rustle the leaves, and I have been really enjoying this since my arrival. Karaganda may be on the opposite side of the world from where I am from, but it certainly retains some sense of home.
Denis and Nadya took me to this Hogwarts themed part of the park, which was super cute and funny. They have a real train and station dressed up like Platform 9 3/4, and it’s a really fun gimmick. They have dementors in the trees, a little Hagrid cabin, and Ron’s car is even driving through the sky.
This train has been around for a long time without the Hogwarts theme; the Harry Potter makeover is relatively recent. Something hilarious Denis told me is the original purpose of the train was propaganda for the children of the Soviet Union. The idea was to get them interested in trains so they would grow up wanting to work on them!
Afterwards, Denis treated me to the national take on bread, which was delicious, and we walked back to my apartment. But before we got there Denis invited me to go back to their apartment for some homemade Borscht, which is a traditional Ukrainian dish quite popular in this part of the world. It’s a soup made from beets as its base. I got to meet the rest of their family and share dinner with all of them, and this was a wonderful opportunity I am truly grateful for. Denis and Nadya, if you are reading this, your hospitality has been incredible. Thank you.
No photos, sorry. I felt weird taking photos of a normal moment inside someone’s house. Felt a little… I don’t know, sacrilegious. This was one of those things you just experience in the moment. If you want to know what it was like in further depth I encourage you to book a flight to the other side of the world.
Anyways, I ended up hanging out with Nadya and Denis for a large part of the evening, and later with Nadya and her five-year old sister Katya. We played games together and practiced some English words on their whiteboard. Katya is by far the funniest family member, and I wish more of my friends had her energy.
Hockey and Horse Milk
While on that walking tour, I expressed a desire to see a local sporting match. I was told the hockey season is ongoing, and I asked how I can buy tickets and attend a game. Denis, as hospitable as ever, invited me to go to a game with him and his family. Again, I really cannot express how grateful I am for his hospitality.
So anyways we went to this hockey game the next day with me, Denis, Katya, and the younger brother Fyodor. Nadya was unfortunately feeling unwell. This was a great experience and I am super glad we went. We came in a couple minutes late and Karaganda was down 1-0, but we ended up scoring before the close of the first period. It was a pretty sick goal too, a nice slapshot from far out. Unfortunately the game did not stay close; we ended up blowing out the other team 5-1 with I believe two goals each in the second and third periods. How fun. I really don’t think I would have enjoyed this nearly the same alone.
In the background of these adventures I have been teaching, and this Monday (the same day of the hockey game) I began actually leading the class, albeit with some guidance. I will probably save talking about my experience teaching for other posts.
Tuesday passed by largely uneventfully as well, although I spent a lot of time cranking out some law school applications. I finished my Michigan application, submitted it, and I felt really good about it. I finished Duke sometime over the weekend as well, but I felt terrible about that one. Knowing how life can be, I bet I’ll get into Duke and not Michigan. No not really, but life does have a funny way like that. Four years ago, following rejections from UCSB, UCB (lol), and a waitlist from UCLA, I thought I had zero chance at UCSD, and I was feeling extremely dismal about it when I got the email notifying me a decision had been made. But then I opened the email and started screaming outside the house of the person I was delivering pizza too. Simpler times.
And finally, I had no classes today, so I decided to crank out some more applications. I don’t think I will have a lot of time in Balkhash for the next two weeks because their school is significantly more developed and has more classes, so I wanted to get these done as soon as possible. Today I cranked out Cornell and Harvard (shooters shoot). Cornell I felt really good about. I wrote a custom five page personal statement for them in like an hour, I was on fire and it came so naturally. I will be genuinely surprised if I don’t get in there.
The last thing that happened was a great traditional Kazakh lunch with teachers from the school, including our wonderful director Rada.
We had a wonderful assortment of foods to try, including puffy fried dough called Baursak (really good), a huge spread of salads, and of course the horse meat dish called Beshbarmak! I was extremely excited to get to try this little bit of Kazakh culture, and it was good. I mean to be honest it didn’t really taste that different than beef, but perhaps that was just due to how it was prepared. We also had this suspicious milky white horse fluid which was reportedly milk, and I thought it tasted terrible. Like I kind of unconsciously gagged when I tried it and they all laughed. I don’t know what they do to it but it’s extremely smoky, and also very sour. Not my jam at all.
Anyways, that’s all for now. Stay tuned for the first draft from Living Naturally and my experiences in Balkhash.