So Different!!!

One of the challenges of living in Kazakhstan is doing things differently for different team members.  During the last week, we have had a chance to experience this uniqueness in a pretty entertaining way.  Ember's birthday was last Friday.  Ember likes BIG, exciting, lots of attention, and a new surprise every minute.  Jason's birthday was today.  Jason likes quiet, not a lot of attention, and is not really fond of big surprises that he doesn't know about.  I think my preferences are closer to Jason's - thankfully, I got to take most of the pictures on Friday. 

  
Jason at Ember's party (below)                                                                                         

                

Ember's Party, complete with clowns (above)                                              

        Ember's Desk (below)

   Jason's Birthday Desk

Blogs as Procrastination

So, I really should be studying Kazakh now, but I don't really feel like it.  So ... instead I'm going to post some entertaining pictures. 

Thanks Ember for taking pictures!

 

Kazakhstan is a very dusty country and one of the dogs at Ken's house was filthy - to the point that I had stopped wanting to even think about petting him.  Just as we were getting ready to arrange a time for a bath, it got cold.  Thankfully, last Saturday it warmed up and we had just enough time to give Scooby a bath in between orphanage visits. 

I don't think he appreciated it much, but I certainly prefer coming near him now. He rolled around in the dirt as soon as we let him loose, but at least it was new, first-layer dirt.

A Busy Week Ahead

Well, this next week looks to be one of the busiest weeks in my year (not to mention the start of a REALLY busy month).  I figured I'd let you all know what is coming up ... maybe if I write it all down I will be a little less overwhelmed by it.  :) 

Monday - Monday is just Monday.  I don't like them ... I have never enjoyed going back to work after a weekend.  I think my biggest complaint is how early the morning starts.  I use my weekends to mess up my sleep schedule entirely (going to bed at 2am and waking up at 10:30 am and having a nap sometime during the day). As a result, Monday mornings are hard - but it is my own fault.  The Redskins play the Cowboys starting at 2:15 am Monday morning - although I am really tempted, I think I will have to miss out on listening to the game.  The day also includes a Kids Connection meeting, a meeting with Marina, getting a computer ready for our accountant that returns, and a techonology training. 

Tuesday - Olya and Jason's birthday.  I am in charge of making a peach cobbler.  I have never done this before, so we'll see how it goes. There is a possibility that we will have an Ulan birthday party in the evening.

Wednesday - I have a Kazakh lesson at 12:30, which I haven't started to prepare for yet.  I think this will be a week of procrastinating right up until my lesson.  I am supposed to sing a song in Kazakh for my teacher ... we'll see how that goes.  Olya and I are also supposed to do a teacher training at the Polytechnic College (PTL) sometime on Wednesday.

Thursday - We begin our weekly orphanage visits at Ulan orphanage.  We will spend most of the day at Ulan playing with kids.  It will be fun to see the kids and spend time with them again, but it will take a little while to get back into the routine.  We will also try to make sure all of our information is completely updated for Kids Connection. 

Friday - MY DAY OFF!!!  I plan to sleep in and have no other plans until the evening (at least that is my hope). 

Saturday - We will leave at four in the afternoon to go to Savva orphanage in order to celebrate birthday parties.  We will return Sunday night.  The advantage to all of this is that I get to go in late on Monday, which means another day of sleeping in!!!

Later in the Month - We have two delegations coming in October (they will overlap in Kazakhstan for a couple days).  So, with all the Kids Connection visits starting and two delegations, this should be a crazy, but fun month. 

A Chance to Give Back

Due to the changes in plans this summer with the Ulan delegation not being able to do camp at Ulan Orphanage, we felt it would be nice to hold a carnival for the children. We had one slight problem with this idea ... staff size. It was fun to see how this problem was solved.

Thanks Ember for taking this picture!

We have four people in Taraz that work with Kids Connection. We were able to convince two others from our staff in Taraz to join us (it actually didn't take much convincing). One of them brought her sister to help. There is also a woman in Taraz adopting from a different orphanage that volunteered to come help. This brought our total up to eight, not quite enough to run the six stations that we wanted and have a runner to anticipate problems.

We then asked our Kazakh speaking Youth Impact participants if any of them would be interesting in volunteering to help us. I was shocked by the turnout. We had 11 volunteers show up to help. They did such a great job. There were several stations where the adults didn't even have to do much because the youth did such a great job managing the stations. They were such a blessing to us and we couldn't have pulled off the carnival without them. What a joy to see them giving back to the kids from their orphanage. When we were done, they asked us to let them know if they could help with anything else. We look forward to thinking of ways to have them get involved in our work in the future.

During the carnival, my job was to be the runner. I was able to walk around the carnival and make sure all was going as it should be. This included directing, correcting, and enjoying the kids. One thing that stands out to me as I look back on that time, are the relationships that I have built with these children. I have reached a point where they will listen to what I say and usually obey. It is nice to finally be at a place where they recognize my authority and are able to laugh and joke with me. Our carnival ended up being really organized and not very chaotic at all. This in itself was amazing considering there were probably about 100 children making their way between six stations.

Smoother than Butter

Saturday was a day that surprised me. Thankfully, that surprise was a good one. We had what seemed like an impossible plan for two hours at Ulan. The plan was to go to the orphanage for one hour, both in the morning and the afternoon, hand out gifts to all the children and take pictures. IMPOSSIBLE!!!

In order to try to do the impossible, we had planned things very specifically. Two weeks ago, we started the process of preparation by asking the orphanage for a list of the children that are at the orphanage. We then compared this list with the list we had from last year. We noted any group changes, children that had graduated, and those that had come to the orphanage for the first time this fall. We also made a list of children who were on our list, but we couldn't account for. We had to go through the lists several times in order to make them match up.

On Saturday as we went from group to group we apologized for not having done a camp with them over the summer, took pictures, and gave gifts to each child. These gifts were shirts and bags that had been brought to them from the Ulan work group. Although the work group was unable to work with the children from Ulan, they had brought gifts for each child. The kids loved their new bags and shirts. When we visited in the afternoon, some of the children that had received shirts in the morning already had them on.

Thanks Ember for taking the picture!

The staff at the orphanage were extremely helpful. They made it easy for us to go from group to group. I think we were able to give out gifts to about 90% of the children. That's pretty impressive considering it ended up that we were visiting on both a school day and Taraz City day (many of the kids were at the park celebrating in the morning). It was such an encouraging day for me to see how smoothly things operated and it was so fun to be back in the orphanages again!

Note: Some children here go to school in the morning, while others go in the afternoon. As a result, it is difficult to find a time of day when all the children are at the orphanage (except in the middle of the night which is not a good time to give gifts). This only added to the impossibility of the task we were trying to accomplish.

Boys Will Be Boys

The other day as I was walking home from the garage, I had to laugh. I heard a lot of voices coming from behind the trees above some small garages. When I looked up, this is what I saw.

These boys were leaping from garage to garage playing tag. I'm guessing that none of their mothers was watching at the moment. My mind naturally ran through all the potential dangers of playing tag 8 feet off the ground around sharp corners made of metal. My second thought was how fun that these boys are getting to be boys and live with a bit of adventure in their lives. I mean, really, how much will they hurt themselves if they fall off the garages. Likely the worst that would happen would be a broken bone or a couple stitches.

I also thought to myself how fun it would be. Had I been their age and out playing with them, my mother probably would have come out of the house to find me on top of a garage playing tag with the boys. That probably wouldn't have lasted very long ... but it would have been fun.

As I walked away after having taken my pictures, I heard someone screaming at the boys and a few minutes later they were no longer on the roof. We'll see if it happens again.

Time to Prepare

Although I love the time we have with the children at the orphanage, I have really enjoyed this month of preparation.  Over the last year, there have been many times that I have been so busy with orphanage visits, holidays, and other random things that I haven't had the time to be as prepared as I like to be.  We have had about a month since delegations left to get some of our systems in order as we prepare to start orphanage visits the first week of October. 

Each month we celebrate birthdays with children at each of our orpahnages.  Last week we prepared birthday gifts for them.  This year we decided to give them packs of supplies that they could use for school.  This includes a notebook, pencils, pens, a pencil sharpener, colored pencils, and other things they need for school.  Now, to some this might not sound exciting.  Who would want school supplies for their birthday?  One thing I appreciate about Kazakhstan is that children here often see school as a privilege as opposed to a requirement.  These children that we work with have probably not had a special pack of school supplies just for them and we hope that they will treasure them. 

As we focus on school supplies for birthday gifts, I hope we are able to encourage the children to dream big and start on the path to realizing those dreams.  

A Bit of a Break

It looks like I haven't posted in a long time.  A lot of that probably comes down to the fact that this has been a slow month.  In order to give the children a chance to get settled into school and in order to give us a break from the busy summer schedule, we start our orphanage visits at the beginning of October.  Although I don't necessarily enjoy being in the office behind my desk each day, I have enjoyed the chance to catch up on a lot of things that I didn't have time to do over the last year. 

I have reinstalled Windows on several of the computers at our office.  In the last two weeks, I have also been working with Jason Walke to get DSL working on everyone's computer at the office.  We are also using this time to try to get all of our records straight for Kids Connection (the child sponsorship program).  We have to figure out who has left,  who is new, and who has changed groups.  This is a pretty big project and will take us most of next week to get things updated.  Before we were able to start this, we had to get our online database working efficiently in order to be able to handle all of the changes.  We are currently preparing activities and plans for our weekly orphanage visits as well as our monthly birthday parties. 

I feel refreshed and ready for a new school year.  I'm glad I've had this short break from the busy schedule in order to catch my breath a bit and get focused and energized for the next few months.  I am sure the next four months (before I return to the States for a visit) will fly by.