Sitting down for breakfast this morning in northern Kazakhstan, it’s quiet and overcast as shoppers hurry along the walkways to the nearby Eurasia shopping complex, passing spindly trees and rutted dirt yards torn up from construction. My housemate Bena* looks out the window, remarks on how karangi it is,…
It’s begun snowing quite a lot in the past week, and it’s getting colder. But according to a recent news article, local architects are interested in building a giant dome over the government and financial area of Kazakhstan’s capital. The article claims this is already being done in Houston, where…
I’ve always enjoyed learning about the meanings of names, and living in Kazakhstan is no disappointment. Traditionally, Kazakh parents invited their relatives to a besik toi, a “cradle-party” for their newest child. After gathering around the cradle, an honored guest or relative would be invited to name the child. This person…
I’ve briefly covered this before, but Aitys (“saying-to-each-other”) is a classic style of Kazakh musical performance, where two court wits dual out a commentary on society, while strumming a two-stringed dombira. Eva-Marie Dubuisson has written all about aitys, if you’re into that sort of thing. I’m not sure what ancient aitys would have looked like–but…
Welcome back! I’m just getting set up as the new librarian at Bilim-Tilim* School… only instead of prodding college student workers to stay awake after a long night of studies, I’m entertaining small children with story-books, explaining what a Dictionary is, and calming small ruckuses with colorful worksheets. Because…
“It’s really important to join your life with somebody who has the same priorities as you.” I’m still working on transcribing my interviews with single Christian women in the U.S. last spring — I swear! In the meantime, I talked with my friend Marina about her experiences. Marina is…
This photo slideshow gives you some of my favorite photos I’ve taken. Click on the photo to get informative captions and ethnographic details, or go directly to Flickr to see more: Slideshow created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR. Thanks, guys.
Studying Kazakh this summer, I’m impressed by how Kazakh linguists are steadily replacing Russian words with Kazakh ones. While everyone mixes the two languages freely, scholars vigilantly separate them. In fleshing out Kazakh as a versatile 21st century language, they simply create new Kazakh words whenever there’s not a…
I’ve been attending informal painting classes at the university for about twelve weeks now. It’s been a great opportunity to relax and get to know some of the women living on campus, many of whom are expat wives. Oh yes. I think this may be my career goal. We…
I realized that I vastly prefer blogs that are mostly pictures and only a few words, over blogs that have deep thoughts. So I’m trying to do the same for you here! Below is a little story… A few weeks ago I took off for Nauruz (the spring new-years…