Aktau – Part III

My two months in Aktau brought a question into perfect focus, “WHERE do i want to be?”

It sure wasn’t Aktau. but why? What did i need from a place?

So, yeah, i was teaching in Aktau. It all happened suddenly and i’m still not entirely sure how. One of Sarah’s co-teachers knew a Russian guy who was starting his own language school. The American who’d screwed over Sarah and her school had been planning to partner up with the Russian guy and defect to this new school with all of Sarah’s students. But like i said last time, instead he fled the country and left the Russian guy in a lurch too.

So the guy asked me if i’d fill in as the native teacher till they found someone else. As with many things in Aktau, one week turned into two, then eight. Eight hours a week turned into ten into thirty. I gave them a month’s notice that i was leaving, but in the end they were still scrambling and asked me to stay longer. “ostavaĭsya! Ne hodi!”

I can’t believe i actually considered it. It would have been a nightmare, but i had to fight through my overly-helpful Midwestern tendencies Even though i was REALLY over Aktau, i was still sorta sad to leave. I grew attached to my students.

Most of the fun in Aktau involved my students and, believe it or not, some of the more fun times we had were bowling. I don’t think our students particularly loved bowling, any more than we did, but there really wasn’t much else to do. I’m a terrible bowler, but (same as in America,) i just focus on the most ridiculous way to throw the ball. Hitting the pins is a bonus.

I’m still not sure why my students liked me so much. I’m really not sure if i was a great teacher or not, but i think they primarily kept coming back because they though i was funny. On my last day they took me out to dinner and then we all walked on the beach. A number of students took me aside and said they thought i was kind and positive and that they’d miss me, a lot. “Any future teacher will be measured against you.” I nearly cried.

I hate leaving people. The worst part of traveling is not being able to take anyone with me. I suck at saying goodbye. Honestly i’d be most happy if the folks i love would just agree to follow me around the world.

Annoyingly, people seem to have lives and other things to do with their time. I’ve been chatting folks whenever i can, a little obsessively, not knowing when i’ll get to see someone again. It’s always bittersweet to connect with people on-line, but i’ll take it over losing contact with them entirely. Traveling is amazing, and sometimes it’s lonely.

It’s also hard on my writing. The combination of stress and lack of structure and additional time commitments kills my ability to focus and produce. I did manage to get twenty stories in the mail last month, and even rewrote a few things, but i desperately need to finish the final polish on my last novel, just so i can call it done and move on. I currently have in the queue: a four issue comic i’ve only finish one issue of, a new YA novel i’ve been thinking about for half a year, but have only written 4000 words, and a good fifteen short stories that either need to be rewritten or finished. I also have about five shorts that are plotted out but need to be written. Aside from all that, i want to get back into finishing a new short every week or two and to maintain everything in the mail. My last book has been circulating the agents for the last few months. I’m hoping to have the YA novel circulating along with it within the next six. Sometime soon i’ll have to ask one of my comic-published friends how best to get the comic script around. I suspect i should be hitting up my artist friends to see if we can get a package together to pitch to comic publishers.

So anyway, Aktau. It wasn’t a bad place. It definitely wasn’t right for me, but i met some lovely people and experienced things i never would have experienced otherwise. More importantly, it gave me important clues as to what i DO want. When i’ve thought of places to be before, it was always focused on people. I moved to Eugene for people. Every day i feel it calling me back.

So, people are important, probably the most important thing in the world, but Aktau taught me to care about WHERE i live. I figured out things like: i really care about trees and climate and beautiful places. I love mountains and ocean. I love having variety in my food and potential to do different things.

All things considered, i have no regrets. Aktau taught me a lot.

Aktau, in spite of everything i’ll miss you. Thanks for helping me on the path toward figuring out what i want.

Next: Turkey! Istanbul! Samsun! The Black Sea!

Tags: aktau, far from home, kazakhstan

Aktau – Part II

A theme that has come up over and over in my life is, “Where do i want to live? Do i really care?”

I care mostly about people. When i’ve tried to think of places to live, i’ve often drawn a blank. Do a want a place that’s beautiful? Full of fun things to do? I dunno.

There wasn’t a lot to do in Aktau. We watched a lot of television and read our few books over and over and over. Being so stressed and sad killed my motivation. I barely wrote or played music.

I only practiced mandolin sporadically, but i did make a little progress, mostly by plotting out the fretboard on paper and figuring how various chords worked. I worked out a number of scales: Persian, Gypsy, Celtic, Raga. Hopefully i’ll memorize them. I did make up this goofy little pseudo-Greek melody i played over and over till Sarah wanted to stuff the mandolin up my nose. I think once i get the scales down, i’ll probably teach myself some covers before i try to compose original stuff. I’ve never really played covers before, always thought of it as cheating, but i think i can live with doing ironic mandolin covers of punk songs.

We put up a Couchsurfing.com ad and soon acquired these friendly British guys, Jack and Jamie. Both were nineteen, in college and taking an extended “off year” by driving a jeep all over eastern Europe.

Many of their stories involved being arrested in countries where no one spoke English. Often they escaped by singing the officers Elvis tunes. Jack’s musical talent was awe-inspiring. After noodling on my mandolin for half an hour (an instrument he’d never even heard of) he was quickly playing songs.

Jamie was mad for cricket and carried a “stone” and bat with him everywhere. They’d already taught a number of Kazakhs across the country how to play and would have taught us if we’d been more game. They’d originally planned to stay with us for just a day or two, but the ferry (steamer ships, really) from Aktau to Baku, Azerbaijan were infrequent and random.

On their fifth day with us we suddenly received a frantic call, “Port! Chto vy!! Chto vy!!” They threw their stuff together and blazed off to spend 18 hours on a steamer ship and get arrested multiple times in Azerbaijan. Last we heard they were on their way from Georgia to Turkey.

We also met these amazing crazy French guys who are WALKING around the world. They were very calm and centered, which i guess they’d have to be. Their group had started with eight people, but most of them quickly burned out or bristled at the self-imposed rule that they never use cars or planes. The two remaining guys stayed with us for five days while they tried to secure a camel (their rules indicated they couldn’t RIDE the camel but they needed it to carry water as they WALKED across the Kazakhstan desert.) When they left, they still hadn’t gotten a camel, but decided to forge ahead anyway.

The visitors were a nice distraction, but it felt like life always fell back into feeling tedious and stressful. Not speaking Russian was seriously isolating. For the most part, people were nice and tried to accommodate us, but we weren’t ever entirely happy. I think part of it was just how aesthetically different it was from what i’m comfortable with. No trees. The buildings universally soviet bloc concrete boxes, just depressing in and of themselves, but stuck in the middle of a dessert, which made them surreal and accentuated their … wrongness. Aktau didn’t have much, in food, in electronics, books, anything. I don’t think of myself as a huge consumerist, but i was struck again and again when we needed a cable or writable discs, or light-bulbs, or missed fresh vegetables, or were DYING for something new to read. We just weren’t prepared for how isolated we’d feel.

OMG, and the food. I think Kazakhs are used to working with no fresh ingredients and not even many spices. I’m crazy about spicy food, rich foods, sauces, anything. So i went a little nuts. It was also really hard to be vegetarian. Nuts are extremely expensive and they don’t have much in the way of beans. I eventually gave up and started eating chicken, which sometimes made me sick. Sarah and i got very good at making chicken burgers.

To fight the language isolation, we practiced with Rosetta Stone and took Russian lessons. We found a really nice Russian lady to teach us (she normally taught children. She’d regularly yell, “Nyet!” When i got things wrong.) But we didn’t find her till our last three weeks there, which was a too little too late.

Honestly, most of our problems came from Sarah’s job. The guy who hired her lied about EVERYTHING: living conditions, pay, Russian lessons, everything. Then he fled, leaving us, and Sarah’s company, to pick up the pieces. The company wasn’t great, they still promised things and didn’t follow through, but many of our problems we can attribute to this one guy who lied to everyone.

But, you know, it happened and we dealt with it. The two months weren’t always easy, but we made friends and definitely experienced some things we never would have otherwise.

Tomorrow: Teaching, missing people and writing.

Tags: aktau, far from home, kazakhstan

Aktau – Part I

Aktau was a mixed bag. Honestly i was generally pretty unhappy most of the time.

Partially because i missed so many people, partially from stress and disappointment, partially … i dunno, probably still because i was still mourning the transition in J and i’s relationship and ending contact with A. Most of the time i carried around sadness and stress, but a few times the city gave me little gifts of joy.

One night i was walking home from teaching and passed a yurt constructed in the middle of a sandy playground. It was spitting rain, which felt gentle and pleasant. I leaned over to look inside the yurt and saw the floor was covered in Indian rugs and there were long tables with candles and flowers. Later when i passed from the other direction, in slightly more rain, the yurt looked even more peaceful under a pattern of taps played out on it’s roof. Outside a barbecue pit spat and steamed and inside children whispered while candlelight created dancing shapes on the walls. I felt like i’d glimpsed something special, but was never sure quite what.

People say that it used to never rain in Aktau. Never. I guess global climate change reshuffled things because we’ve had three major rainstorms in the last two months. Since they never used to have them, the city is completely unprepared for rain: no drains, roads flooded, the dirt lots turn to quicksand and caverns form as the rain flows away. Each time it rained the streets flooded, the sidewalks flooded, everything flooded. The lights failed.

Most days were hot and dusty. Very little grows. When i went out, i walked through dirt lot to dirt lot, from our flat to the school where i worked. In the rain, the dirt lots became quicksand and the weird combination of clay and sand and dirt became slick as ice. Secretly i kind of liked it.

The flat itself was crazy: 30s wallpaper applied incorrectly, a picture of baby Jesus in our living-room, Christmas decorations used as design elements. It took us weeks to figure out our washer and the refrigerator knocked all night. Almost the biggest challenge was our flat itself. They were doing construction on the flat above ours.

Everyday. Eight to ten hours a day for MONTHS.

They repainted the hallway, which helped with the concrete-prison-feel (a bit,) but the paint was so toxic that we had to flee the flat all day on two separate occasions. Our water died twice. We lost electricity four times. Lost internet connection countless times and when it did work, it came in a trickle. At times it was funny, we’d smirk at our eastern block apartment and say to each other, “What’re we doing here?”

But other days we’d already have had a hard day and losing electricity or water was the last straw. We’d sit on the couch, practically in tears, and seriously wonder, “What ARE we doing here?”

My fastest route to work included a tight-rope walk along the top of a long wall next to a school. Once i was balancing along when a cloud of butterflies lifted from a nearby tree and circled me. I was late that day because i couldn’t leave till they were done.

Tomorrow: music and visitors and why you probably don’t want to live in Aktau.

Tags: aktau, far from home, kazakhstan

Oh yeah, London pictures

If you’re not friended to me on Facebook, here are some pictures from my trip to London.

NOTE: These pictures are from two or three weeks ago at least.

London Facebook album.

Tags: london, travel

Me and the Caspian Sea

Just posted a ton of photos on my Facebook account.

Lot’s of fun pictures of Aktau.

Around town. / On the coast. / In my apartment. / Food.

Tags: aktau, caspian sea, kazakhstan

6000 miles from home: London to Baku, Azerbaijan

On the flight from London, they handed us very hot towels, which was awesome. I already felt scummy and it was a good start to wipe my face.

Everything felt five times more intense than my original trip to London. I kept saying to myself, “I’m over the North Sea, i’ve never been this far from home. I’m over the Black Sea. I’m over the Caspian Sea.”

The flight was so empty that most people lay across their seats like a bed. I tried to stay up for the entire flight because i knew i’d have to reset to another five-hour time difference, but ended up sleeping for a few hours, which really just made me groggy and gave me a neck crick.

They showed what may well be the BEST INFLIGHT MOVIE EVER. I think the name was “Fantomas,” but i can’t be sure. It was originally in French and then poorly translated (i could still hear the original dialog underneath the translated voices) into what i assume is Azerbaijani.

Did i say AWESOME? The villain looked like he’d dipped his head in lime-colored rubber and the police chief occasionally had three arms.

By the time i landed in Baku i was sleep-deprived and extremely nervous about language and customs and, i don’t know, being arrested for having purple hair or something.

Okay, fine, it wasn’t as bad as i’d worried, but i did have to run through four people and they took my passport for awhile and made me sit.

The Baku airport has smoke everywhere. Everyone smokes! As far as i can tell the airport is run by eight guys in grey suits with cellphones who rove around handing out boarding passes and pointing to gates.

Within an hour getting into Azerbaijan i saw not less than three men and one woman with entirely gold teeth. Entirely. Gold. Teeth. My camera battery died as soon as i left London, so i don’t have any pictures.

When i left again through the smokey airport, the pilot walked through the airport yelling, “Aktau! Aktau!”

Our plane died on the runway …

OUR PLANE. DIED. ON THE RUNWAY.

There was a lot of discussion, heated discussion, i didn’t track any of it … because it was all in Russian and possibly Azerbaijani. They sent a bus to bring us back to the airport while they got another plane.

Yes, this was kind of stressful and i briefly considered living in Baku forever or taking the train.

Once we did take off toward Aktau, they gave us onion-potato knishes, which sort of made everything okay.

Tags: azerbaijan, baku, europe, london, travel

Whitwell to Leicester to London

House-sitting in Whitwell was largely a success. Matt and Klara, the owners, were funny and interesting. Matt picked us up at the train station and Klara made us dinner. Rocky and Milo, two Yorkshire terriers, were the kind of dogs that magically appeared on your lap the second you sat down. The night before they left we stayed up till far too late talking about American politics and theater. Their house was awesome, big and comfortable. They left us with a ton of food for the week.

I spent a big chunk of the house-sit writing and learning mandolin. The dogs were pretty hyper, Milo in this sort of chill way. Rocky was … well, Rocky was a very angry dog. I mean he liked us, but he was enraged that people would dare walk by the front window and on walks he was constantly trying to mix it up with other dogs, seriously ignoring that just about any dog in the world was two to four times larger than him.

I once accidentally stepped on his paw and he was seriously going to KILL THE SHIT out of my shoe. I just sort of stood there and held out my show out for him to maul until he got it out of his system. After a few angry minutes, he eventually forgave me.

So, like i said, the house and the dogs and the owners were all nice. The town of Whitwell itself … well i’m not sure the people liked us all that much. There were some exceptions. The folks in the chip shop were friendly and there was this really nice guy at the Boot & Shoe pub, but in general the vibe was distinctly “foreigner go home!”

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The worst moment was when we went to the pub across the street from the house. We literally had one of those movie moments where everyone stopped talking and started at us till we left.

There’s not really anything to do in the town and i started to go seriously stir-crazy by the end of the week. I even took a bus to the nearby towns Clowne and Worsop, but people still didn’t really that into me and there weren’t markedly huge things to do. The Worksop pub, which felt disturbingly close to a Denny’s, didn’t help much either. After the worst Guinness i’ve had outside of America and a DEEP FRIED VEGIBURGER (??!!?) i gave up and spent the rest of the week in the house watching movies and writing.

Once back from their trip, Matt and Klara graciously drove us to Leicester, right to our friend Damien‘s door.

Damien, as always, was awesome to hang out with. He was great host and played tour guide around Leicester, giving us feel for local flavor, history and political vibe.

I liked Leicester a lot, but Damien says i still have to see the dark side. We spent most of the day and night talking writing and books. Unfortunately we had a house-sit to get to the next day, so we had to take a train in the morning.

In London now. More on that soon.

Tags: house, sitting, travel, UK

The obligatory foreign food post.

Yes this makes me an ugly American, but you know, some things must be noted to give a proper impression of my trip.

First up, there’s just the unusual language usage. Just little things that catch me off guard, like:

And, you know, is it just me or do the English use a lot of precious language for things, especially food.

When we first arrived at the housesit, Klara asked if we’d, “like some squash.”

Now, to me “squash” means the single nastiest vegetable on the planet, but in England it’s this sort of Kool-Aid stuff you splash in water to “make it taste better.”

Speaking of taste, we couldn’t help but try DANDELION AND BURDOCK SODA, which was unfortunate, because it tastes like where cough syrup goes to die.

And finally are the foods that i can’t even get my head around, like maybe there’s just a gross misunderstanding of how certain foods work.

Like, say, PUTTING PASTRAMI AND PICKLES ON %$#@!* PIZZA!!

Tags: England, food, nastiness

Eugene to Seattle to Reykjavik to London to Edinburgh to Whitwell

Flying across the world takes a long time. I figured out that by the time i stepped off the plane in Edinburgh, nearly 30 hours had passed. Whew! One of the weirder bits was flying through Reykjavik.

My plane from Seattle landed at about 3:30 in the morning and i had a two hour layover. Everything was closed and i had to go through FOUR security checkpoints to get to my plane (the last two i had to wait and hour for because they wouldn’t let us near the plane till a half hour before the flight.) I’m sure Reykjavik is lovely, but at 3:30 am and without anyone else to talk to, it was pretty freaky.

By the time i got to Heathrow in London, i was starting to go off from sleep deprivation. Heathrow is kind of like Los Vegas, flashing lights and ads everywhere. While i tried to stay awake i sat between two men arguing vehemently in Italian and some kids fighting over whether Spiderman was a mutant or not. (Yes, girl in the grey jumper, you were right, he’s not.) People there were really nice and a cute guy said he liked my purple hair. I was almost disappointed when i didn’t have to do the “naked scanner” thing.

I didn’t think i’d like Edinburgh as much as i did. I mean, sure, i thought it’d be nice, but, God, i love it there! I miss it already. I’d originally planned to land in London and bop around by train, but Sarah was up there and my good friends Heather and Gethin live there.

Heather and Gethin went above and beyond. Housing us, feeding us, showing us around. They were perfect hosts.

I could have spent another week in Edinburgh. The city has a lovely old and modern feel to it and a good chunk of my memories were wandering the streets, looking at amazing old architecture and listening to people.

About that: Did i hear someone use the word “fooking” within five minutes of landing? Yes, yes i did.

Actually, most people had pretty understandable accents. Edinburgh is diverse. I heard Italian accents, German accents and 300 dialects of Scottish. The Scottish accent spans from “oh that’s adorable, say something else” to “wha?”

One night, we were coming back from a party and had just missed our train. With an hour to kill, Heather Gethin and i started playing hacky-sack on the platform. Because i suck, i inevitably kicked the thing down into the tracks. And because i’m an idiot i decided to climb down and get the damn thing. The second i hooked a leg into the rail-pit, a woman in uniform appeared like magic, yelling at me. So you see, some Scottish accents might as well be Tagalog for all i could understand. She was very upset, i got that, but i couldn’t translate a single word. Seriously, not even “is” or “you.” We got into a sort of rhythm where she’d yell at me, i’d smile and nod and then look to Gethin, who’d shrug. Then she’d yell more and we’d start over.

When not attempting to get myself arrested, i went to concerts. Most notably Balkanarama, which was a mad mash-up of video, costume and gypsy klezmer party music. The concert was my first night in Edinburgh, so i attended on a 48 hour sleep deficiency. It was awesome, but i made it till 2am and then started to go seriously fuzzy around the edges.

It took me about three days to get a hang of my sleep cycle. Well, i actually still need regular afternoon naps, but i seem to be mostly synced up.

Sarah bought me a mandolin for my birthday! She knew i was sad about leaving all my instruments packed away in Eugene, so she got me something i can travel around with. I’m slowly learning chords and scales and my guitar/bass/viola background is helping. That day i also had veggie haggis at Urban Angel. That night the four of us went out for a pint (my God, i’d forgotten how much better beer is without pasteurization) grabbed some Indian take-out and watched Kiss Me Deadly with our newly acquired friend, Richard. Kiss Me Deadly is … well, it’s a pretty tight and clever noir until the end. After the TALKING BOX OF PURE SCIENCE, it gets pretty cracktastic.

Anyway, in Whitwell now, somewhere in the center of England, where it’s raining!

Much more to report. More to come.

Hugs all around,

Grá

Tags: adventure, birthday, friends, fun, life, Ms. Miller, travel