School Days Part III (First Day of School)

Yulia got a call from the twins' teacher on Friday afternoon (August 30) that there would be a parents' meeting at the school at 7:00 p.m. that day.  We arranged with Jon that he would come with us so that he could get information for his son who is in the same class.  At the meeting we were told that the first graders would have their "line up" (Линейка) on Monday, September 1st at 9:00.  We needed to be there at 8:30.  After the line-up a few classes, not ours, would have a short lesson as a demonstration for the day's special guest: President Nazarbayev himself!

Monday was a holiday in Kazakhstan (Constitution day was celebrated) and so I didn't have work.  Yulia's mom had arrived the day before on the train from Krasnoyarsk, so we had an entire contingent of folks to go to the festivities.

Waiting at the bus stop on the first day of school - the twins in their uniforms!

The three amigos on their way to "the line-up"!

Riding the bus to school - It was nice and empty on the holiday.

Walking from the bus to school

There were a lot of people at the school.  There was a girl handing out balloons to all of the kids in attendance, especially the first graders in their uniforms.

The twins with their balloons. 

1V (1В) Class sign and the twins with their balloons.

It was quite chaotic getting everyone lined up with their classes and keeping the parents in the background.  That was coupled with the extra presidential security made for a bit of a crowded space in the school's courtyard.

One side of the courtyard, parents in the background behind the kids and next to the wall.

 The ceremony was quite simple and nice[1].  The older kids danced, there was a ribbon cutting by one of the younger kids to open the school, and a first bell of the year rung by a first grader being led around by an 11th grader (senior here).

First grade girl ringing the first bell (Первый Звонок) being led by a senior.

As part of the ceremony all of the children released their balloons.

Seniors doing a dance number.  The boys were not super enthused (are most boys ever super enthused about forced dance numbers?)

Getting ready to cut the ribbon to open School 75!

All in all it was a pretty good way to start the school year.  Our only complaint was that we didn't get to hear a speech by the President.  Apparently he came to the school and walked around during the short lessons after the ceremony.  

The twins and James with their teacher, K. Ulkhanovna.

The main thing was that the school was opened.  It was actually ready on the 1st of September and our kids were ready to get started.

Leaving the school after the ceremonies were over.  School 75 is open for business.

________

[1] They announced during the ceremony the following statistics: 

1. There were five new schools opening in Astana that day.

2. Of the nearly 1 million residents of the city, over 100,000 are school-age children

3. The school had been built for a capacity of 2,000 students and there were nearly 4,000 signed up already.

My Commute to Work

One of the things I love about working at NU is that we live on campus and my commute is very short.  After living the last year in Las Vegas and dealing with traffic every day, a quiet walk to the office is a slice of heaven.  I took these pictures on my morning walk with Yuki.

View toward sports complex from the front of our apartment.

 The first part of the walk is through construction right now. It is to walk around some road and utility work near the sports court and next to the new business building that is going up right now. [1]

Looking down the straight (to the East) toward campus.  Campus is on the left.  To the front and right are the dorms.

My office. It is right through the glass doors ahead.  It is the building on the left.  

In the winter atrium door won't open, so I'll have to walk to the front of the university to enter.  That is until the business building is finished and the atrium is extended.  Then my commute will be all indoors after a quick 50 yard walk to the business building.
________

[1] You can see throughout this post that construction is a reality of life on campus.  We'll have to do a post on construction soon!

Subotnik - Civic Cleaning Day

The weekend before school started we got an announcement in our email - the university was going to hold a subotnik (субботник).  This is a holdover from the old Soviet days when everyone would pitch in and clean up a building, school, factory, the streets, etc.  We decided that we would be good citizens and help out.  We really feel like we are part of the community and we need to help build it and to help it grow.

Nazarbayev University is on a beautiful campus that is under construction in a lot of places.  We'll have to do a post about construction a bit later.

Late afternoon view of the NU.

Yulia went to the hospital to pick up lab reports, so the girls and I went to volunteer.

Working to pick up weeds and garbage at the front of NU!

All five us working hard!

 We were assigned to get weeds from the sidewalks.  Sidewalks here are typically made of bricks or other stones rather than concrete, so weeds easily get in between them and grow.

The successful work crew!

School Days - Part II

In our last school days post we ended the story with our visit to the new school.  The two young women who were running the application desk were different from the one we had met the day before.  They were surprised that we were registering four children at once.  They asked our address and we told them. They asked where we were from and we told them.  They said that they needed to talk to their director, so one of them got on the phone for a minute. They spoke for a few minutes and then said, okay.

[ We later learned that our helper from the International Scholars Office had called the ministry of education.  Apparently they called the director, and very shortly after that we had been invited to meet with her the next day!  It is sometimes nice to be on the right side of a power balance.]

We're in - Now What?!?

We were in!  Now all we had to do was take care of all the things we needed to do to actually register the kids for school.  The first step was to fill out an application for each of the kids.  This was done in the old Russian fashion of handwriting an application based on an example that they had taped to the table.  Yulia did this for all four of the girls - she didn't trust my handwriting to inspire confidence in our kids by the school.

After we wrote the application (заявление) we were given a list of things that we needed to bring to enroll the girls in school.  This list included a medical passport, an individual tax identification number (like a social security number) for the girls, birth certificates, a proof of residence and proof of work for the parents, and uniforms.

The HR staff at our school (The School of Humanities and Social Sciences) helped out by applying for the individual tax numbers for the girls.  The first step in that process was to notarize their passport information and to register them with the government here.  Since they are under 14 they didn't have to do that when we first arrived, so we had to do the extra steps.  That was an afternoon for me with someone from the school helping.  We got on top of the medical issue the next Monday.  That required a great deal of going back and forth to the hospital for various appointments with all the different specialists, translating the children's shot records into Russian, and collecting urine and stool samples at home. The blood sample they took at the hospital.  Overall the girls were good about the process and were very brave.

The girls show off their bandages after giving a blood sample.  They earned ice cream as a reward for their bravery!

The school required uniforms, but they weren't available yet.  We were given a number to call on Sunday (August 9) to find out where and when the uniforms would be available.  We were told that they would be ready on Tuesday at 10:00 at a store on the other side of town (at the bazaar).  We found the bus route to the area and on Tuesday took the bus to get the uniforms.  We found the store, but the kid that was running it pointed to all the boxes in the hall and said - we have the uniforms, but we aren't ready to start selling them, yet.  We'll start selling them on Thursday morning at 9:00. He learned that we were from America and said that he studied in Vancouver for 5 years a few years back. He was really glad to use his English with us.

Thursday morning we went back - and it was quite wild.  We were almost the first ones there, which was good.  We had to get uniforms for all four girls - and it was quite a process to find and try on all the different components.  The sizing is different from America, so we had to guesstimate and then verify.  We left the store a few hundred dollars lighter, but glad that we had gotten the full uniforms.  They had not ordered enough uniforms because they were not expecting as many kids to sign up for the school as did.

Through all the process we were not sure if the school would be finished on time for school to start on 1 September.

Finishing up the main courtyard - School 75 less than 2 weeks before class begins.

Inside the School 75 less than 2 weeks before classes were scheduled to start 

All of the medical and other paperwork took a while to get together so we didn't turn in all of our documents until  the 19th or 20th of August.  We were by far the last parents to complete the process, though!

We were the first ones in our school to send the kids to a local school.  My friend, Jon, and his family moved here from Moscow, arriving a few weeks after we did.  They decided to send their two oldest to the local school as well.  Another of my colleagues' husband is from Kazakhstan and her daughter had attended local school before.  She decided to send them to the local school as well.  We were about a week ahead of both of them and so Yulia became the expert on the process of enrolling the kids in the schools. She went to the hospital with both families to show them where and how to get started and to get uniforms as well.  It was nice to be helpful.  Jon's daughter is in Veronika's 4th grade class, and his son is in Sophie and Lexa's 1st grade class.  So only Polina is alone in class.  She will probably be the first to learn Russian!

Overall we felt as ready as we could be - the kids were enrolled, we had their uniforms, and we were ready to begin.

Experiencing new things - Trying Kazakh Kumis

Before coming to Kazakhstan we  decided that we wanted to try new things while we were here.  One of those things was to try the national drink of Kazakhstan, kumis.  Kumis is fermented mares' milk. Like horse milk.  That's been fermented.  We enjoy Russia's fermented drink, kvas, which is a drink made from fermented bread.  It has a slightly sour and sweet taste that is quite thirst quenching and has a bit of a carbonated feel with the fermented yeast.

Today we went down to the local mall to get new cell phones.  The one we had bought from a kiosk the day we arrived were cheap knockoffs (we found out later) and weren't working very well.  After we picked up our new phones we stopped to pick up a few groceries.  While in the dairy section we saw some kumis in a bottle.  What better time than now to try something new.

Our Kumis, at the table.

We decided to have it for dinner.  I poured a little into all of our cups.  We raised our glasses.

Lexa and Nika don't look too sure about this!

Drinking our Kumis

Then we drank.  Disaster!  It tasted like rotten kerosene.  It was awful.  I gagged, the girls spit it out.  Sophie could only cry.

Sophie did NOT like kumis

We all rinsed out our cups and then drank some juice to get the taste out of our mouth.  Some might say that we got a bad batch or a bad brand. Overall we don't plan on trying kumis again.

Pouring out the unused kumis.  Get it out of here!

School Days Part I

One of the attractive features of a job in Kazakhstan was the ability for us to immerse our children in the Russian language.  Our two oldest daughters got a pretty good foundation in Russian because their grandma (Babushka) spent extended time with us visiting when they were young and because Yulia was able to speak Russian at home with them.  Then our oldest went to school and started speaking to her mom in English.  That upset the carefully crafted dynamic that we had built.  The girls understand Russian, but need a lot of immersion and to be outside of their comfort zone in order to really start speaking it.

International schools in Kazakhstan are expensive - even with the generous education allowance that is part of our contract with NU.  This is especially true when you have four school-age children, and will have those children for the foreseeable future!  We had planned, since we took the job, on enrolling the girls in a local Russian-language school.  It would be a trial by fire, a sink or swim moment for them.  We talked to them a lot about this and they agreed that they would give it a try - they are young enough that they weren't too scared at the prospect of something new.

Then we arrived in Astana.  I had been in contact with the international scholars office about schools and they told me that there wouldn't be any problems with our children attending school.  They even contacted the school where the children should attend and told us that we could go and tour the school when we arrived.  Great!

A few days after arriving, I contacted the office about setting up a school visit and getting started on registration.  They set up an appointment for us to visit a school on Wednesday (August 6) and see about registration.  When we showed up at the school we were told that the first school that we had been told about was not accepting students from our area (schools attendance is based on geographic location here, too), but that our helper from the international office would take us to the correct school.  We got in the van and drove to the school.  It was a nice-looking school in a more established neighborhood on our side of the river/our side of town.  When we spoke to the ladies who were there taking care of registration we were told that NU was not part of the geographic region for their school and they would not accept us.

Our assigned school was a new school - No. 75 - that was still being built, but that would be ready for the school year to begin on 1 September.  We were also told that the school would be accepting students and that representatives from the school would come to do registration beginning later in the day.  They would also be there the next day.  We left, a bit disappointed, but not too discouraged.  We made a plan to go the next day with everyone in between some of my orientation meetings.

Hostility

When we arrived at the school the next day and walked into the reception room we were met with a great deal of hostility by the woman who was registering students. Here is the gist of the conversation we had with the woman.  (Her comments are red.  Ours are black.)

Where do you live?
At Nazarbayev University.
Where are you from?
America.
Your children can't study here. Go to the international schools. Our schools are only for Kazakhs.
We are legal residents of Kazakhstan and pay taxes.  Why can't our kids attend school?
Who told you that you could come here to register your kids (directed at our helper)?
That's not important (from our helper).  Why can't the children attend school?
The government pays a lot of money for each kid for their education.  This is an education for Kazakh kids.  I've been to America and you can't study there at public schools if you're not an American.
That's not right. Many non-US citizens study in US schools - especially if they are legal and pay taxes.
We've already turned away Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Russians who are here legally working.  Our schools are only for Kazakhs.  It's the law.
Tell us where to find that law.
Not until you tell me who said you could come here and register your children for school.

At this point we left - feeling quite upset and quite discouraged.  We decided to go and look at an international school that we had learned about online.  We went to the school and really liked it.  It was about half as much as the other international schools and the program was half in Russian and half in English, so it would have been a good fit.  We asked about getting spots, but were told that the registration was closed for the coming year because of the high demand.  We put our names on the waiting list for the next year and left.  Still discouraged.

Our helper from the international scholars office told us that he would call the Ministry of Education to find out about the law and that I should speak with my dean about the issue so that if pressure needed to be applied, we could start that process.  Yulia and I started talking about alternatives to schooling, including home-schooling for a year or just trying to find spots for the older girls in the other international school.  It was kind of a rough afternoon.

Hope
I got an email later in the day, towards evening.  Our helper had spoken with the director of the school and we could meet her the next day at the school - she may want to test your children's Russian ability.  That was good news, but we were still quite wary of what was going to happen.  We started drilling the children and warned them that they would have to be on their best behavior and best Russian.

We drove to the new school.  It was already Friday, and we were ending our first week in Kazakhstan.  We pulled up to the school - after having to pass through the construction of the apartment buildings that go around the entire block where the school is located - and saw that the school was still very much under construction. We got out and headed into the school where we asked a worker if anyone was in the school.  He pointed us down the hall and we went that way until we found the one room that looked like it was about ready.  In it was a long table, a couple of young women, and a number of chairs at the table and around the wall.

To be continued...

Getting to Kazakhstan

We flew out of the SLC International Airport with our route taking us from Salt Lake to New York to Istanbul to Astana.  Our first leg of the trip was on Delta Airlines and the last two legs were with Turkish Airlines.  Wednesday, July 30 was a busy day of finishing packing, picking up some last minute items, such as shoes for the twins.  We also were able to get a little walk in before it started raining.  The thing that we didn't get in the afternoon was a nap.

We needed to check Yuki (our dog) into Delta Cargo before our flight, so we planned on getting to the airport at around 8:00 p.m.  My older brother came with his van with the seats out to load our bags.  We had 22 bags total, including the girls' carry-on bags and the backpacks for Yulia and I.  The checked bags were all between 35 and 50 pounds in weight, which is okay on international flights, but heavier than you can take for free on domestic flights.

We pulled into the airport at around 7:45 p.m. and went straight to cargo.  It took us about 30 minutes to check in Yuki, and while Yulia and I did that the girls watched the airplanes taxi by, land, and take-off with Ben and with Oma. Our next hurdle was to stop, unload 22 bags curbside, and then park.  We unloaded the bags and Yulia and Oma stayed with them while Ben and I made a loop around the airport to return to the parking garage.  We parked and took the kids to the bags.  It took three trips and some coordination to get all the bags from curbside to check in.

Unloading our bags at SLC

Delta isn't Turkish

And they don't work together.  This meant that we could only check our bags (17 of them) from SLC to NYC.  We also had to pay $800 dollars in extra fees for the extra bags. The check in process went smoothly and we were checked in in no time at all.  That is when we hugged Ben and Oma goodbye and then headed for security.

Through Security and on to our Gate!

We had practiced going through security at home a few times, and that process went smoothly. This meant that we were checked in, at our gate, and waiting by 9:00 p.m.  Our flight was at 12:30.  Our itinerary (from the time our flight took off until we were scheduled to land) was 37 hours and 37 minutes of traveling. We started that 5 hours early.

New York

Our first leg on our adventure!

We arrived in New York on time at around 7:30 a.m.  We got off the plane and went to the luggage area.  We were wondering how we were going to handle the bags and the kids and the change of terminals.  It turns out that there are porters there waiting to help you out for a small fee.  Ours helped load the bags and also helped us get some cabs.  The cabs were not happy when we told them we were just going to a different terminal.  They thought they had hit pay dirt.  Another porter at Terminal 1 helped us move our bags inside to where they were still setting up the lines for the Turkish Airlines Check in.  It only cost us about $80 dollars to do things with help.  We like being independent and doing our own thing, but in this case the money was well-spent.

Waiting to Check into Turkish Airlines in NYC (JFK Terminal 1)

About the time we got everything piled up at the head of the line, I received a call from our dog courier.  Jim had picked up Yuki and was bringing her over.  I met him outside and he helped me cut the ties that were keeping Yuki's cage shut.  Then I walked her for a few minutes before taking her inside.  Check-in had started for Turkish, so when it was our turn we started the process.  They were not terribly efficient at check-in, but the agents were friendly and helpful.  For our extra bags and dog it cost us another $900, but it was cheaper to move from New York to Astana than to get the same things from SLC to NYC.  They told me that I couldn't check in Yuki until 11:30.  Our flight was scheduled for 12:30, and we were finished checking in at about 10:00.  I asked if I could leave her crate at the counter and bring her back, which they allowed me to do.

Yulia was brave and took the girls through security herself.  She said that she got very relaxed treatment and a lot of help because she had four very tired and unruly children all by herself.  She went to the gate and waited.  I walked all around the airport and Yuki got a good workout and took care of all of her necessary functions.  While I was at the bottom floor waiting for an elevator (I couldn't find any stairs) to go check in the dog I heard my name called to report immediately to Turkish airlines.  It was still 10 minutes until the agreed upon time, so I was worried something had happened with the flight or girls.  The elevator wait was interminable and my name was called three more times.  When I showed up, it was just them wanting me to check in the dog.  We had to get a special check from TSA for her crate and then we loaded her and they took her away. I got through security and met the family with about 10 minutes before we boarded.

Waiting for the flight to Istanbul

Turkey

The long one! Flight from NYC to Istanbul

Our flight to Turkey was long, but uneventful.  None of us slept a lot, maybe three or four hours. The entertainment options were good and the kids were well-behaved on the flight.  The food  was really quite good.  When we arrived at Ataturk Airport at 5:30 a.m. on 1 August, we felt like we were in a whole new world.  There were many groups of Muslim pilgrims there and the airport was very busy.  We arrived and found a bathroom.  Sometime in those first twenty or thirty minutes Lina was being naughty and Yulia had to reprimand her in public.  She started crying.  A man and his wife, who were either Chinese or Japanese, came right over and the man began to make a paper crane for Lina from a bunch that he had started.  By the time he was finished the girls had 6 or seven cranes of various sizes and a paper ball to boot.

Paper Cranes

The rest of the day in Turkey (from 5:30 until our flight at 7:45) was spent hanging out in as quiet of spot as we could find.  The girls slept.  Yulia and I took turns sleeping as well.  It had been a pretty grueling bit of travel up to that point and we still weren't finished.  We also did lunch and a little dinner snack before heading to our gate.  At the gate we met some of my new colleague who were on the same flight.

Tired Kids and a long wait in Istanbul

A long, long day for all!

Arrival in Astana

We arrived in time in Astana at around 2:30 a.m.  By the time we disembarked and got through passport control many people were already headed through customs.  We began getting our bags and putting them on carts.  Yuki's cage was also sitting off to the side of the luggage carousel so we picked her up as well.  She was happy to see us and was whining to get out, but we couldn't let her.  We got all of our bags, but two, and kept waiting and waiting.  Our flight was mostly gone and another one came in.  We had to fill out paperwork on our missing bags, and there were a few people who had the problem, so that took awhile.  Once that was done we went through customs.  They told us that because we had extra bags we had to fill out extra forms.  Eventually the riddle was solved with our contact at NU - the guards would let us through for a small unofficial payment ($200).  Otherwise we would have to fill out paperwork and our bags would be quarantined for days.  We paid the shakedown and as a bonus Yuki was able to come right with us without even waiting for the vet.

We loaded our bags onto a van and then loaded onto a bus with a group of individuals all coming to NU, many from the School of Humanities and Social Science.  We arrived on campus with our bags and filled out a few papers and received keys to our apartment.

Our apartment was just like the pictures we had seen, but it seemed bigger.  We got our bags in, and while Yulia bathed the girls and got settled in I took Yuki for a good walk around campus.  The air was cool, the sun was rising, and workmen were already starting work (on a Saturday morning) on the new buildings that are going up all around our apartment.  We were home.

Epilogue

Our two missing bags arrived on Tuesday afternoon and I was able to pick them up with no problem.  We settled in to our new digs just fine.  I will write more about that later.

Breakfast on day 2 - Settling in to our new home!