I am moving to Kazakhstan

Hey family - I have an interview with a school in Kazakhstan. It'll be a good refresher interview to sharpen up and I'll keep an open mind but there's no way I'll actually go there.


Hey fam - So I got a job offer at the school in Kazakhstan that I told you about. There's like a 10% chance I go.


Hey family and friends - I am moving to Kazakhstan!

"I can't tell if you're joking or not."

"Ha. I am not visiting you."

"Is that where Borat is from?"

"Jesus" (checks the Canadian travel advisory site)


And so after a stopover in Poland that went roughly like this:

Step 1

 Step 2

Step 3

I arrived in Kazakhstan. A country that I am older than by a year. I had a short stopover in the capital city of Astana (100% will be visiting this city in the near future) before flying to Taraz, my new home. Taraz is very very old. Like Jesus old. It celebrated its 2000th birthday in 2001 and when it was little more than a fortress called Zhizhi it was the sight of a battle in 36 BCE. It was a major trade centre on the Silk Road, a famous trade route connecting Asia and Europe for centuries. It was almost invaded by Genghis Khan in the 1200s, and now I live there, so that's pretty cool.

I talked to some very friendly Kazakhs on the flight to Taraz and was picked up by my Vice Principal at the airport and given a brief tour of my new school, made a quick stop where I was treated to lunch, and finally was dropped off at my apartment.

I took one look at the menu and asked my VP to please just decide for me

He played it safe and chose the famous Uzbekistan dish of fried spaghetti. There is no way fried spaghetti is an Uzbek dish. Just no way.

I was dropped at my "three room" apartment (in Kazakhstan they count bedrooms and living rooms as rooms in an apartment). My legs almost quit when carrying my two suitcases of a combined 40kg (I got charged being over weight, that's how I know) I was informed "there is no lift and you're on the fifth floor". But the hike was worth it when I got the first look at my humble abode.

(I've unpacked, its clean now)

I spent the entire first afternoon, evening and night sleeping, obviously, but before I did so I was sure to stock up on water so I could stay nicely hydrated for when I inevitably get some sort of traveller's diarrhea or likewise. There were dozens of water brands so I bought the one with a glacier on it because obviously. When I got home and opened the bottles they were fizzy. I hate tonic water, but was too embarrassed to go back to the store immediately. The following morning I tried again and this time chose a different water without a glacier on it because apparently glaciers in Kazakhstan are aerated. Failed again. So much fizz. On my next attempt I went bold and bought a 5 litre bottle because there's just no way someone would ever put 5 litres of tonic water in one vessel. This strategy proved successful, so with a massive fist pump I hydrated, and ever since have only bought water in 5 litre increments.


September 1st is a national day of celebrating education, known as First Bell. It basically marks the first day of school, with a ceremony called Last Bell taking place on May 25th. Since September 1st also coincides with Eid al-Adha we had to postpone the First Bell celebrations til Saturday.

This is a photo at my school of the First Bell ceremony. I have no idea what was going on but there was lots of singing and dancing. My school is massive, this photo shows about half of it.

On birthdays in Kazakhstan all your friends bombard you and make a circle around you and one at a time say nice things about you then everyone claps. Given that it was all in Kazakh I finally caught on to the pattern right before it was my turn to compliment the birthday girl who I had met 90 seconds ago. 

No Kazakh ceremony would be complete without launching a bunch of rockets into the sky.

So what have I learned about Kazakhstan so far? First and foremost Kazakhstan has the friendliest people of anywhere I've ever visited. The only country that comes close is Nepal. And I'll basically spend the rest of this post trying to convince you of Kazakhstan's unbelievable hospitality. 

After the First Bell ceremony I met a few local biology teacher colleagues and they were extremely curious about me, my country, and my marital status (its the first question anyone you meet in Kazakhstan asks you). One teacher quickly offered me a famous local snack called kurt. It is made of dried salty cheese (what does that even mean?) and was famous when people would migrate long distances to replenish electrolytes lost through sweating. It is also rock hard, and basically tastes like I was trying to eat a salt lick. I am told it goes well with beer but I am pretty sure any taste that follows kurt would seem delicious.

mmm dried salty cheese rock

Another local teacher named Ohlzas offered to take myself and a couple other international teachers out to a microbrewery. Awesome! We had a meal, a few snacks and several locally brewed beverages for about $9 Canadian. 

Admittedly the photo is pretty bad but the place had a beautiful outdoor setting, with no music and big tables for maximum drinking and chatting, one of Kazakhstan's favourite hobbies.

The place offered miso soup style samplers of the beers brewed in house.

Shashlik kebab is a very popular dish and it is delicious. This one is turkey!

 Here's a few more shashlik dishes. I will clearly never finish all the onions they think I need. 

 (lamb)

(chicken)

This is a pizza but we're doing food pics so I put it in here. Its 4 pizzas in one!

Ohlzas was showing us a great time and speaks exceptional English so he and I ventured out to another of his favourite bars afterwards and it gave me a chance to speak with him one on one and learn a ton about Kazakhstan culture, hear about his time in London studying his Masters on a Bolashak scholarship. Kazakstan is pouring tons of money into university scholarships for their citizens to study abroad for free on the condition they return to Kazakhstan and work for at least 3 years afterwards. 

On our way home I learned firsthand how taxis work in Kazakhstan. Basically, everyone is a taxi. Its like Uber on steroids. You just stand at the side of the road and wave your hand at cars, someone will pull over, you negotiate a price, and voila, you have a taxi. I am gonna to be getting in many strangers cars who don't speak English mom, so you should try not to worry about me. 

It was really a great evening and I left feeling pretty excited for having taken the opportunity to live in Kazakhstan. 

But the clear cut winner so far for hospitality goes to one of my local colleagues Ms. Inna who volunteered to take me around in her car to help me buy a few household items to help me in settling in. A fan, clothes hangers, laundry detergent, a kettle, just stuff that could be difficult to find with the wandering aimlessly and looking confused approach that I usually take.

Sunday morning at 10am I got a text that she was outside my apartment and ready to take me around the city. I walked downstairs to find Ms. Inna, her husband, and her daughter (fluent in English, Russian and Kazakh so playing the role of translator) all waiting excitedly for our excursion. I am a pretty terrible shopper and a very indecisive person but with the 4 of us, and trusty Google translate for when all else failed, we were able to make some huge headway in turning my apartment into a home. Now when you buy something in Kazakhstan (in this example it was a kettle) first you choose from the items on display, then the employee finds a boxed one for you, then you pay for it and get a receipt, then you take that receipt to where the employee has brought the boxed item, then someone takes your kettle out of the box, plugs it in and tests it in front of you, writes you a warranty in Russian, and then you take your kettle. There is no way I ever would have figured this out without a full squad of helpful Kazakhs. 

My first purchase! A glorious feat! I don't know why everyone laughed so hard when I asked if we could take a photo of this triumph.

Yuliya, Vladimir (obviously his name is Vladimir), Inna, Myself, Pan

On the way out of one of the stores I saw a watermelon and got excited. Inna was having none of those hardware store watermelons so we stopped at a fruit vendor on the side of the road. 

Hold on. Let's get a closer look at those monstrous melons behind the watermelon.

What the heck is that??

Cantaloupes in Kazakhstan are massive!

After buying a completely unreasonable amount of melon I was dropped off at my apartment. The whole family hiked up the 5 flights of stairs, bags and giant melons in hand, and wouldn't leave until they had seen to it that my newly bought fan had been properly assembled.

I can't honestly say I ever thought I'd have a Russian man in my living room building a fan. 

After the nicest family in the world finally left to go buy math books to donate to children (actually, that's what they did next) they were far from finished extending their hospitality. Yuliya messaged me 3 photos of water brands that were non-aerated so that I wouldn't fall victim to sneaky sparkling water ever again. 

And finally later that afternoon I received this message from Ms. Inna. 

You win Kazakhstan, you have the nicest people ever.

Tomorrow will be my first day of school, and I am so excited because I know the students are going to be absolutely amazing.