Wednesday, June 10, was my departure day. At 5pm we departed from our hotel in Atlanta to the airport. All of us generally cringed at the treatment my guitar was visibly recieving before it was even really checked into baggage, however that was to be expected. My positive sentiments about how it was well packed for any danger diminished quickly. Unable to find any currency exchanges that provided Tengre, the Kazakh Currency, at about 6pm I entered the terminal and began the 3 hour wait before boarding.
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| The Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia, USA |
Around 9:30 the flight began boarding, which was a chaos of people not understanding the direct instructions of the announcers as to how seating would be done. Having no carry-on luggage (only a backpack as my personal item), I was perfectly complacent waiting for the chaos to die down without rushing for an early seat. While waiting I did notice one or two Kazakh passports, quickly identifiable by their light blue cover, almost certainly making the same transfer flight as I was going to. Other distinct passports I could make out included the PRC, Russian Federation, Netherlands, Ukraine, and even Australia. This, of course, was largely dwarfed by the mass number of US citizens on the flight. Still, all announcements were done first in Dutch before English.
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| An example of a Kazakh Passport |
Before the plane took off, two passengers got into a seating dispute and I ended up offering my aisle to maintain the peace. While this made things more uncomfortable, it was far less tedious than one would expect. We arrived around noon in Amsterdam, 8 am Eastern Time.
When reaching the transfer section of the airport, I had a brief crisis that scared the living daylight out of me. After scanning my passport and confirming my reservation, the self check-in asked if I checked in any baggage on departure. When I answered "no," it proceeded to give me an error saying that this was inconsistant and that I was not marked for baggage, and refused to give me a ticket until the issue was solved. Imagining my mother's worst fears were about to come true I decided to head for the gate to solve the crisis there, so that I would be able to get on the plane immediately after if time were cut short. What I soon discovered was that not only was I at the wrong gate, but the issue of baggage could only be solved at the center for the airline itself, not any part of the airport. In other words, I needed to go back where I started. At this point there was an hour and 30 minutes until the boarding time of the flight to Almaty, establishing a legitimate risk of me not arriving on time for the boarding. Panicking, I sprinted across the airport to the KLM service desk, which had a line sprawling throughout the room filled with disgruntled travelers.
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| Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam |
Luckily for me, my rudimentary Russian saved me from such stress. While in line for the main desk I overheard a conversation between a kiosk assistant and a woman with a Kazakh Visa. The Russian words for "luggage," "error," and "don't worry" could be recognized and I saw the woman show her baggage receipts, to which the assistant smiled and used the kiosk to print her ticket. I moved out of line and asked her in English if my problem was the same. She listened, agreed, and printed out my ticket for me.
I must say, going through the gate and its separate security in addition to boarding the plane was a unique experience. I have traveled to many places across the world, however these have always been very touristic spots where it usually isn't hard at all to find a US Citizen or English speaking counterpart. However, while waiting for my gate I tried my absolute best to find someone who was from the United States, and then just looked for someone not from Kazakhstan or the Russian Federation. However, I think I was the only person on that entire flight not from those two countries. Being so outnumbered and foreign without any friends, classmates, family , or even fellow tourists around was very different, however not as unnerving as I initially feared it would be. It was incredibly lucky for me that KLM included English in all of its announcements (Along with Dutch and Russian) otherwise I would have been hopelessly lost. (In all honesty, however, the staff of the flight focused on speaking English to the passengers, and it seemed that very few of the passengers did not know English, and few of the KLM staff knew Russian).
As for the flight itself, This plane is actually seemed larger and more comfortable than the previous. This may have been biased, however, as I had an aisle seat to myself without any hindrance to me reaching my belongings.
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| The Almaty Airport Unfortunately, at night this amazing backdrop wasn't visible |
Our plane arrived a few minutes early, but unfortunately I ended up being last in line in the passport control of the Almaty airport. Still, despite arriving at three I was given a warm welcome by some of the leaders of AIESEC Almaty, complete with a stylized sign of me.
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| Airport welcome, complete with a poster of me in traditional Kazakh attire |
We left the airport and they introduced me to my dormitory at one of the city's universities. Upon arrival, they proceeded to call the woman who managed the gate and waited for her to show up and let us in. When three Kazakh women, apparently residents of the dormitory, came behind us and tried to enter the woman controlling the entrance would only let us in. Apparently there is a 11pm curfew in the university unless under clear and pre-approved circumstances. The woman controlling the entrance clearly knew no English, and all the signs in the University were in Kazakh, meaning things are going to certainly be interesting for me trying to get around here. They took me to my dorm on the second floor, where I met two very tired European Interns (One from Estonia, the other from The Czech Republic) who were woken up by my arrival. Still, they were pleased to meet me and we chatted before trying to go back to sleep.
That brings me here! I'm now on a top bunk of one of the room's four beds, preparing for my first visit to the school camp where I will teach English. I'm excited to get to know the interns and the city.
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