Open House Day
On February 4th for the second time this academic year KIMEP has opened its doors for potential applicants. More than 600 high school students and graduates from various institutions of higher education, as well as about 100 parents have visited KIMEP. More information >>>
My KIMEP Valentines Day Story
By: Caleb Gilleland
The day I met my future wife I smelled terrible.
I had just arrived at KIMEPafter enduring a 30-hour journey from Atlanta, the home of Coca-Cola, the 1996 Summer Olympics, and the world’s busiest airport, to Almaty, a city in the faraway land of Kazakhstan where I was to spend the next year of my life. Why was I here? I didn’t even know anyone in the entire country of Kazakhstan.
I had studied Russian language in college, and I had spent the summer of 2007 in Vladivostok, Russia. I graduated with a Bachelors degree in International Affairs from the University of Georgia not long after that, and I was soon trying to get a job in the field of international relations. Unfortunately, the financial crisis and worldwide economic recession had just occurred, and jobs were very hard to find, especially in international relations. I started searching for different options.
The summer before while I was in Vladivostok, I started reading about Almaty. Most of the locals thought that Kazakhstan was a backwards place where nothing ever happened. I wasn’t so sure—the economy seemed to be booming, and I was impressed with the ethnic diversity of the country. The idea of a place with hundreds of different kinds of people sounded great, especially since I wouldn’t look too out of place (I assumed everyone would think I was Russian until I started talking). In addition, most young people in my religious tradition, the Baha’i Faith, give a year of their lives to devote to community service and teaching, often abroad in other countries. Personally, I had always wanted to travel somewhere where I could volunteer in the community and help people who hadn’t been given the same opportunities in life that I had. So when I graduated with no job into a terrible economy, Kazakhstan was on my mind. The only question was: How do I get there?
Because the economy was so bad, I decided that I should go on to graduate school. I didn’t know what to study, but I knew that business might be more useful to study than international affairs. When I started looking for colleges with strong business programs around the world, I made a special search to see if any Kazakhstani universities were good fits for me. I found KIMEP’s website, and I became quite intrigued with the possibility of studying there. It took a while, but I applied and was accepted. Through a miracle that I won’t go into here, I managed to obtain a scholarship that would pay for a year of study. After some hesitation, I bought the plane tickets and obtained a Kazakhstani student visa. I had made the commitment.
So I had gotten off the plane at the Almaty airport, negotiated a decent fare in a local taxi, and had been dropped off only one block north of KIMEP’s campus. I walked up the hill and into the front lobby of the university. I had arrived, but because of communication difficulties the week before, I wasn’t actually sure that I had a dorm room to stay in. I figured that if I showed up, I would find a place to stay somewhere in the city. Luckily for me, there was one room left in the dormitory, and my future roommate, Artyom, graciously invited me to share his room with him.
Unfortunately, as my journey had been so long, I hadn’t had a chance to take a shower in a couple of days. As soon as I had moved in to my new home, I was told that all international students were meeting to have a “special” lunch in the KIMEP cafeteria. As tired and dirty as I felt, I was even more hungry and thirsty. I put on a new change of clothes and ran down to meet my new classmates.
As vulnerable international students, we eagerly ate whatever the KIMEP administration put in front of us. Only after we were finished did we discover that we had just been fed “bishbarmak”, the national dish of Kazakhstan, which contained horsemeat. As an American, the idea of eating horse is only slightly better than eating dog or cat. Uniquely, though, at that moment, I was so truly hungry that I didn’t care what I had just eaten. I was just happy to be sated. Now that hunger and thirst were no longer issues, I started to meet the other international students. Just about all of them were exchange students from Europe, Korea, or Singapore. There was only one other student there who was there for a full year—an American girl named Christie. And trust me, the last thing I wanted to do in Kazakhstan was to date an American girl, because that would be incredibly lame. It turned out that I had little control in the matter.
Christie, even now, says that she barely remembered me that first day at KIMEP. I’m glad, since I did not smell so good and my hair was pretty crazy looking. And I know I looked really, really tiredsince I hadn’t slept much since I left Atlanta.
It wasn’t until a week later when I really got a chance to hang out with Christie. She had been invited to be a judge at an international relations conference at a resort a bit south of the city. She didn’t know what it would be like, so she asked me if I would like to go with her to check it out. Teams of students from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan were competing on whose vision of Central Asia in the future was the best. I was asked to be a judge as well, and both Christie and I had a great time. When I got back to campus, we talked for a while and then went our separate ways.
The next time I heard from Christie I was up in the mountains at Medeu with Artyom. She called and said she was interested in getting to know me better. I suggested that we meet that night at il Patio. (I found out later that she doesn’t eat pizza, but she didn’t hold that against me). We again had a great time.
Truthfully, I was beginning to like Christie. The next weekend the international students had planned to go to Altyn-Emel National Park along with Sharyn Canyon. I knew it was going to be a long bus trip, so I grabbed a seat right next to Christie so that she would be stuck with me for hours.
I don’t know if it was the beauty of Kazakhstan’s magnificent countryside, or whether I am just stunningly handsome, intelligent, and kind, but I knew she was beginning to fall for me too. Probably there were just too many poisonous fumes in the old bus that we were stuck in. Whatever the reason, whenever we returned back to KIMEP, we made plans to hang out the next day. And the next day.And the next day. Soon, it was obvious that we were supposed to be together.
We spent the rest of the year studying for our classes, making friends with both Kazakhstanis and people from all over the world, doing service projects with the Baha’i Community of Almaty, starting English-language clubs at the Almaty Children’s Library and Kazakh-American University, and helping to lead the KIMEP English Club.
Upon our return to America, I arranged to finish my Masters degree in Marketing at Georgia State University, and Christie got accepted into one of the best Law programs in the country at the University of Virginia. We’ve had to move around the country to be with each other while we complete our studies, but we have recently become married and now both reside in Charlottesville, Virginia. Both of us remember our experiences at KIMEP and Almaty fondly, and aim to return there after our studies are complete. We love Almaty, and we cannot wait until we can someday make it our home once again.
Thank you KIMEP, for helping Christie and I find each other! It is a debt that we can never truly repay.
Christie and I at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta protesting the planned closure of KIMEP, Fall 2010.
Christie and I at our wedding ceremony at Ruby Falls Caverns, Chattanooga, Tennessee, January 2012.
