Our second contact with the outside world was through a visit by Professor Perry Hodges who came to speak with us about her professorial exchange experience in Kazakhstan. From my impression, I must admit that none of us were very familiar with Kazakhstan as a country. Professor Hodges helped to inform us, however, by not only explaining some of the cultural information she gathered from her experience, but also showing us a map of Kazakhstan and pictures of the landscape and the people she met while living there. A map of Kazakhstan and some pictures of its landscape and inhabitants can be found in North-Western Asia on our map. Considering our deprived state of familiarity with Kazakhstan, it was very surprising to find that it is the ninth largest country in the world.

With open borders between Russia, China, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, this country is very ethnically diverse and maintains relatively peaceful relationships among its varying ethnic populations. There is a strong Russian influence; however, as a large population is Russian and Russian is the primary spoken language. The native language, on the contrary, is Kazak (an example can be found among the photos on the map), and currently there is a great push for Kazak to be both the official language and the primary spoken language, which is leading Russians to emigrate back to Russia because of a lack of desire or ability to learn this complicated language, despite the fact that many Kazaks are open to learning Russian. English, as well, serves as an important language for success for the Kazaks, yet it is not one of the primary spoken languages. Thus, Kazakhstan is still in the process of forming a combination of an official and a primary language that is most beneficial to them- a process that we have discovered through our own class discussions to be imperative to establishing a definitive culture.

As a result of Professor Hodges’ visit with us, we learned not only about a part of the world that we were unfamiliar with, but also about the ability of a group of people with different ethnicities, languages, and experiences to join together to form a peaceable culture; in turn, we can compare ourselves as Effins to the people of Kazakhstan in that we share a similar challenge, as well as enjoyment, in creating a culture.