Over the Hill

Warning: Today’s post has an amazing number of pictures of just me, so if your arrogant asshole detector is going off…. It’s accurate.



It’s the end of week 5, meaning that I’m now more than halfway through training. Let’s take a look at the scoreboard:

Number of volunteers who have quit: 6
Classes I’ve taught: 4
Times I’ve witnessed the slaughter of a cow: 1
Books I’ve finished: 2
Hours of Language Training: 80
Hours of Technical Training: 48.5
Hours of Medical Training: 9.5
Number of Vaccinations I’ve received: 8
Weight I’ve lost: 6.8 lbs
Maximum Number of Days I’ve Gone Without Bathing: 5
Number of Drunks I’ve had to step over to go to work: 4
Number of times I’ve eaten horsemeat: 3
Times I’ve shit my pants: 1

Writing this blog is difficult in many ways, because my time to journal is fairly limited – there’s so much that one wants to do, but given the fact that there’s only a certain amount of hours in the day (and the fact that I’m a lazy asshole) it’s been hard to keep up. The fact that I have to ride a 30 minute bus to the hub site for internet access also contributes to this, of course.

With training half over and the end of the first immersion teaching session, I’ve decided that a discussion on what’s been going on lately is in order.

Immersion teaching went extremely well – the whole process was essentially a 4-day session of working with real live students from Novoalexseeyvka. About 2 weeks ago, we were given weekly tasks to put our technical training to good use and to start writing lesson plans. I was to teach 7th form kids, meaning that the ages ranged from 12-13. Being from a university teaching background (in the loosest sense of the word – I was basically a fairly advanced writing tutor that happened to teach 1-unit pass/nopass adjunct courses) this was different for me – I found it difficult to skew my lesson plans towards something that was challenging to them. My lessons, basically encompassed a variety of topics – “What I like and what I don’t like,” – “Planning countries to go to for holidays”, “Animal Life,” etc. Animal life was easily the most fun out of all of them – the classes was focused on grammar, so I had the children do present-simple sentences regarding their favorite animals – which included doing an animal sound.

School life here is a little different from America – here, respect for the teacher is heavily emphasized. When you enter the room, all of the children stand up, and must say “Zdrasvutiye” to you first, in which you respond in like. In addition, materials are very difficult to find – it’s normal for classrooms to be missing chairs, and children end up sharing chairs, one cheek each. Whiteboards, Powerpoint, overhead projectors, etc. are all nonexistent, and you’re often left with an aging, scratched up chalkboard that seems to retain 10% of the chalk you’re actually putting onto there.

The other option is to prepare materials at home on recycled butcher paper – all of it has a grayish tinge to it, and is definitely of lower quality – but it’s cheap and easy to acquire, so you use it. For my particular lesson, I chose to go this route, drawing pictures of animals and the various phrases I wanted the students to learn on the butcher paper.

We began the activity by doing a warm up. At technical training, we’re taught to use communicative approaches to teaching, meaning we want the kids to think for themselves and to encourage independent thinking. For example, a question that’s commonly asked in English class is something like “What is the weather outside like today? Or what color is the shirt I’m wearing? What date is it today?” Using this form, the answer is predetermined, meaning the kids actually don’t have to think all that much. Instead, I chose to ask questions like “What did you eat for dinner last night? Or why do you like the color blue?” – something that gives the children an opportunity to think for themselves.

It was terrifying for kids to think for themselves, apparently. Several of the students, even though they clearly demonstrated time and time again that they knew the English words for the things they had eaten (never mind the fact that I allowed for them to use the Russian names of the dishes they had eaten), would stand up, and essentially freeze up, saying something like “Last night, I ate… last night, I ate… last night, I ate…” over and over again like a broken record until I would come in and help them. “Last night, I ate pellimenni (a Russian dumpling).”

After the activity, I began by giving my lesson:

1. I am a….
2. I make this sound…
3. I like to eat…
4. During the day, I like to…
5. During the night, I like to…
6. When I move, I move…

And so on. Kids seem to love it when their teacher is goofy, so my first two demonstrative activities were rooted in cows and lions. They roared with laughter when I would do a booming “MOOOOOOOOOOO” in the classroom, or when I would roar, followed by clawing motions. I followed up with their choice of animal, which of course, turned out to be a monkey.


Getting everyone to do the monkey, of course, was a joy in of itself.

Then came the opportunity for all of the children to do whatever animal they wanted for themselves. I started by asking all of the children for names of animals, of which they came up with an impressive list – panda, bear, lion, dog, cat, crocodile, snake, etc. After doing say, I gave them all 10 minutes to draw their own picture and to write the sentences.

My mistake was not telling them that now Monkey, Lion, and Cow were out of the question. Perhaps 8 of the 12 kids did one of the three we had already done, certainly disappointing, since it didn’t really show that they had learned anything, but it was a lesson learned. The kids that got up to present had a fun time getting everyone to do their animal motions and sounds alone with them, so at least some of them understood.

The week went relatively smoothly, though stressful. One of the things that we’re consistently told here in training is that we’re always being evaluated – the presence of the regional managers during the immersion teaching was obvious, but they’re always thinking and watching us about other things as well, like the way we interact with staff and other volunteers and locals, and our attitudes and behaviors. Our language teachers also have a say in the matter since they tend to be most in touch with us on our day-to-day lives, knowing how we interact with things and how we deal with stress.

Somewhere along the line, I’ve acquired an image of being a good boy with the staff, and I’m told I’m well-liked. Kris, the country director, told me that there was something about my attitude and the way I interacted with other people that said a lot of good things about me as a person, and made me a desired commodity amongst the regional managers. The fact that I don’t drink and smoke is something of an oddity amongst my particular group, and seems like it may work out in my favor in terms of site placement.

The constant evaluation basically results in our suitability to be volunteers and the suitability of placing us in particular sites – as I had mentioned before, each regional manager has in mind a certain sites for certain volunteers, but there’s many different things to consider. In my particular case, I’ve heard, the fact that I don’t drink and have a certain level of technical ability may land me in a city rather than a village. 80% of us are going to rural villages, whereas the last 20% may have a shot at a city. The reasoning for this is that since the city provides many more opportunities to party and various distractions, I’m apparently more suited towards it because I won’t be as likely to be distracted. The technical skills aspect, of course, comes into play with the fact that villages are unlikely to have computers and internet access to start with.

While many volunteers desire to go to the city simply because that’s what they’re used to and they want opportunities to party and be distracted, I’m trying to keep an open mind about everything – certainly, in my mind, I’d like to go to the city simply for convenience’s sake – things are much more readily available there, and I’d love to have things like internet access all the time. However, at the same time, I realize that villages have just as much to offer – the sense of community there is much stronger, and you’re more likely to be afforded more protection as the villages tend to function more on a personal basis. In the end, all I know is that I’m going to keep an open mind about whatever I get, and that there’s good and bad to any sort of site placement – to sit up, hoping for a particular placement is only setting myself up for disappointment.

Certainly though, Kazakhstan is a huge country, about 4 times the size of Texas – most of the sites are far from Almaty, where I am right now, meaning a train ride anywhere from 20-80 hours away, so essentially we’re starting a whole new life after we’ve just adapted to the one here.


The other aspect is the dynamics of the group – many friendships have been born out of the past 5 weeks, and after site placement, we could all be several hours away from each other. Some of us, the only time we’ll see each other, will be at the mid-service conference at one year and at the close of service conference at 2 years. When you see people everyday and are used to their faces, the concept of that can be frightening, as you’re torn away from that familiarity and once again on your own.

We’ll have to see what happens in a week, and see how things play out as a result.