First Week of Work

I’ve survived my first week of work as an official Peace Corps volunteer, and I’m very thankful to have a day off to sleep in, cook some eggs and mushrooms for breakfast, and then sit with my computer and a cup of coffee listening to Ben Folds and recap a very monumental week.

Apart from the tiredness I feel from adjusting my daily routine, and the general stress of moving in to a new job and new family, I’m doing very well. In my first week as a PCV I team-taught 24 lessons with Saule, my counterpart. She is a large, commanding woman, who doesn’t take any lip from any of her students, maintaining absolute control over her class when she teaches. She has 32 lessons for 15 different classes (one class has 4 lessons a week while the others have 2), including two 8th grade, six 9th grade, two 10th grade, and five 11th grade classes. We spent about an hour each day planning the lessons for the following day, but because most the classes come in groups of the same grade, we only needed one plan for the 3 different groups the next day. Teaching the same lesson to three groups in a row can definitely get boring and repetitive, but it is also nice to figure out what works in the first classes to change them as the day progresses. Most of the classes received me well, although one is convinced that I know no Russian and therefore am not worth listening to. Halfway through the lesson Saule said that she had been summoned to the zavuch’s office and that I should just continue the lesson. The second she walked out the door, the kids lost all interest in environmental problems in Kazakhstan, and made it pretty difficult to maintain control and continue teaching. When we got to the grammar part of the lesson (countable vs. uncountable nouns) I gave up, knowing that there is no way that they would understand my explanations in English and I could never explain it in Russian. So, we took the vocabulary list and played hangman, instead. As the bell rang and the class left I could feel how tense I was and how glad I was that I came out alive. For a little while I was disappointed that I didn’t have control over the class and didn’t get through the lesson plan, but I am now feeling a little proud that I survived a class on my own in my first week as a new teacher in a country other than my own. I’ve been told by other volunteers that my work load is way too heavy and that there is no way that I’ll be able to keep it up for my whole service. They might be right, once I start doing English clubs and secondary projects, as well as working at the teacher training institute. I definitely feel like 24-30 hours a week is still not a full-time job, but maybe my expectations are different than those of the Peace Corps. It’ll be nothing new to find out that my expectations for myself are higher than those of my employers, counterpart, or fellow volunteers. The concern I have for myself, however, is the mention of job burnout because of overworking. For now I’m going to keep trucking along, knowing that I’m still working less than 40 hours a week.

My family here is great. This week I’ve talked more in Russian than I had with my whole family in Uzunagash. My Russian has improved so much this week, just by constantly using it. I know I won’t be using it much at school, and hardly at all with my counterpart (part of my job is to improve her English as well), so I need all the practice I can get here at home. I had my first tutoring session here with Darya, my former LCF in Uzunagash. She has moved back home to Petro and, for the time being, is looking for a job and has time to keep teaching me Russian. PC gives us a monthly allowance to continue tutoring throughout our service, and I hope to keep it up the whole two years. This computer is old and won’t let me put up pictures, so taht will have to wait until another time.

The weather has turned cold, and the snow has come. The sidewalks stay covered with a layer of ice, which I think will be the norm until April or so. There is a street cleaning crew that works (with brushes and shovels) to keep the streets clear, but the pedestrians like myself get to slide and skate are way around town. I’ve nearly fallen about 5 times already, and have seen many people do the same, but I haven’t hit the ground… yet. I did see one wipeout which definitely made me chuckle. Along the sidewalks there are some areas with a nice stretch of smooth ice which kids and adventurous adults alike enjoy sliding on as they walk along. On Thursday, as I was waiting for Mike at a street corner on our way to the University American club meeting, I got to watch the people pass for 10 minutes or so. I saw, about 20 yards away, a young boy (maybe 8-10 yrs old) bundled up and walking home from school. He was sliding on all the ice patches he could find, most of them just a foot or two long. As he approached, his face lit up as he saw the 8 foot long patch in front of where I was standing. He geared up and got a decent 7 step running start and launched onto the ice. He slid 4 feet, began tilting backwards, losing his balance, and so he leaned forward. He overcorrected, which is easy to do on the ice, and his miscalculation sent him face first onto the ground. I was smiling from the beginning, having seen the whole event develop and unfold, but I chuckled out loud (although quietly) as he, in his big coat, rolled and writhed for a minute on the ice like a turtle trying to flip back onto its stomach. He finally got up and, unhurt, made his way across the street. I like to think that at the next intersection and the next 8-foot ice patch, he corrected his miscalculation and nailed the landing.

And for the announcement part of today’s broadcast, my home phone number here is 8(7152)364855. My street address is 37/55 Internacionalnaya, if you care to see on google earth, and my new mailing address is PO Box 121, Petropavlovsk 150000. It is a shared box with the other PCVs in Petro, so that I don’t need to rely on Saule for my mail.